WORKS > Skip AD (2019)

Skip AD
2019
Single-channel video, 00:16:57

"Skip AD" is one of the most common phrases you can encounter on the Internet. Advertisements can be intrusive, forcing me to watch them and distracting my attention when I'm reading news, viewing images, or watching videos. While I'm allowed to access content on YouTube after watching an advertisement, I can also choose to skip it by clicking "Skip AD." However, the YouTube video I'm watching may be a form of viral marketing created by companies in a capitalist society to generate profit.

What is true and what is false in this scenario? If everyone prefers to embrace falsehoods, can those falsehoods become a substitute for inconvenient truths? And why am I so fixated on uncovering the truth? This video confronts these questions with fabricated responses, manipulated statistics, fake news, and erroneous beliefs. It presents the duality of the human desire to seek the truth and skepticism regarding such behavior through representative visual elements in a non-narrative format.

This work incorporates Symphony No. 1 "Hiroshima" by Mamoru Samuragochi, who impersonated Beethoven while claiming total deafness and employed a ghostwriter for 18 years. When he requested 'Hiroshima,' he provided his ghostwriter, Takashi Niigaki, with four concept words: 'origin,' 'revelation,' 'ordeal,' and 'chaos.'