Group Show, Manuel Gnam, Confinement, Zürich 2021
Interview with Manuel Gnam 

Meghan Rolvien
At first, every landscape presents itself as immensely chaotic. Your maps question territorial realities and present a certain geographical ambiguity. Place descriptions suggest a connection between land and emotion.
Have you ever been to Lake Gullible?
Manuel Gnam 
I’ve seen it but honestly, it’s not worth going to. It’s situated somewhere between Comfort Beach and Identity Delta. I try to draw maps of how I think tech companies organize people: making profiles according to their preferences, their physical and emotional states, and their sociologies instead of more classical cartographic signifiers like country of origin. Old maps feel like ancient tribes to me, whereas these new ones are based on broader categories of how individuals identify. And because the tools of tech companies amplify the belief systems of the individual and target their prejudices, many people end up feeling more at home in online worlds that respond to them rather than the places where they live.
From a technology point of view, people are just target demo(geo)graphics. So, who do I want to show my content to?
People who are on the left, or dog owners, or vegetarians, or people who are, well, gullible?
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