Publication:

Dramas, comedias e incertidumbres de la propia existencia: documentos de adolescentes en la época de la fotografía líquida

Taking on account what I have been investigating all these years and from my own experience (which I believe is the same experience as the ones who feel young have had) I would dare to say that everything that affects the ‘youth culture’ is conditioned by what is happening on the Internet at that time. The ‘free’ traffic of documents that come and go without a speed limit is leading us to get used to a frustrating consumption, as we are absolutely unable to process them all. At the same time, this amount of data is causing the unavoidable feeling of being greed for information which, most times, cannot finally be satisfied and it is taking over our lives. Young people nowadays are living in a different world, a world where their movements on the Internet not only give information about exactly who they are to the rest of the internauts, but these movements also carry a social dimension on which young people depend. New technologies (such as different mobile devices which keep you connected to the Internet) work in favour of this dynamic and, it also spreads among young people the interest to learn how to use different audiovisual tools, which are definitely useful in this learning process dealing with images. The result are documents generated in many ways and with very different intentions. Some of them deal with easy criticism, some of them talk about a provocative self-centered exhibitionism, and sometimes they are just personal observations and thoughts about their own reality. Young people’s visual culture is timeless, although they are the ones who are most properly defined by it. These young people are the first digital natives to experiment the emotional and intelectual changes that growing through the Internet involves.

Desde la investigación y desde la misma praxis de aquellos que se sienten jóvenes, podría aventurarme a decir que todo aquello que afecta a la cultura juvenil viene condicionado por lo que ocurre en la red. La libre circulación de documentos que van y vienen sin límite de velocidad nos acostumbra a un frustrante consumo por la misma imposibilidad por procesarlos, a la vez que provoca una inevitable sensación de gula informacional que pocas veces se ve saciada. A los jóvenes de hoy les ha tocado vivir un momento en que sus movimientos en la red no solo son un registro inequívoco de quiénes son, sino que conllevan una dimensión social de la cual dependen. Las nuevas tecnologías traducidas en dispositivos móviles de conexión favorecen esta dinámica, a la vez que provocan el interés por el manejo de unas herramientas audiovisuales muy útiles en ese proceso educativo para con la imagen. Los resultados son documentos generados en tonos e intenciones muy diversas que van de la crítica fácil, pasando por un exhibicionismo egótico y provocador, hasta reflexiones personales sobre su propia realidad. La cultura visual de los jóvenes es hoy ageneracional aunque a ellos les define más que a nadie. Se trata de los primeros nativos que experimentarán los cambios emocionales e intelectuales de lo que supone crecer a través de la red.