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Googling Californias (Half Truths for People on the Go)
Video Loop, 2013.
Amy Alexander
Late at night, thoughts wander -- and we find ourselves Googling Californias. Seems fitting -- and all wrong: Google is itself the image of early 21st-century California technology, commerce, and power. It lives in California -- and it doesn't. The images Google offers form a muddled patchwork of stereotypes and half-truths; but the awkward thing about half-truths is that they are half true. Like stereotypes of California itself -- as awkwardly accurate as they are grotesque distortions. Sometimes you don't find the California you were searching for. The system failed you -- or you failed the system. Or maybe you weren't looking for the right Californias. And as you travel between Californias, you remember, there's yet another California beyond the borders of California. It doesn't stop here. And it does.