The artistic duo Nayantara Ranganathan from India and Manuel Beltrán from Spain take a provocative statement with their project ad.watch – “Political subjectivities are manufactured, commodified, and on sale. What happens to political participation now?”

In cooperation with esc medien kunst labor, Elevate Festival presents a new installation by the two artists, which explores ideas emerging from ad.watch and took place in Graz from 1 to 11 March 2020.

ad.watch questions the foreclosure of access to political advertising information. The project collects records of political ads on Facebook and Instagram and creates interfaces for their use to provide the opportunity to explore them more closely. With ad.watch, country-specific contextual themes and political strategies as well as questions on the infrastructures of persuasion through the use of personal data can be examined.