Marine Tanguy explores the sinister and heartening aspects of your visual landscape

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Did you know that the average person encounters 10,000 commercial images in a day? That neighborhoods where people have lower incomes tend to have more advertisements for unhealthy foods and have more stores selling and advertising commercial tobacco? That the majority of images we see of the African continent are mostly from Western sources? This is some of what I’ve learned from the new book, The Digital Detox, by Marine Tanguy, who is my guest in this episode.

Manufactured visuals surround us everywhere we go, offline and online, and if we aren’t vigilant, it is almost impossible not to be overstimulated and manipulated from when we wake to when we sleep. Naomi Klein said in an interview recently something that’s stayed with me: “we’ve become machine food!” That visual of human machine food stuck in my mind while reading the Marine’s book. Her book is essentially  a guide on how not to become machine food. And according to Marine, a key to that is art, which helps us activate our critical thinking and our imagination, while also being a medicine for our spirits.

Marine is CEO of MTArt Agency, a talent agency for artists. She has held high profile positions in the art world since she was 21, starting as a gallery manager of  the Outsider's Gallery in London, which was the first to showcase the work of Banksy, and she was on a Forbes 30 under 30 Art & Culture list.

The thread that runs through The Heart Gallery podcast is that art and stories are what bring us together and move our society forward into a more caring future. So of course I was so excited to talk to Marine. Marine’s mission is to bring art out of what we think of traditional art spaces - galleries, theaters, museums, fancy places - and into the heart of society, art representative of everyone and for all. That is a mission we can all get behind. I hope you enjoy listening to Marine Tanguy.

Homework from Marine: "Take a couple of minutes to close your eyes and think, "what have I seen today?" Try to understand how what you saw made you feel. This will help you to start to be aware of the impact that images have on you."

Mentioned:
- The Imagination Muscle by Albert Read
- Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
- "The media is the message" - here's a great article about Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Jenny Odell and others
- The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk

Connect:
- Marine instagram
- MTArt instagram
- Rebeka instagram
- The Heart Gallery Instagram
- Episode blog post

Credits:
Samuel Cunningham for podcast editing, Cosmo Sheldrake for use of his song Pelicans We, podcast art by me, Rebeka Ryvola