On screen and off screen, content proliferates and becomes a tool to shape reality. Language wields into an image stream, converges into a TikTok, is deconstructed into its emotive states, bleeds into a poem, feeds into a detective story. The allure of content entangles fiction and reality and spawns new cycles of engagement.

Guided by the participants' varied artistic practices, this conversation explores how content performs online, unpacking how a chronically online condition brings users and content into bonds – desired and undesired – sustained in sickness and in health. Investigating the realms of fan culture, AI, the politics of visibility, and mythmaking, the participants share tactics for negotiating the confines of digital interfaces and re-appropriating the real.

The participants were part of transmediale’s 2023 residency programme. Jennifer Merlyn Scherler and Lukas Rehm were part of the Digital Art Residency in collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Nadia J. Armstrong and Mac Andre Arboleda were part of the residency in cooperation with Beta festival in Dublin, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland International Residency Initiatives Scheme.