Tim Arnold performs Super Connected at The Roundhouse, London, May 2023 © Iain G Reid
The Super Connected live show is an immersive experience blending film, performance and live music. The narrative explores the ‘thinning out’ of intimacy and the fracturing of relations which have accompanied the spread of monetised social media through Big Tech. On entry to the show, audience members place their phones in a pouch that securely locks their mobile devices inside, making them inaccessible until they’re unlocked after the show. The phone is kept on their person. Ostensibly, the possibility of interruption to the show is curtailed.
What really happens though, is that this small act of compliance serves as a ritual of initiation. Before we even take our seats the journey into Tim Arnold’s world has begun. Super Connected recognises that phones, social media, and the internet form the fabric of social reality, today. There’s no call for a mass abandonment of our devices. It’s recognised that once outside the theatre you’ll immediately become part of the electronic web once more; a data point to be exploited and directed by algorithms. What the experience of Super Connected does is create a fresh perspective. It helps us see what’s happening to us. At least then, at the end of the show, when we finally remove our phones from their protective sleeves, we’re viscerally aware of what happens to us when our devices herald each new connection with a ping.
Jonathan Harris, High Priest of Church of Burn