#Hashtactivism

The hashtag has organically appeared on Twitter within the exploitation of its users. The need to shorten statements by “hashtagging” words became quickly necessary as the limit for twitts shortened to 140 characters.

Twitter, then Facebook, Instagram and many other social networks categorise hashtagged topics to enable users to see other people talking about the same notions. Rapidly people started to expand the number of hashtagged words into series of words, which by association of idea rendered them more complex and personalised, until they became totally unreadable.

This strategy has also given birth to the controversial hashtactivism. By hashtagging causes and political topics, people would be able in one click to be supportive of these causes. The counter word for this phenomenon, slacktivism, denotes the ease to hashtag (or like) something without getting really involved.

The hashtag has here been objectified and split into 8 chunky bits of packaging foam. It is a play between the real and digital world. By taking this hashtag appart one could create an infinite set of possible sculptures.

Between distance and proximity, this minimal sculpture placed into a space hashtagges everyone and everything that surrounds, in the same way that, almost on its own, the digital hashtag packs up words or phrases into categorised concepts which are rendered public from/to the audience.