http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31656672Life in the 21st Century reached a point of visual overload, says Will Self.
I've started telling people that I've become "post-image". I try to say it in a normal tone of voice, but it doesn't matter how studied I am, the announcement still sounds absurdly portentous - rather like that moment in Robert Graves's I, Claudius when Caligula reveals he's become a god. Still, I suppose this is understandable, because there is something vaulting and divine about being post-image. Most of the people I've told about my elevation quickly drop the subject of images altogether. However, one or two pursue the matter, asking: What do you mean by that? And I explain I've reached a point in my life where I can no longer accept uncritically any image whatsoever - be it television picture, film frame, photograph, web page, advertisement graphic, drawing, cartoon or painting. When I say "accept uncritically", I mean I now refuse to take any image as necessarily representative of any existent thing, and furthermore I challenge the information which any image appears to be conveying. You see, I am indeed post-image.
