Valentin Fetisov

‘Be My Friend’ is a program that gathers, analyzes and visually represents the online status of the artist’s friends on Facebook. “Online” or “offline” is an important paradigm, visible to every social network user, that shapes the way we communicate today. Data is collected on how much time we spend reading posts, “liking” them, scrolling through profiles and so on, but is never published, as that would make the surveillance process too obvious. It’s interesting that Facebook gives us the ability to see both the time when a person was last online and their last type of activity in which they were engaged.

The name of the project plays with the general understanding of modern friendship and how an artist’s popularity depends on their ability to attract new subscribers and followers. On the one hand, this is a critique of isolated communities (including artistic ones). On the other, it is an indicator of changes in our relationships as a result of the digital surveillance built into our day-to-day communication.