Dis-Reality

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Josè Daniel Benitez is a Mexican-American multimedia artist, activist and is currently a student at CUNY Baruch College. Benitez’s work spans from participatory art and video installations to photography and silkscreen printing. His work explores the intersectionality between identity and struggles within social movement spaces. The majority of his works are created through a collaborative process, based on the political principle of believing that there is a power that innately comes with collective works. Benitez's Dis-Reality explores the relationship with oneself in relation to the rest of society. Through his video, Benitez delves into how one may become over stimulated through the process of staying connected to reality through the use of social media. To counteract the overstimulation, his video depicts metaphorical images of dissociation. Inspired by Benitez's personal experiences of growing up within the rise of social media, he incorporates and explores this phenomenon in the analysis of overstimulation to keep up with pop culture.