Real FPOE

March 2, 2019 7:54 pm

2017/2018 | Facebook-Archive | Website | Database | Book

Real FPÖ is live-scrapes the Facebook-Api to get access to the Facebook-FPÖ-Group comments and “Likes”. It’s an art and research project concerned with the documentation of present forms of semi-public digital spaces.
Companies like Facebook or Google are diminishing the gap between “real life” and the digital identity with huge amount of collected data. An uploaded photo within a specifc context like a Facebook profle is enough to get the biometric faceprint of a person that can be used as surveillance indicator in the public space.
Who has access to this data and how is it used? How could present ways of digital communication be preserved for future research or political reappraisal? The intention of Real FPÖ is to document far-right mindsets and communication in recent digital spaces in Austria.
Easily accessible Facebook posts permit to get in-depth look in the mindset and thoughts of FPÖ devotees. In non-digital public spaces people wouldn’t unveil such personal thoughts to “strangers”. This gives access for people outside the peer group to in detail examples of far-rightpositions. With the Facebook ID, even more information on the individuals can be retrieved like a friends list and the music taste.
Real FPÖ’s aim is to show that homophobic, racist and nationalist attitudes aren’t a marginal phenomenon but part of the mainstream identity in Austria. The project refers to the work of the polish artist Piotr Uklański who collected 250 pictures of Nazis shown at documenta 2017. In his work Uklański used archives and libraries to get to the individualities
behind an ideology.
Given the uncertainty of accessibility to Facebook comments in the future, archiving has to start now.

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