![]() They do not know how to interact with a world that is defined by its realness and its differentiation from what is virtual and imaginary. This is what is reflected in the awkward gestures and facial expressions of our avatarian siblings. KEEP IT REAL! The sober view produces a moment of exposure, awkwardness, uneasiness, and questionability that is not resolved by consulting our smartphones, working hard on ourselves or detoxing. Every click, like, post, and swipe translates our attention, our excitement, our engagement, our wishes, our outrage, our sociability and our curiosity into statistical data and profits, and increases the power of international tech-giants. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.” Apropos Marx: If we abandon the difference between virtual and real production, we are compelled to realize that the avatars linked to us – our avartarian parts – are doing a lot of unpaid labor. “All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. KEEP IT REAL! is what Marx and Engels demand in The Communist Manifesto. Which poses the question: how do we create more desirable social formations and more pleasurable entanglements? It calls for the acceptance of impurity and the techno-socio-economic entanglement as the material basis. “Keep it real!” in its avatarian subversion does not enforce purity laws. Neither ethnicity nor gender or genetics will ensure our sense of belonging. There is no turning back, no full employment, no natural lifestyle. KEEP IT REAL! Don’t avoid conflict! Face the facts, as disagreeable as it may be! Fact is, we are living in the digital age. Who wants to have their free will and true desires exposed as a result of market research? There it is again, an origin, a genesis, a heteronomy that embarrasses us. As the focus group revealed: The majority of customers react positively to hyper-realistically vamped up pictures of rural idyll. Authenticity is nothing more than the corny scenery of alpine pasture imprinted on the plastic-coated milk carton, whose contents have been industrially produced without any cow ever standing in a meadow. Even going offline is nothing more than a pose masking our socio-historical genesis – the wiring beneath the surface. Claiming authenticity, realness, originality, and naturalness becomes fake. You are digitally recorded, hooked up, algorithmically determined, and statistically analyzed. You are fictional, fabricated, industrially produced, and priced. Suddenly another gaze appears from behind the screen – and we are the ones caught in it. ![]() The gaze no longer originates in real life and looks at the screen. Now, due to its avatarian kinship, the phrase takes on new meanings. KEEP IT REAL! For a long time, the slogan was aimed at imposters and posers, those embarrassed by their origins, deficits, weaknesses, by their otherness and impotence – pretending, performing and hiding behind empty masks. They are the ones claiming realness for themselves. But an interpretation as accommodating as this one cannot hold up, since the slogan is inextricably linked to the avatars, cut into each other in the video clip and glued together on the wall. Then there is the cozy word “keep.” It does not call for anything new but for the preservation of the status quo. ![]() In times of fake news, TV star politics and anonymous online agitation the call to “keep it real!” seems like a yearning to take a step back – to move away from the screens and become an authentic self again – and to engage in actual acts amidst the real world. KEEP IT REAL! At first glance, this is a pretty conservative appeal. This text was written by the writer Luise Meier in September 2018, commissioned by HAU Hebbel am Ufer to go along with the film and poster campaign “KEEP IT REAL”, which accompanies the new five-year cycle of the directorship of Annemie Vanackere and her team at HAU from summer 2017.
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