Language in Presence

Language is a digitally framed system, creating a relatively stable “public symbolic world,” yet individuals often lack an internal, rational understanding of this symbolic system and frequently engage in mechanical use or blind obedience, whether through historical narratives, social media, national educational content, or everyday life.

This Performance project examines how language and symbolic systems become fragmented within digital and cultural contexts, potentially determining individual consciousness and behaviour. It critically reflects on the mechanical use of language and algorithms, exploring how societal symbolic systems may implicitly control free will and personal agency.

• Mechanisation of language and symbols: how do symbolic systems evolve from tools of communication into instruments of unconscious conformity?
• The true nature of free will: questioning whether what we call “free will” genuinely exists, or if it is simply the result of social and cultural algorithms.
• Unconsciousness and consciousness: exploring behaviours to question whether unconscious actions might represent the authentic way we become aware of our own existence.

In the digital age, connections between individuals and society increasingly rely on language, symbols, and data transmission. If the use of language and symbols becomes mechanical and instrumentalised, individual critical thinking, creativity, and independence might gradually weaken or even disappear. This raises fundamental questions about whether our thought processes, ways of communicating, and behaviours are predetermined or programmed, and whether what we call “free will” or “personal agency” is simply the outcome of calculation and processing. Furthermore, it suggests that unconscious behavioural logic might actually represent how we genuinely perceive our own existence, shaping real motivations, societal structures, and the essence of individual subjectivity.