Season 1, Day 30/30
This is not a pipe — and nothing you’ve seen in this series is the thing itself.
One Minute, One Masterpiece, One Modern Idea
René Magritte simply gives us an image of a pipe and writes beneath it: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” or “This is not a pipe”.
In his own words: “The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying! “
An image is just a representation; it is not the real thing.
Today, we are living inside representations: profiles, feeds, posts, images, avatars, headlines, symbols, brands.
Deepfakes, AI, and curated realities have turned everything into a ‘Treachery of Images.’ We can no longer trust our eyes—yet we trust our feeds. We don’t experience reality directly. Everything is mediated, filtered, performed.
For 30 days, we’ve looked at images of art to learn about life. But Magritte reminds us: the image is never the thing itself.
Don’t let representations replace reality. Don’t let your feed replace your life. Don’t let the image replace the experience.
Stop looking at screens. Go live the thing itself.
And that is why it matters.
To reflect: You are still here!? I thought you were going to go live!
