Defunct television channels, destroyed artworks, missing aircraft, cancelled military projects, former nations, extinct birds, list of sinkholes, discontinued burial techniques, tornadoes, failed banks, discontinued fragrances, obsolete aeronautical machines, etc.

This year, the New Zealand pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale will feature lists of inventions, life forms, phenomena and “things” that no longer exist. The work traces a kind of “history of progress” through the history of obsolescence. Although the “things” listed are now lost to us, their existence still lingers in the present. We might not see them anymore but they’ve made this moment possible.

Dane Mitchell, Post hoc, 2019, Digital Working Drawing

Dane Mitchell, ​Hiding in Plain Sight (​ detail), 2017. Installation view, Connells Bay Sculpture Park, Auckland

The lists will be broadcast throughout the city via a network of tree cell towers, the often derided communication towers that camouflage as nature. The fake trees are being installed in various historical sites across Venice: 3 will be located at the New Zealand pavilion as a sort of networked plantation, and 4 in other sites across Venice. Inhabitants and tourists will be able to hear a whispering of the lists as they walk by the synthetic trees.

Dane Mitchell, Post hoc, 2019. Screen shot from production video filmed at SJ Cell Tower & Artificial Plant Company Limited, Guangzhou, China

Dane Mitchell during the installation of the work at Palazzina Canonica in Venice. Image facebook

The artist behind the project is Dane Mitchell, an artist interested in the physical properties of the intangible and visible manifestations of other dimensions.

“We all live in some sort of technological filter bubble,” Mitchell told me when i asked him what guided the selection of lists of defunct things. “The work pushes up hard against the edges of my own — it is undoubtedly an expression of the perimeters of knowledge I might have access to. The work embraces the fallibility of encyclopedic thinking — it is a (western) delusion to assume that we might be able to ‘hold’ the world in such a way, however, Post hoc is contradictorily an attempt to momentarily hold aloft these vanished things that sit under our present moment.

The lists are very much generated by, and authored by me. In this way they have a poetic logic…one list leads to another leads to another and onwards. I started with ten, and was apprehensive about the task of amassing this list — a list that reads for seven months, averaging 25,000 words a day — but through a meandering approach the lists grew. The filter bubble is also an expression of the types of material forces I’m interested in, be it in relation to science, belief, materiality, etc. The ‘bubble’ is certainly an expression of my own habits and predilections.”

Dane Mitchell, ​Hiding in Plain Sight (​ detail), 2017. Installation view, Connells Bay Sculpture Park, Auckland

Dane Mitchell, Post hoc, 2019. Production still at SJ Cell Tower & Artificial Plant Company Limited, Guangzhou, China

This year, the New Zealand pavilion will be located inside the Palazzina Canonica, the former headquarters of the Marine Research Institute. The Giardini, the historical site of the biennale exhibition, has space for only 29 pavilions of foreign countries. New Zealand is not one of them. Like many other nations, it has to find a palazzo elsewhere to host its exhibition. Dane Mitchell, however, has devised a cunning way to sneak inside the Giardini of the Biennale. He installed one of the tree towers in the Parco delle Rimembranze, a nearby park covered in (natural) pines. Visitors touring the Giardini of the biennale will be able use their wifi-enabled device and grab the transmissions emitted from the neighbouring green space.

I admire the bravery and irony of creating a project that highlights disappearance in a city that’s slowly sinking into physical oblivion. Without even mentioning the art biennial, a format that’s often been labelled as ‘outmoded’.

Interestingly, the title of the exhibition is “Post hoc” which translates to “after this” in Latin, the most famous dead language of the Western world.

Dane Mitchell, Post hoc 2019. Production still

If you want to know more about the project, do check out Dane Mitchell’s discussion of it a few weeks ago at daadgalerie in Berlin:

Dane Mitchell, Övül Durmusoglu and Heman Chong panel discussion at daadgalerie in Berlin on 12 March 2019

Dane Mitchell, Post hoc is on view at Palazzina Canonica (and across the city), the New Zealand Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, from 11 May until 24 November 2019.

A Chronology of Photography. A Cultural Timeline from Camera Obscura to Instagram, by Paul Lowe, an award-winning photographer and Course Director of the Masters programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

Available on amazon.com and .uk.

Publisher Thames & Hudson writes: A Chronology of Photography presents a fresh perspective on the medium by taking a purely chronological approach to its history, tracing the complex links between technological innovations, social change and artistic interventions. Structured around a central timeline that charts the development of photography from early experiments with optics right up to the present-day explosion of digital media, it features sumptuous reproductions of key photographs, together with commentaries and contextual information about the social, political and cultural events of the period in which they were taken. Special features highlight important themes and influential practitioners, while technical sections explain how the development of new camera technology has affected the practice of photography.

Oscar Graubner, Margaret Bourke-White atop the Chrysler Building, c. 1930.

Are We Lumberjacks?, LOL Missile (Clickabiggen), 2008

I’ve reviewed a number of publications and exhibitions about photography: its history, some of its main genres and challenges. It doesn’t make me an expert in photography but that won’t prevent me from declaring that this book is a real tour de force.

A Chronology of Photography brings the evolution of photography into its historical, cultural and social contexts. Paul Lowe managed to cram into one book some 200 years of history, technology, art, society without ever making it look laborious nor indigestible.

While charting the rise in popularity and critical appreciation of photography, the publication highlights the main dilemmas and challenges that photographers have struggled with over the years: the use of the medium by human rights champions, advertisers and authoritarian regimes alike; the surge of the camera phone and its questioning of a whole profession; the figure of the photographers are a conceptual artist, innovator or reporter; the exploitation of the tool to advance racist theories or document environmental scandals; the role of photography in unveiling untold stories or serving the revisionism of certain accounts of history; the copyrights issues and the sometimes uneasy relationship between culture and commerce; the documentation of important cultural moments or of society’s daily ridicules; the tensions between personal privacy and overexposure facilitated by social media; etc. Replace the word “photography” with the word “internet” and it will all sound uncannily familiar.

William Wegman, Ray, 2006

The book is also packed with amusing anecdotes and important moments: the rise and fall of Kodak, the game-changing technological discoveries, the introduction of photography as evidence in court or its acceptance as an art form.

The other strength of the book is that the author didn’t go for the obvious when it came to selecting the illustration. There’s some iconic photos here and there but there is also plenty of visual material that hasn’t been printed ad nauseam.

Demonstration below (with a few comments here and there):

Marcus DeSieno, 36.887900, -118.555100, from the series No Man’s Land, 2015

No Man’s Land, presents a series of landscape photographs captured on CCTV cameras in the most surprising places around the world. Marcus DeSieno found online the location of these cameras and got the tools needed to hack into them and get access to the streams. Once he found a view he liked, he would photograph the screen with a large format camera, before using salt paper processing to create a painterly and “timeless” aesthetic.

Gillian Wearing, I’m Desperate, 1992-1993. From the series “Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say”

Boris Mikhailov, Case History, 1997-1998

Cornelia Parker, Einstein’s Abstract, 1999

Cornelia Parker made photomicrographs of the blackboard covered with Albert Einstein’s equations from his lecture on the Theory of Relativity, Oxford 1931.

Timothy O’Sullivan, “A Harvest of Death” Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863

Ron Haviv, from Blood and Honey, 1992

William H. Mumler, Bronson Murray, 1862 – 1875

In the early 1860s William H. Mumler became the first producer of spirit photographs, portraits in which ghosts and other spiritual entities appeared to loom behind or alongside the sitter. Mumler opened a studio in New York City in 1868 but was arrested the following year on charges of fraud and larceny.

William Klein, Gun 1, New York, 1954

Patty Hearst, Surveillance Camera in San Francisco, 1974

Tom Wood, Bottlenose, Chelsea Reach (from Looking for Love), 1985

John Thomson, London Nomades, 1877

Frances Benjamin Johnston, Self-portrait with false moustache and penny-farthing, between 1880 and 1900

William van der Weyde, Electric Chair at Sing Sing, ca. 1900

Herbert Ponting, Grotto in a Berg, Terra Nova in the Distance, 1911

Neil Leifer, Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, 1965

Charles Sheeler, Criss-crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company, 1927

John Heartfield, Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses: Kleiner Mann bittet um große Gaben. Motto: Millionen stehen hinter mir! (The Meaning Behind the Hitler Salute: Little Man Asks for Big Donations. Motto: Millions Stand Behind Me!), 1932

Josef Koudelk, Gypsies, Zehra, Czechoslovakia. 1967. © Josef Koudelka | Magnum Photos

Thomas Sauvin, Chinese Wedding

Martin Parr, Outside the Vatican Museum, 2014

Raghubir Singh, Pavement Mirror Shop, Howrah, West Bengal, 1991

Tomoko Sawada, from School Days, 2004

Spreads:

Related stories: Nonhuman Photography, Making It Up: Photographic Fictions, The Edge of the Earth. Climate Change in Photography and Video, Faceless. Re-inventing Privacy Through Subversive Media Strategies, Photography and its ghostly footprints, Watching You Watching Me. A Photographic Response to Surveillance, Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers, etc.

We, humans and connected objects alike, are producing data so rapidly that storage infrastructures can’t keep up and that some engineers are now looking at the potentials of nature’s most ancient way of preserving information: DNA. DNA digital data storage, the process of encoding and decoding binary data to and from synthesized DNA strands, holds the promise of putting huge amounts of information into tiny molecules. One can see the appeal: DNA is fairly easy to replicate, stable over millennia, far less resource-hungry (or so it seems) than traditional data centers and the technique of storage is getting increasingly cheaper.

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Artist Margherita Pevere has also been experimenting with DNA storage. Her motivations, however, are less utilitarian and more poetical. But they are no less thought-provoking and exciting. One of her ongoing research projects, Semina Aeternitatis, uses DNA storage technique to archive a woman’s intimate experience from her youth into foreign life. Throughout the whole developing and exhibiting process, the artwork explores a series of questions related to wider issues of life, anthropocentrism and ecological crisis:

Can a living body carry the nostalgia of another living body? If you inscribe a human being’s childhood memory onto foreign DNA, will the resulting hybrid body help us understand the increasingly strained relationships between humans and the world they are only a small part of? Will the experiment give us a different, perhaps more compassionate, perspective on other forms of life, big or small, and on the ecological threats they are exposed to?

Pevere collaborated with bioscientist Mirela Alistar and the IEGT (the Institute of Experimental Gene Therapy and Cancer Research at University Rostock in Germany) to convert into genetic code a childhood memory of a woman who chose to remain anonymous. The genetic code was further synthesized into a plasmid which was then inserted into bacterial cells. The bacteria thus store the woman’s transient memory in their own bacterial body. Colonies of bacteria were then grown and cultured to create a large biofilm which, even after it had been sterilized, retains that childhood memory.

What drew me to the project is not just its ambition of keeping a personal recollection into DNA for a seemingly infinite amount of time, it’s also the aspect of the biofilm. With its flesh tones, wet and viscous surface, it evokes skin and other body matter. It’s disturbing, strangely enticing and makes it impossible to reduce the project to a purely artistic speculation.

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Margherita Pevere is an artist and researcher whose practice combines scientific protocols and DIY inquiry with aesthetics and a rigorous questioning of the methods and materials she engages with. Semina Aeternitatis is part of her practice-based PhD research at Aalto University, Helsinki. The reason why i asked her to talk to us about her project is that it is part of Experiment Zukunft. This very interesting-looking exhibition, curated by Susanne Jaschko, brings artists, scientists, students and citizens together to imagine probable, possible and fictional futures.

Margherita was kind enough to find a moment to answer my many questions about the work:

Hi Margherita! You started the project Semina Aeternitatis in 2015. Is it an entirely new version you are showing at Experiment Zukunft? How does it build upon or simply differ from the earlier version?

The project has had a long process and the art piece exhibited in Experiment Zukunft evolved from the initial idea. The project started in 2015 with a performances series where I interviewed strangers about the memories they would like to preserve for eternity, with the aim to store such memories on bacterial DNA. The initial idea was to make a series of visual works made of microbial biofilm, but during the process the need for a different embodiment emerged. Hybridity is crucial in my practice and it is interwoven with a visceral fascination for anatomy and biological matter. I wanted to create a hybrid creature that could entwine human memories with bacterial inheritance. The piece called for more liveliness and performativity.

For Experiment Zukunft, I interviewed a lady from Rostock who shared with me a crucial childhood episode which had to do with a horse – I will tell you more about this later. The horse unexpectedly links the woman’s experience with my own. I collaborated with Dr. Mirela Alistar and the Institute of Experimental Gene Therapy and Cancer Research (IEGT). Dr Alistar developed an algorithm to translate the story of the lady’s memory into a DNA sequence. The latter was manufactured as a plasmid, a circular DNA molecule. At IEGT laboratory, we run all protocols to eventually introduce the plasmid by electroporation into the cells of biofilm-producing Komagataeibacter rhaeticus bacteria. The bacteria is now carrying the memory story in their body.

Other artists have worked with DNA as a storage medium, think of the pioneering Microvenus by Joe Davis, or the recent Mezzanine release by Massive Attack. Semina Aeternitatis tackles the friction that arises from our understanding of DNA as a stable molecule, the potential to use this feature for long-term data storage, and the inherent process of becoming we – organic as well inorganic entities – are part of. On the one hand, there is an interplay of timescales I find artistically fertile. On the other hand, such friction may reveal politics and poetics of biological matter in post-human times.

K. rhaeticus microscopy, picture Dr. Alf Spitschak

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

I remember hearing Prof Nick Goldman talking about his pioneering work on DNA data storage a few years ago. At the time, the experiment was very costly and looked a bit outlandish. How affordable would DNA data storage be nowadays? As far you know, is this a form of data storage we could consider since the way we store our data nowadays is so energy-hungry?

DNA data storage is still considered a promising technology, although it is far from being error-free and recent research focuses on making it more reliable. However, I would point at an inherent contradiction I see in the narrative of many technologies that are considered “environmentally promising”.

Let’s agree DNA data storage will be more compact and efficient than hard drives. However, it does still require digital interface and the production of DNA still has to be optimised from an environmental point of view. My point here is that it can be more efficient, but it does not affect the system. We live in a system that is data based, where someone sells a huge lie called “the cloud” to someone who buys it, but the aspect I find most concerning is that such system is based on accumulation – one of the pillars of capitalism since its inception – and relies on fossil fuels.

Let’s assume technological development can help shrink our environmental footprint, but until the mantra of more consumption and production are valid without taking into consideration how process the fall-out … There’s a long way to go. Industry is currently about to launch foldable smart-phones, but there is still no solution to the immense dilemma of electrowaste. To be honest, and I am aware this might sound controversial, I wish there were dumps in every city, so people could see with their very eyes what technological materiality is about. I wish people could see black rivers in the parks, smell burning plastic and rotting metals, and relate this to the shiny surface of new laptops. Would that change anything?

To go back to your question, I can be fascinated by the storage and computing potential of molecules, but I think a more radical action is needed towards the environmental footprint of current technology.

I’m interested in the title of the project Semina Aeternitatis, which “is inspired by the human longing for eternity and the desire to permanently preserve memories and information.” In Latin, the title means “Seeds of eternity”. Which made me think about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and how it also carried this mission of eternal preservation. The project however seems to be threatened by climate change. Do you feel that this gives a new dimension to the work? At least to the way it can be interpreted since our ambitions of achieving eternity seem less and less credible and valid in these unstable times?

You to raise a relevant point here. I should mention first that I have been studying how humans impact the biosphere, including climate change, for 15 years. This has influenced both my own Weltanschauung as well as my work. We also should not forget that climate change has been out there for almost three decades, although its soaring urgency reached the news only in recent times. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened in 2008 at what used to be considered a very stable spot, but, only a decade later, unforeseen permafrost melting challenges its stability.
Semina Aeternitaits means both “seeds of eternitiy” and “people of eternity”. This ambiguity addresses both the desire for permanence as well as anthropocentrism of Western culture: I was interested in understanding what link there may be between anthropocentrism, the Christian promise of afterlife, and the process of becoming. In the early phase of the research I considered different manifestations of the desire for permanence. I had long conversation with conservators of audio-visual media, contemporary artworks and ancient documents. I also explored the different approach between myself, a frank atheist, and some dear friends who have faith. Another phenomena I looked at is how Europe is still elaborating the inheritance of the 20th Century and the Holocaust, which came with the promise “Nie wieder!” (ENG: Never again!). Today, the founding values of the society built upon such promise are collapsing before our very eyes.

Again, there is an interplay of temporalities here. We can perceive better if we move away from our everyday temporality, whose fast pace is set by being ever-connected. Climate change introduces an event horizon in such interplay of temporalities, it somehow fractures it.

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Could you tell us about your collaboration with Dr. Mirela Alistar? And did her own background and perspective influence or illuminate the final work and its development in any way?

I met Dr Alistar through the Berlin biohacking scene a few years ago and we have been in touch since then. Next to her academic research in computer science and microfluidics, she cultivates a vivid interest for biological systems and art and is one of the founder of the first citizen lab in Berlin, Top Lab. We have been discussing the project together since a couple of years and she officially joined it in 2018.

Her contribution has been multifaceted and deep. She did not only develop the algorithm to convert the text into DNA sequence, but we also shared important parts of the research and had real fun during the hands-on part in the laboratory. Dr Alistar has an extraordinary mind and is immensely curious, which triggers my imagination. But I think she also helped me find the right thread when I was feeling lost. I really look forward towards what will come out from her laboratory at CU Boulder, where she is starting her professorship next fall.

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

If the online translating service and I understood correctly the description of the work, the childhood memory of a Rostock woman was stored into a DNA sequence. It was then inserted into the cells of a bacterial strain. The bacteria, which carried the memory, were then cultivated to produce a large piece of cellulose film. This cellulose film looks quite lively and disturbingly organic. Aesthetically, it is miles away from the cold, clean and hygienic aesthetics of the data center that store our digital communication. Could you explain us why you decided to work with this cellulose (you could have stored the information inside a test tube for example)? Does it evolve, change over time?

You both understood correctly. Once we obtained the “memory” plasmid, we ran a series of procedures to combine it with the proper plasmid backbone for the target bacteria K. rhaeticus. We used consolidated scientific protocols, for each step one has to insert the desired molecule into E. coli, grow overnight to amplify it, extract it, run chemical reactions to combine the molecules in the desired way, and so on. Researchers at IEGT laboratory helped us a lot in this process. Eventually, we introduced the plasmid by electroporation into K. rhaeticus bacteria and cultivated the latter to obtain microbial cellulose. The scientific laboratory is a highly controlled environment, where bacteria are mostly perceived as tools and not as living entities.

The ambiguous biotech body of the chimeric creature diverges from the aesthetics usually associated with bioinformatics as to spur the reflection on politics of body and nature. Biological matter is inherently leaky and unstable. There is an inherent ambiguity in the materiality of microbial cellulose. Its resemblance to flesh may trigger abjection, or, conversely, uncanny intimacy. The biofilm in the exhibition has been sterilized and will retain its wet materiality through a controlled environment in the diorama, although it may change over time.

Now that you make me think about it, I also have made back-up tubes containing the molecule for IEGT and Biofilia Laboratory at Aalto University (where I am PhD candidate): such vials are in cold, clean, hygienic environment for archival purposes. But the audience will probably never see them.

Could you also tell us a few words about the lady whose memory will be preserved in this piece of cellulose? Why was it important for you to focus on nostalgic memories?

Thanks to the research of curator Susanne Jaschko, I could interviewed a lady who, in a unique way, positively influenced the life of many people in the region. She asked not to release her identity, so I can’t tell you more details about her. What I can tell you is that she is now in her eighties and is a wonderfully passionate, bright, and determined person. She was eager to understand the process in Semina Aeternitatis and was enthusiastic about the exhibition. I was struck by her strength and charme. I wish can be a bit like her when I grow older!

The lady’s childhood memory, which survives in Semina Aeternitatis, goes back to a formative experience. As a five-year-old, the lady was sent home from the field for the first time unaccompanied and on a workhorse. After the first shock, the horse’s reliability, stamina and equanimity became a life lesson that made her the strong person today: “Trot (through life) like a mare”. The lady paid big attention to pick a memory that was not transformed by further reworking, a sort of primal memory, and it was the first time she shared such episode with someone. She narrated it with beautifully chosen words and vivid awareness of how her experience as a girl entangled with the context and her adult life. It’s a great narrative fabric.

As I mentioned earlier, the lady’s memory somehow overlaps with my own individual experience. I grew up in a semi-rural context, so I am familiar with the one she describes. However, the horse is the strongest link. My horses were companions and not work animals, which makes a difference. But I know so well the moment where you learn to trust the animal, the way the animal knows its surrounding and the way it goes its own way no matter what. However, as any relationship, transpecies relationships may also involve trauma. On my left check there is a scar from one of my horses, who involuntarily kicked me in the face. I knew him well and it was an accident, but I had to be determined to overcome fear. I am attracted to scars and this particular one is now part my individual landscape. While preparing the horse skull for the exhibition, I realized that the delicate frontal crests on the skull have the same curve as the scar on my cheek.

Going back to your question, Semina Aeternitatis is about temporalities, materiality, and erosion. Individual memories’ nostalgic lure counters techno-feticism and their evanescence connects different temporalities trough a sense of longing, they manifest desire and vulnerability. They create a space for encounter.

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Fritz Beise

Margherita Pevere, Semina Aeternitatis, 2015-2019. Photo by Margherita Pevere

What can people see in Rostock. How are you showing and communicating the project there?

Semina Aeternitatis is an artistic research project and the exhibited art piece is a final manifestation of an articulated research process. It was important to give access to the complexity behind it.

The art piece features a diorama hosting a chimeric creature whose bodily elements grow onto each other in a very organic way. In the diorama, a controlled environment keeps the biofilm moist and creates a feeling of liveliness, while condensation gives a sense of processuality
Next to it, a 3m long table displays research materials including excerpts from laboratory journal, working notes, pictures, drawings, to provide the audience with insights into the artistic and scientific research process.

On April 30th I will join artists Sascha Pohflepp und Antye Guenther and scientists from the Rostock University for a panel with the title “Hybrider Mensch” (Hybrid human).

Thanks Margherita!

You’ve got until 5 May 2019 to see Semina Aeternitatis at Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany. The works is part of Experiment Zukunft, a show curated by Susanne Jaschko.

I missed the latest edition of the GAMERZ festival, the one and only media art event that 1. introduces me to at least half a dozen exciting artists i had never heard about before and 2. excites me so much that i eagerly spend 9 hours on 3 super slow trains in order to get there. “There” being Aix-en-Provence and Aix is never a bad idea in November.

The programme of the last festival was short but it featured a few artworks that looked worth an article on the blog. Julien Clauss had a particularly fascinating installation that creates invisible geometries and architectures with the help of little more than 30 good old radios and FM radio transmitters.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

The artist turned one of the exhibition spaces of the spectacular Fondation Vasarely into a giant jamming room, a Salle de brouillage in french. He placed 30 FM radio transmitters on the walls. They are made of brass plate circuits and each of them is connected to an antenna, a power supply and audio players via a network of cables that crisscross the walls of the room. Each transmitter is tuned to a different frequency along the FM broadcast band (from 87 to 108 MHz), covering the entire FM band.

Visitors could pick up one of the portable radio receivers available, move along the space, play with the frequencies, scan the FM spectrum and uncover the invisible waves that occupy the space. By playing with the low tech devices, visitors could thus explore an invisible architecture shaped by the world of electromagnetic fields.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

I got in touch with Julien Clauss who, between a residency in Chile and the installation of a new sound work in Montreuil (east of Paris), found a moment to answer my questions:

Hi Julien! Salle de Brouillage was installed at the Fondation Vasarely for the GAMERZ festival, a space that might have its challenges for a sound artist but that remains incredibly inspiring. Is the way you are going to install the work be influenced by the location?

The geometry of the room in which Salle de Brouillage is installed instructs the spatial deployment of the work, the pattern of the transmitter is repeated throughout the room by strictly following the architecture of the place.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

How site-specific is the installation?

Salle de brouillage is installed in relation to the architecture and the electromagnetic field of the site. The transmitters and copper cables follow the contours of the exhibition room like a tapestry and play with the spatial dynamics of the room. In a less visible manner, the radio emissions of the 30 transmitters meet the ambient electromagnetic field, a joint result of the emissions of the local FM stations, the filtering of the walls and the radiation of the electrical installations inside the building. The electromagnetic field in Salle de brouillage depends on the FM emissions specific to the installation as much as on the radio environment around and inside the building.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

I like that you’re using portable radios. Why did you want to use devices that might look old-fashioned in today’s world of digital everything?

The first wireless transmission experiments date back to 1900, which makes radio the oldest of the “new media”. This is not the vintage aspect of the radio that interests me but the spatial and plastic dimensions of the media. I want to bring to the same level the structure of the media, its technology, the implicit hierarchical structures of the forms of networks as well as the sociability that these structures generate. Radio is a mundane object that makes it possible to get in touch with an invisible dimension of our environment which realizes a complex physical and geo-strategic space.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

How did you select the sounds that visitors discover while navigating the space? Are they found materials?

Two stations play found materials: number stations (sequence of coded numbers emitted in short waves and addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries) and natural radio (solar radiation, variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, etc); the other 28 stations broadcast sounds I made in reference to the sonic universe of radio: filtered noise, pure frequencies, shortwaves, ambient music, readings from concerts performed together with Emma Loriaut and Jean-François Blanquet.

How does the sound emitted by the radio sets evolve? is it just a question of turning the buttons on the devices or do the movements of the visitors influence the sound in the room?

The concentration of the emitters inside the same space produces mutual jamming. The field generated by the emissions in the room is an entanglement of chaotic waves. It is necessary to move around to receive the stations, some pop up very locally on an unstable portion of the frequency range, others in several places across the room.

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage, 2018. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

Julien Clauss, Salle de brouillage, 2018. Photo: Luce Moreau for GAMERZ festival

How does the “physicality” of the electromagnetic energy manifests itself to visitors?

The material and visual dimensions of the electromagnetic field interest me because they are an invisible component of our environment. The specific state of the electromagnetic field in the installation is a form of sculpture, which can be discovered with a radio receiver. The portable radio goes from being a media receiver to a tool that scans the surrounding space. Moving in search of waves while holding a radio in your hand is a sensitive experience of getting in touch with the invisible.

Salle de Brouillage was inspired by the media experiments of Tetsuo Kogawa. Could you explain the importance of his work?

Tetsuo Kogawa started a social practice of radio on a very small scale in the 1980s in Japan. It was based on the proximity between the broadcasting site and the listening site of the radio. He then undertook a performative work of building miniature transmitters with which he plays live while he is assembling them. By considering the carrier wave as a signal and the sound signal as a parasite of the carrier, he literally reversed the dialectic of the signal and noise in the radio.

The transmitters used in Salle de brouillage are designed according to a model that he has developed and shares freely. I place my radio sculpture work in the wake of the one made by Max Neuhaus. I started working on the layering and mixing of radio waves with Walk In Music, a cover of Neuhaus‘s Drive In Music (1967) I made on the island of Vassivière during a residency at La Pommerie. This first experience of mutual interference between transmitters, combined with the idea of composing a complete FM band, prompted the idea for Salle de brouillage. The design of Tetsuo Kogawa’s transmitter on a copper plate was perfect for this project. Emma Loriaut and I slightly modified the graphic design of the circuit. The work premiered in January 2018 at Centre Gallery in Quebec.

Julien Clauss and Emma Loriaut, Météo Mondiale

I found another of your works, Météo Mondiale, very moving. It’s hard to imagine anything more banal and boring that the weather news on the radio. And yet, we’re living in 2019 and the weather is now a topic that makes most of us anxious and afraid of the future. But there’s something very soothing, poetical and intimate about that piece. It also, as was your intention, makes tangible the relentless flow of information. I’m curious about the interplay between the weather data read out loud by Emma Loriaut and the “arpeggio of analog synthesiser.” How did you create the underlying sound work? Does it connect with the voice of the artist and the actual the weather data?

Météo Mondiale is an improvised performance. The data is extracted from the internet in real time, compiled, printed and read live during the performance. The prosody, the enumeration of the names and numbers of the weather report creates a distance to reality. This creates a textual material that is shaped in parallel to the synthesizer line that is also improvised throughout this dialogue.

Julien Clauss, Ground Noise at Instants chavirés. Image courtesy of the artist

Any upcoming projects, events, fields of investigation you’d like to share with us?

The exhibition Ground Noise at Instants chavirés started a few weeks ago: 3 laser distance sensors, each 3 meters in diameter, read the contours of the concrete slab on the floor of the old brewery.

Merci Julien!

If you understand french and want to see the installation ‘in action’, check out this interview with Julian Clauss. He talk about Salle de Brouillage, old bearded composers, black boxes and media reappropriation:

GAMERZ 14 / Julien Clauss

The 14th edition of the GAMERZ festival closed last December but if you’re in or near Paris, you have until 26 May to experience his installation Ground Noise at at Instants chavirés.

According to the World Bank‘s latest estimates, the world generates (and often poorly manages) 2.01 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, 12 percent of it being plastic. A third of that plastic finds its way into fragile ecosystems such as the world’s oceans.

Plastic debris now aggregates in gigantic floating landfills in oceans and endangers wildlife. Turtles ingest plastic bags and balloons, tiny fragments carpet the sea bed while chemical additives used in plastics even ends up in birds’ eggs in High Arctic. We’ve all read about this kind of stories, just as we’ve heard about the small gestures we should adopt to curb plastic waste. Yet, the growth of the plastic tide looks unstoppable.

Swaantje Güntzel, Hotel Pool, Intervention, 2016. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Scheibe & Güntzel, PLASTISPHERE Portrait. Photo by Scheibe & Güntzel

Swaantje Güntzel, an artist with a background in Anthropology, has long been investigating our conflicted relationship with waste. Her work forces us to confront the dramatic consequences that trash pollution is having all over the world, from our city streets to the wildlife living at the other end of the world. Using aesthetics, provocation and humour, she lays bare the interdependence between our daily consumer choices, tepid reactions to environmental urgencies and fragile ecosystems.

Her strategies to spur us into action are many. She exhibits porcelains, photos, embroideries and sculptures inside galleries of course. But she also goes into the streets and infuriates passersby with her public performances. Some of her interventions involve the conspicuous “relocation” in touristic areas and fjords of trash dumped by absent-minded citizens. Others see her placing underneath public park benches sound devices playing a series of sounds generated by humans underwater, the kind of noises we never talk about but that nevertheless deeply disturbs wildlife swimming and living in the North and Baltic Sea, Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean.

Swaantje Güntzel, Offshore (detail), 2015, sound intervention, ARTweek Aabenraa, Denmark, Rosegarden

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, intervention excavator 1 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Many of her works involve collaborations. Often with artist Jan Philip Scheibe but also with activists, researchers or even employees in a recycling plant. She lent some of her ideas and talent to environmental organizations such as Ocean Now in order to create campaigns that show her own face (and even, in the last iteration of the campaign, the faces of famous German public figures) covered in microplastics collected on beaches across the world. She also regularly collaborates with scientists in order to ground her artworks in robust facts or get help gathering plastic toys trapped inside the digestive system of sea birds. Last year, she even spent a couple of weeks on the huge scrapyard near Stuttgart to understand the whole process that keeps raw materials inside a closed recycling loop.

Ocean Now is currently using Swaantje Güntzel’s artwork “Microplastics II” for its In Your Face project, part of their campaign “Microplastics in Cosmetics and Cleaning Products”. Photo by Helen Schroeter

Swaantje Güntzel, MIKROPLASTIK II, 2016. Photo: Henriette Pogoda

I discovered her practice through the artworks series that explores the plastic invasion of our daily lives and oceans but our online discussions also brought us to discuss excavator choreographies on scrapyards and how to stay sane when the world around you is sinking under piles of garbage.

Swaantje Guntzel & Jan Philip Scheibe, PLASTISPHERE/Promenade Thessaloniki Performance, 17 March 2016, Thessaloniki, Greece

Hi Swaantje! I was very moved by PLASTISPHERE/Promenade Thessaloniki when I first read about it. It makes visible, in the most shocking way, how careless we are in our daily life when it comes to plastic trash, even when we are in the proximity of the sea or of a park. And even though we’re all aware of the problem by now. How did passersby react to your gestures of throwing plastic back into the urban environment? Did they get angry at you?

What you see in the video is not the whole truth because it was impossible to cover every reaction. In performance art you have to decide whether you focus on the performance or on the documentation because as soon as people see there’s someone filming or taking pictures around, they immediately think this is not serious and will refrain from intervening. We thus had to ask the filmmaker to stay away and try to be invisible as much as he could. Several moments in the performance were even stronger than the ones you can see in the video. For example, when we started the performance, after some 10 meters as I had just begun to throw out the garbage, a guy on a bike stopped and spat at me. His spit was all over my dress. He didn’t even ask what was going on. Further on, we had people yelling and shouting at us. The old woman in the video wasn’t just slapping me, she was hitting me hard. And she wasn’t the only one. There’s also this guy at the end of the video whom we later discovered was part of far right group The Golden Dawn. If it hadn’t been for the curator who was running behind and trying to explain what we were doing, I think he would have beaten us up.

Scheibe & Güntzel, PLASTISPHERE Promenade, 2016, Thessaloniki. Photo by Giorgos Kogias

Collecting garbage at Galerius Palace Thessaloniki, 2016. Photo by Giorgos Kogias

Did people get angry like this everywhere you presented the performance?

Yes, people react that way pretty much everywhere we go.

Lately, I’ve been wondering why people get so worked up. They don’t get angry when they see people dropping garbage or when they see trash in the street. They only get so worked up when they see somebody doing it in such a condensed and obvious way. I find it a bit hypocritical.

The funny thing is that I’m only relocating that garbage. We always start by picking up the trash we find laying around the city. In the case of Thessaloniki, we picked it up at a nearby archaeological site. The site is inside the pedestrian area. You can get a ticket, enter and visit the site. Yet, people who walk by still throw their wrappings onto the archaeological site.

In the first performance, I was relocating the actual garbage within the site, picking it up in one place and throwing it in another. After that, we took that garbage and moved it three blocks away, on the promenade. Only this time, we were throwing the garbage while riding some kind of bike for tourists.

I think that the outraged reaction has a lot to do with the fact that people don’t like to be confronted with garbage so blatantly. In a way, they know it’s theirs and it’s their responsibility. No matter where you are and who you ask, people seem to believe that garbage in public space is not their fault, that it’s the others who are to blame for its presence.

Public space is a collective space. We should all be responsible for it. Unfortunately, people just don’t want to take responsibility, neither in a personal sense nor in a collective sense. A performance in which we bring the garbage back to them is like a knock on their doors.

On a more abstract level, it has a lot to do with the walls we create around consumerism and in a broader sense around capitalism. When you start to talk about waste and plastic pollution, you have to question your way of life, the whole system of capitalism as well as us, humans. Of course, that’s probably not what is crossing these people’s mind immediately but I think it all comes together to create this strong reaction. And then on a more personal level, I think that a lot of people might be compensating for their daily lack of responsibility towards waste by acting in such a strong way and pretending they care. Because I throw garbage around in such an outrageous way, they suddenly take the role of the “clean up police”. It’s a bit like when you interview passersby on animal well-being, everyone will tell you that of course they’d be ready to pay a bit more if they were sure animals are treated better. The choices they make in their daily life, however, do not necessarily reflect what they say when they are interviewed in public. My work highlights this contradiction between what you do or say in public and what your private behaviour might be.

Scheibe & Güntzel, PLASTISPHERE Galerius Palace Thessaloniki, 2016. Photo by Giorgos Kogias

Do you think part of people’s anger can be explained by the fact that you look like a tourist on that touristic vehicle?

I don’t think so. I was acting in such an exaggerated way, throwing garbage around in broad daylight, in a popular area of the city and dressed in such an extravagant way. It was impossible to take me seriously. It was all staged to look like a performance or maybe an activist action to raise awareness around the waste problem.

Swaantje Güntzel, Portrait at Kaatsch. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Last year you collaborated with the German recycling company Schrott- und Metallhandel M. Kaatsch GmbH in Plochingen as part of the Art Festival DREHMOMENT of KulturRegion Stuttgart in order to follow the route taken by the recycled objects, looking in particular at “the physical and logistical effort required to keep raw materials in a closed cycle of recyclable materials.” I found it interesting that you seemed to have established some relationship with the people working in this recycling company. What role played the relationship you established with them? How long did you stay there by the way?

I produced the actual work in two weeks but the whole relationship started long before that, in January, when we had the first encounter. That’s when I was presented to the company and they had to decide whether or not they wanted to work with me. They were very afraid I would run around their company looking for problems in the way they work. On the one hand, their fear was understandable because so far I had only focused on the damages of consumerism and not on the solutions to it. It took them 3 months to think about it. And it took me a lunch and a lot of wine with the boss of the company to convince him to say yes to the collaboration. But the moment we started to work together, they were incredible. They opened every door for me, they let me do everything I had dreamt of.

The work with the excavator that you can see in the short movie was something I had dreamt of. I never thought they’d allowed me to do that because that would mean slowing down the work process, it would be complicated, require a lot of men power and they’d lose money. And yet, the moment I told them about my idea, they reacted very fast and made it happen.

During my research and over the course of these two weeks last summer when I tried to realise most of the works, I found it very easy to talk to everyone. Later in October, for the opening of the resulting show, I had a conversation with one of the people working there and I almost apologised for being this woman crawling everywhere on their working space, always in the way of the workers on this big scrapyard. But the worker said “No! Not at all! All the women who work here would never come on the scrapyard, they prefer to stay inside the offices but you looked so interested in our work, trying to understand, getting yourself dirty, etc. That was actually very flattering for us.” The people who are in charge of the place also understood the potential of this synergy between the artist and the company and how something completely new could emerge from it. I had warned them that I wanted total freedom, that they couldn’t interfere with the content (unless it was for technical reason) but we never had any situation of tension.

I saw the power of recycling our waste, of keeping the resources in this loop and not lose any of it. It’s the future. They always say that recycling is the 7th resource of the world. Recycling will become an essential resource. Without it, we’ll destroy the planet even sooner than expected.

For me it was a new experience. For once, everybody was so happy about my performances! Although in the end, I think that people getting angry and me being beaten up is part of the solution. It’s one of the puzzle pieces in trying to understand that we are on the wrong track.

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, 2018. Photo by Tobias Hübel

One of the works in the LOOPS series intrigued me. The triptych titled LOOPS / LH 150 E. Did the excavator create these marks?

Yes, you can see the process in the video.

My concept was that I wanted to visualise how much power is in the logistics and in the physical effort you need to keep resources in recycling loops. While doing my research on the scrapyard, I saw the company´s excavators picking up what seemed to be big bundles of steel wires that look like balls of wool but weight tons. The excavators grab these bundles and use them to move the trash from one side to the other. When they’ve finished the work, they use the bundles to clean the spot where they were working. When you see 3 or 4 of these excavators doing it at the same time, it looks like a ballet or a choreography. You can also sense the power. You feel the soil moving and shaking, the air getting very hot and the loud noise. It’s like you’re in a parallel world. I wanted to visualize these movements so I asked if i could drip these bundles into red paint, put the three steel plates on the ground and thus capture these moments.

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, setting the plates, 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, intervention excavator 1 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, steel wire 2, 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, steel wire 1, 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, intervention excavator 1 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

Swaantje Güntzel, LOOPS LH 150 E, finished plates, 2018. Photo by Jan Philip Scheibe

You hold a Masters Degree in Anthropology. How does that background inform and influence your artistic practice?

At the beginning, I didn’t think it would influence my practice. I was actually hiding that fact. When I started studying art, I was already older than the others and I was struggling to find my spot. Especially because I was working on ecological topics that no one really likes. In the first years, I had a hard time defining myself. After 5 or 7 years however, I started to realise that the way I look at the world, the way I work, the way I observe is so linked to my studies in Anthropology that I couldn’t deny this background anymore and that it played a huge part in my artistic practice.

Besides, I have this project series with my boyfriend Jan Philip Scheibe, who is also an artists, where we try and analyse with the instruments from contemporary art how the interaction between people and their surrounding landscape is still visible and how this defined their culture and understanding of nature. How these people trying to be nourished by the surrounding landscape have interacted with it over the course of the past several hundred years. These projects require a lot of research and I’m the one in charge of that before we actually start the work. My technique, my way of researching are linked to that understanding of the world as an anthropologist.

When I work on plastic pollution, I collaborate with many scientists, with marine biologists, with physicians, experts in acoustics, etc. Without this academic background, I would have hesitated a lot before before approaching them and asking them if they were open to collaborating with me.

Swaantje Güntzel, Stomach Contents, 2010. Photo: Swaantje Güntzel

Swaantje Güntzel, Box Set XL, 2018, plastics, wood, glass, 41,3 x 31,5 cm. Photo Tobias Hübel

Swaantje Güntzel, Cigarette lighter R, 2014. Photo by Anne Sundermann

How did you work with these other scientists? Do they play only a consulting role or a more active one?

It depends very much on the project. For example, I worked with marine biologist Dr. Cynthia Vanderlip on a series of projects in which she played an active role. She is the head of Kure Atoll Conservancy, a seabird sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean. She was one of the first scientists I approached in my artistic career because I needed items that had been swallowed by birds in the ocean. She works a lot with Laysan albatrosses that have ingested plastic objects and she agreed in 2009 to provide me with all the materials I needed. She collects the pieces found inside dead birds on that remote Atoll. Now she can’t go to the Atoll anymore but she still directs the team over there and asks them to keep on collecting the objects for me. She answers any question I might have. Her role is thus very active.

With other scientists, it’s more about getting answers to very specific questions.

Last year was the first time I dared to present my work in a scientific conference on microplastics. I had no idea if they would appreciate this kind of presentation or even if it made sense for them to see how artists are working on this topic. From the interested reactions I got after the presentation, it looks like it was the right thing to do.

You’ve worked on the topic of plastic pollution for many years now. How do you see the discussions evolving? It seems to me that on the one hand, awareness has been raised years ago. On the other hand, we’re not making much progress in controlling plastic waste, are we?

I started to work on that topic in a time when nobody really knew about plastic pollution or about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at all in Germany. There were a few scientists in the States who had just named the problem but there was nothing in terms in public awareness. I was so naive at the time. I thought that if I started making the problem visible, an understanding would grow and that over time we would take action. However, I could see that time was passing and that my work kept being labelled in curatorial texts or critical reviews as “raising awareness”. Last year, I started wondering how long we’d need to “raise awareness” before we decide to actually do something. Five years ago or so, people who are in charge started to advise the public on how we could change habits, use as little plastic as possible or put pressure on politicians and on the industry to see changes emerge. But we’ve been stuck in this same movement for such a long time. By now, I think that each of us is aware of the problem and we all agree that plastic doesn’t belong in the environment. And yet, not much has changed.

At the opening of my exhibitions, people view me as a kind of priest and confess their plastic sins to me. They would tell me that they understand the importance of my work, that it’s essential that someone makes the effort but then they’d try and explain me why they can’t make an effort themselves: it takes too much time and too much energy, it’s the industry that should act, people at the other end of the world do worse anyway, etc. Classic whataboutism that doesn’t help us move forward.

It’s the same with climate change, we know we have to do something and yet we stand there. We prefer to blame others, keep our heads in the sand and prolong our way of life.

Swaantje Güntzel, Blowback II, 2015. Photo by HC Gabelgaard

What keeps you motivated and sane? because sometimes when I read how turtles choke on plastic, how microplastics ends up in the food chain and more generally how biodiversity is dying and the climate is warming up, i despair and want to forget about all that.

You have to look at my biography to answer that one. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, a time characterised by what some like to call “eco-pessimism”. As a kid, I was traumatised by what we were doing to this planet. I was a little girl asking adults “Now that you know what we did to the environment, why don’t you change your behaviour?” And I would always get an answer which meaning can be summed up in: “As adults we screwed it up. Now it’s on you to find a solution and save the world.” I was old enough to take their words seriously and I was depressed about the challenge I had to face: saving the world pretty much on my own.

Today’s young people feel the same but at least they have social media to connect and combine their energy and knowledge and turn it into something as powerful as the Fridays for Future movement. Back then however, it wasn’t the case and it’s only recently that I discovered that many people my age had experienced the same depression and sense of helplessness. We did what we could of course. For example, going from door to door asking people to sign petitions against seal slaughtering or collecting money for the local pet shelter. But we felt alone and under so much pressure. At some point, I decided I would leave aside those topics for a while. I went abroad and studied anthropology. Over time however, I realised that both the environmental issues and art were so deep inside of me that I couldn´t ignore it anymore. I decided that art could help me put up with the pressure and feel like I was doing something. It’s not on the level of activism where you have to dedicate your energy to a cause every day, you have to fight and you live with the constant frustration.
Art would allow me to do something but it wouldn’t consume me as much. It’s the only way I found to deal with this global insanity without completely losing it myself.

Thanks Swaantje!

Eric D. Clark, Music producer, DJ. A collaboration between Ocean Now and Swaantje Güntzel’s artwork “Microplastics II” for the In Your Face project, part of Ocean Now campaign “Microplastics in Cosmetics and Cleaning Products” Photo: Saskia Uppenkamp

Swaantje Güntzel has a few exhibitions coming up: she’ll be participating to the Deep Sea group show opening at Ystads Konstmuseum, Sweden, on 1 June 2019. This Summer her work is part of the touring exhibition Examples to follow! Expeditions in aesthetics and sustainability in Erfurt, Germany. She is also preparing, together with Jan Philip Scheibe the work Preserved/Grünkohl opening at DA Kloster Gravenhorst, Germany on 12 July 2019. And of course, her collaboration with Ocean Now is currently taking the streets of Berlin to inform passersby about the urgent need to ban microplastics in cosmetics and cleaning products.

The first few words i read on the leaflet of the Share Festival, the annual event of contemporary tech art and science in Turin, sum up so poetically the way i see the city:

Share Festival XIV, GHOSTS, is worldly by being otherwordly, is Turinese by being international, touches the heart of the matter by embracing the skin, is futuristic by being historical, is visible through the invisible, spoken through the unspeakable and alive through the spirits of the dead.

Well, that certainly beats the very cheesy title i had originally selected for my review of the festival exhibition (The Share festival. Or how to put spirits into the spirit of innovation)!

While Turin is famous -at least in Italy- for its innovations and manufacturing energy, it is also said to be the only city that is part of both the triangle of White Magic and the triangle of the Black Magic. This year the Share Festival played with this enigmatic identity and chose Ghosts as its main theme.

The works exhibited over the course of a long weekend in Turin called forth all the Ghosts of technologies and human memories.

There were 6 works in the show, each of them shortlisted for the Share Prize, each radically different from the others. Taken together though these artworks offered a compact, coherent and enchanting perspective on a technologically-mediated world in which the rational constantly contends with the paranormal and the superstitious.

Below are the 4 works i found most fascinating:
Starting with the ghost of a bird hunted to extinction….

Sally Ann McIntyre, Collected Huia Notations (like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded), 2015. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Sally Ann McIntyre, Collected Huia Notations (like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded), 2015

The Huia is an extinct species of wattle bird from New Zealand. The male and the female had differently shaped bills. They worked together to feed on wood-burrowing larvae, the male chiseling the bark from trees, while the female removed exposed grubs with her long, curved beak. The arrival of European settlers led to the loss of their habitat through deforestation, the introduction of new predators and the mass killing of the birds in 1901 when their feathers sparked a fashion craze on the old continent. The last officially recorded Huia was seen in 1907.

There is no direct recording of their songs. However, in 1949, a farmer named Robert Batley asked Henare Hāmana, a local Māori who used to lure huia by imitating their call, to accompany him to Wellington and record his imitation of the bird on a disc.

Sally Ann McIntyre‘s Collected Huia Notations (like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded) calls forth the ghost of the lost bird.

She first asked Pascal Harris in Dunedin, New Zealand, to play on the piano the four known Western musical notations of the song of the Huia. The sounds were then inscribed onto phonograp wax cylinder by Graham McDonald of the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra. The artist chose the piano because it was a musical instrument found in most domestic houses in colonial New Zealand and the wax cylinders because they were the only commercially available sound recording technology available while the Huia was still alive. During the exhibitions of the work, the sounds are played on an Edison Gem phonograph, launched on the market in 1899 for domestic use.

However, the wax cylinders are so fragile that each playback is a small erosion of the recording, suggesting that the bird will continue to escape from our understanding with each attempt to retain the memory of its existence.

It is hard not to see in this work an allusion to the 1,200 animal species which, scientists warn, “will almost certainly face extinction” without conservation intervention.

Casey Reas, The Untitled Film Stills. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Casey Reas, The Untitled Film Stills. Image courtesy of the Share festival

The Untitled Film Stills is part of Compressed Cinema, a body of work in which Casey Reas uses generative adversarial networks (GANs.) GANs are a type of machine learning systems in which two neural networks contend with each other and generate images indistinguishable from photography.

The artist reinserts a certain level of human agency and creative control into the mechanism by selecting the images GANs trains on. Instead of employing the technology to create realistic images, Reas thus deviates it from its main function, stretches GANs creative potential even further and explores its ability to produce uncanny images.

Each image in The Untitled Film Stills series appears grainy and a bit blurry, as if it were a frame from an imagined film that might have been rescued from the past.

Sophie Kahn, Machine for Suffering. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Sophie Kahn, Machine for Suffering

Sophie Kahn, Machine for Suffering

Sophie Kahn’s work explores how science and technology scrutinize and eventually misinterpret the human body.

The artist uses a laser scanner to captures performers reenacting poses from photos that were developed to diagnose and record hysteria in the 19th Century. Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot was then studying hysteria with the help of anatomical artist Paul Richer at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. Together, they elaborated charts and images documenting the physical poses they regarded as “typical” of the various phases of an attack of hysteria. Photography was their medium of choice, even though photos could obviously not capture the underlying psychological cause(s) of what ailed their patients. Interestingly, hysteria was a psychiatric diagnosis that, at the time, was applied largely to women. Just like today the adjective “hysterical” is almost consistently used to describe women who dare to express themselves with a bit of anger or passion.

Image from Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, 1876-80

Sophie Kahn, Machine for Suffering. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Similarly to what happened in the 19th Century with photography, the 3D technology Kahn is using today fails to adequately capture its human subjects. Since the scanners aren’t designed to handle movements, let alone emotions, they get confused by the ever-changing spatial coordinates and turn the female bodies into glitchy shells that the artist paints, sands, glues and props up with scaffolding.

Her Machines for Suffering look like bodies that had been broken down then hastily pieced back together.

Fanni Dada, Segnali dal futuro. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Fanni Dada, Segnali dal futuro. Image courtesy of the Share festival

Fanni Dada, Segnali dal futuro. Image courtesy of the artists

Segnali dal futuro, by the Italian duo Fanni Dada, evokes a future that comes back to haunt us. This might sound paradoxical but some of the most worrying characteristics of our epoch (from man’s capacity to destroy himself with the technology he creates to the mass extinction of sepecies) were described with disturbing accuracy in the works of J. G. Ballard and Aurelio Peccei. I’m not going to insult you by giving you a bio of the iconic science fiction writer but Peccei might need a few lines of intro.

Peccei, born in Turin (a great place to be as the whole team of the Share festival and i will tell you), was the co-founder with Alexander King of the Club of Rome, an international group of people from the fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy and industry who met to reflect on the interconnectedness of a series of issues that, until then, had been examined separately and in a short-term framing: environmental deterioration, the depletion of natural resources, poverty, endemic ill-health, criminality, etc. Their conclusions, published in 1972 under the title The Limits to Growth, suggested that economic growth could not continue indefinitely if humanity continued plundering resources as it was already doing. Many of their concerns and recommendations feel painfully prescient today. And almost 50 years after their first meeting in Rome, it appears that we’re still governed by the same irresponsible mechanisms and ideologies.

Visitors of the festival were invited to place their hands on the copper plates connected to the electrical impulses of the installation video signals. This simple gesture seemed to conjure the spirits of the two forward-thinking figures. Like in a séance, their faces appeared to urge us to reflect on the kind of future we’ve already wasted and the future we might still hope for today.

Well, we didn’t listen to scientists, artists and philosophers then and we still foolishly ignore their warnings now. It doesn’t sound so far-fetched to ask ghosts to shake us our of lethargy and complacency.

The jury for the SHARE Prize was composed by Andrea Griva from the School of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, artist Lia; curator and art critic Domenico Quaranta; writer, activist and Share Prize curator Jasmina Tesanovic and science-fiction author and Share Festival artistic director Bruce Sterling.

Adam Basanta, an artist, composer and performer of experimental music, likes to turn sound technologies into kinetic and sculptural installations. The way he handles sound objects can be fairly hostile, ironic or even poetical.

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

In his ongoing exhibition at Optica Centre d’art contemporain in Montreal, the artist went for the rude and rough treatment.

A Large Inscription, A Great Noise investigates notions of historical time and time-keeping, cycles of construction and destruction in an era of mass communication, automization through mechanical kineticism, and the modalities of its resulting trace.

In “A Large Inscription”, a microphone is slowly dragged over gravel; “an indispensable instrument of the modern demagogue is knocked over like an overrun statue,” writes the artist. That might explain why i found the sound produced so physical but also strangely satisfying.

“A Great Noise”, however, is more dramatic. A microphone encased in a 40kg cement block is quietly raised towards the roof, left to hover for a second and then it drops and slams against a large concrete base. Bits and pieces chipped off the block scatter around the space. The block slowly rises again and the process is repeated over and over again.

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Solo exhibition at Optica Centre d’art contemporain, Montreal

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

I caught up with the artist as he had just finished installing his work:

Hi Adam! The two works are in the same room. How do they connect or maybe disconnect? Are they meant to always work together?

While both works are independent pieces, they are interrelated and very much designed to be in dialogue. They both try to address the same set of questions, each in their own way: how do we conceive of and represent time, its passage, and its organization into a history? How does the application of technology – mechanical power, automatization, networked communication – shape this understanding and the world around us?

In A Large Inscription, time is envisioned as circular and infinite. A trace never truly begins or ends, it just shifts forward, slowly displacing whatever is in its path. Historical moments (the microphone placement alludes to the toppled statue of a dictator) while cathartic, are repeated, stuck in a loop. The world keeps on turning. On the other hand, A Great Noise divides time into distinct units: the 40kg block of cement (in which a microphone is embedded) is pulled up every 5 minutes, and then dropped to the ground from a height of ~1.5 to 2m. Time is divided into measured intervals, but also moves forward as we witness cause and effect, the block slowly breaking after repeated impacts as days and weeks pass by.

This conceptual dialogue is mirrored sonically, with one continuous layer slowly evolving texturally, occasionally punctuated by distinct, violent events.

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

What do you mean when you write the work investigates the “cycles of construction and destruction in an era of mass communication”?

I feel like we have a very confused relationship to time and temporality in the present moment. On the one hand, we have an immense degree of access to the past, where we can google an event that occurred yesterday or 1500 years ago with the same ease. History is flattened, and exists firmly in the present as an artifact of our time. On the other hand, our notions of the future are dominated by dystopic visions of impending ecological collapse and the autocratic techno-state. The present is changing at a breakneck speed, a speed we are able to follow using our various technological devices and platforms, but somehow this overload of information gives a sensation of stasis and déjà vu. A country is destroyed, a forest is chopped down, a building is torn down for new construction; is any of this new or have I already read about it? Are we progressing or regressing, or staying in the exact same place we’ve always been? There is a sense of malaise in how we relate to time, and while the works don’t address these issues explicitly, as allegorical re-interpretions of the myth of Sisyphus, they speak to this phenomena.

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

There’s some suspense in A Great Noise, a tension that’s only briefly released when the block finally hits the base. What determines the speed of the movements? is it random? Regular? Does it respond to specific rules?

I’m told that watching this work is a very tense experience! The pulling up of the block takes approximately 2 minutes. It is intentionally slow but the speed also transmits the sense of mechanical and kinetic power at hand. The block is pulled up to a variable height between 1.5-2m above the ground. It is then held in place for between 10-30 seconds before the load is released and drops to the ground by the force of gravity. So even if you’ve seen the block drop, there is always a sense of danger about it as it pulls higher or lower, anticipation to see if it drops right away or is left suspended for a longer interval, will a piece of the block break off, etc. Another layer of indeterminacy is in the manner in which the blocks break over time: as pieces chip off, the balance of the block changes, and as the block hits the cement differently, we can attend to sonic variations. Once a cement block breaks entirely – this takes about 2 to 3 weeks – it is replaced by a new cast cement block, and the process repeats.

Adam Basanta, All We’d Ever Need Is One Another, 2018

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

I associate your practice with elegant electronic devices, not with rough material like gravel and concrete. What is the appeal of gravel and concrete to you?

Well, I suppose all work exists on a spectrum! The last piece I made, All We’d Ever Need Is One Another, was very much about digital and computational labour (most of which occurs inside a computer), so it felt right to respond with this new project and make something very physical, heavy, and rough.

But the fascination with gravel and concrete specifically is in some ways quite personal. I live in Montreal, a city which is constantly under construction: in order to repair the effects of the harsh winter, to repair decaying infrastructure, to demolish an old warehouse for the next condominium. Construction is present and seemingly never-ending, but at the same time, it is slowly changing our cities. This change occurs by applying massive amounts of automated kinetic energy on to an already “built environment” and it seems a very apt summary of many human endeavours throughout history. And so cement and gravel are materials which are constantly around me, and I’m quite fascinated with the processes and machines which engage with these materials.

These construction materials are also an indicator of opportunity and change in some ways. For instance, my studio has been in the midst of a massive construction project for over a year, which will probably last another 2 years. And while it can be annoying at times, this construction creates a certain amount of chaos; chaos that is necessary for my existence there. I can find a my place in the interstice, a little ecosystem of cheap rent, a sense of freedom and opportunity created and sustained by this chaos. This interstice will close as the construction of a new ecosystem draws to an end in a year or two, and I will have to find a new place. Another cycle.

Thanks Adam!

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherand

Adam Basanta, A Large Inscription / A Great Noise is at Optica in Montreal until 15 June 2019. On 25 May, Adam Basanta will have a public conversation with Eli Kerr at OPTICA.

Previous works by the artist: The sound of empty space.

Putting Teresa Dillon inside a neatly labelled box is impossible. She is an artist, educator and researcher whose practice involves works as diverse as a performance inspired by women whose skin and hair turned yellow while working in WW1 ammunition factories, cardboard structures that explore the affects surveillance architectures have on non-human animals, collective bike rides for energy harvesting, talks & workshops that probe into the mechanisms governing urban life, etc. If that were not enough, she is also the principal investigator at Repair Acts (a multidisciplinary network of people concerned with the necessity to foster a repair, care and maintenance culture) and a Professor of City Futures at the School of Art and Design, University of West England (UWE) in Bristol.

Teresa Dillon, Are You Still Watching?, 2017. Image credit: Ministry of Transport, Sustainable Mobility and Transport Electrification of the Quebec Government

I’ve been meaning to interview her for ages and the upcoming Nø School summer school (where we’ll both be teaching and workshoping along with artists, academics, hackers and other amazing people) in Nevers, France, gave me an excuse to finally get in touch with her.

Teresa Dillon, AMHARC, 2018

Teresa Dillon, AMHARC, 2018

In this interview, we mostly talked about a performance that explores her relationship with machines, her involvement in repair culture and technology’s impact on other animal species.

Hi Teresa! I’m very moved by AMHARC, Are You Still Watching? and other works of yours that look at the impact that technologies and in particular surveillance technologies have on non-human animals. It’s an under-explored area of investigation. At least that’s my impression. What drove you to explore the effect that technology has on other species and in particular on urban wildlife?

Thanks Régine. I agree that dialogues relating to surveillance, technology and cities have largely been human-centered. My motivation to explore the area is rooted across multiple vectors. In my human-ness, I’ve always felt very animal and that our human-ness emerges from an entanglement with other species and our environs. So this base sits within my work and is expressed in different manners through performances, sound works, writing, research and installations, I’ve made in relation to survival and the techno-civic.

The specific turn towards the effect of technology on other species emerged from work during the mid-2000s projects like OFFLOAD, Systems for Survival (2007), Come Outside (2005), The Listening Chair all took urban space as the carrier so to speak, through which relationships between nature, ecology, systems thinking and cybernetics were explored. These projects were collaborative works, which I created under the name polarproduce and involved many others, such as the artist Kathy Hinde. Back then we were operating from a post-apocalyptic, post-tipping point feeling and so the work embodied these ideas, that is the earthly, physical, bodily and material relations of consumption and its effects on the environs.

For example for Come Outside we took 25 people on a 2km bike ride in the city. Each bike was augmented with a battery, when the ride was completed, we joined the batteries together and attempted to boil the water for one cup of tea, while delivering a performative lecture on energy transfer under a tree. The Listening Chair simply used a mic to pick up surrounding urban sound at the level of a bat for example, and then transduced this into a range that humans could ‘hear’ like a bat.

I’ve also been interested in the effect of what is defined as noise pollution on animal life and this got extended through research I was carrying out in Berlin between 2014-2016, on how artists (such as Mario De Vega, Martin Howse, Christina Kubisch) are making the human made electromagnetic spectrum (EM) in cities audible. This work led specifically to exploring the effect of EM increase on animal and wildlife.

While this research was developing, I was commissioned to make UNDER NEW MOONS, WE STAND STRONG (2016), which drew on the image of the snowy owl that went viral in 2016. Typically millions of pounds are spent trying to keep birds off such cameras. So there is a tension in this image, the symbol of the owl, celebrated versus the CCTV camera. The installation blows up the scale of the camera, accentuating the bird spikes as hostile architectures, which are designed to ward off birds, or anything that is disruptive to the commercial norm of the city. Low-profile solutions like ultraviolet gels are also used. Birds see in UV and so perceive the gel as a fire, which disrupts their flight patterns.

I’d argue such tactics are similar to what Rob Nixon refers to as forms of slow violence in that it’s not spectacular nor instantaneous but incremental, the effects of which are not necessarily immediate but take place over longer time frames.

Are You Still Watching (2016) extends UNDER NEW MOONS, WE STAND STRONG by contextualising the history of the CCTV camera, its a performative lecture/set design, which also pulls out some animal stories like the owl, or security person who did not want to take care of a dog, which lead to closed-circuits been used as an alternative.

AMHRAC (2018, pronounced arc, it’s the Irish for vision or sight) takes this notion of slow violence further, with the installation itself, taking the form of a totem pole and UV ‘screen’, as a way to imagine spaces of clearing, healing, protection and memory. This is currently developing long paths that look at the histories of animal rights and standing in the city.

Teresa Dillon with Kathy Hinde, The Listening Chair, 2007

Teresa Dillon with Kathy Hinde, The Listening Chair, 2007

Teresa Dillon, Come Outside, 2006

Teresa Dillon, Come Outside, 2006


Do you see any sign that technology and science are being used in a way that genuinely benefit other living species? On the one hand, it would look like a good idea because of the dramatic loss of biodiversity so we need to use any tool available to slow down this erosion of biodiversity. On the other, we might not want to trust the tendency to use technology to try and solve problems that have often been created by technology in the first place.

If we speak about technology broadly as a tool, then we could argue that one of its main uses has been to extract capital and this includes capital from non-human species. This is where the narrative has to change. Even when technology is used for the common good, which can encompass other species, the narrative tends to the anthropocentric. The origin of such thinking can be traced back to some of the first stories, we told ourselves like in the Bible where we proclaimed that ‘man’ has the ‘right’ to rule over “the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures” (Genesis 1:26). Contextualised in these anthropocentric ways, it becomes very difficult then to answer what is a ‘genuine’ benefit. Therefore there is a deprogramming and decolonisation of the mind and culture that has to happen, and is happening and many people are working on this, which includes bettering the conditions of species with and without tech intervention.

Teresa Dillon, MTCD – A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life, 2018


Your performance MTCD – A Visual Anthology of My Machine Life explores the machines that have shaped your “technological know-how and imagination.” Could you explain us what happens over the course of the performance?

Yeah sure, I trace my cyborg life – starting for example with when I was born and placed in an incubator. I spent the first six days of my life in this machine and this is where the story starts. The script which I wrote is approx., 45 mins long, I inhabit the space of the story teller and its intended to be entertaining and goes through for example – the first time I ‘saw’ and ‘used’ the Internet, ICQ, bought a mobile phone, put on a VR head set, shook hands with a robot. I also give some social context or name people who have been instrumental or key to the moment. So the narrative is tech driven but links to people and place. I have created a simple stage design, some noise feedback and worked with the visual artist Luke Bennett (transforma) on the current irritation of images, which are like a triptych that bounce between loops of visual feedback, to photos, comic cut outs, etc, which augment the script. This summer, I’m working to further developing set design, as I will be performing it in Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana, on 25th and 26th August.



I imagine that although MTCD talks about computers and other engineered devices, it must have a very intimate component. How much of your private life do you think you are revealing with that performance? And conversely, how much in the performance reflects the direct experiences of the public?

It’s revealing too a point about my personal life and perhaps one could infer many other things from it but in trying to keep faithful to a certain track, which describes the encounter with the tech – e.g., what it felt like to touch, what I sensually remembered, who was around when the encounter happened, where was it situated. This allows, I hope for some balance, without it falling down some nostalgic or narcissistic hole. In keeping to specific details, I would hope that some form of extrapolation can occur that allows the audience to locate themselves in the narrative – oh where was I then; or oh yeah, I remember that…. and to make connects.

Some of the public feedback to date has been interesting, people connecting to the story and resonating with parts of it. I am aware of my privilege but I was particularly moved when some young women spoke to me several months after seeing the performance at transmediale 2018 and shared not just how it made media archaeology feel alive for them. It opened up a conversation about our individual and collective ‘she-tories’ and women’s position and representation in media and tech. Basically, the 2017 story connects to how the first sex robot brothels were opened in Glasgow and Barcelona, with robot names like ‘Frigid Farrah’. Farrah is an Arabic name meaning ‘happy, joyful’, I trust, I don’t have to explain what is at play here with the selection of such a name, alongside the connotations of been frigid. Farrah is marketed as been shy and reserved with ‘personality settings’ so you can essentially tweak her level of submission. Between this and the release and pretty fast take down of Microsoft’s Tay, AI chatbot in 2016 and the Foundation for Responsible Robotics report on Our Sexual Future with Robots also released in 2017, which notes how sex robots are mainly gendered as female models with pornographic bodies. These ‘inventions’ and reports mean we are in the midst of a whole ‘new’ set of values, assumptions and possibilities, that will fundamentally shift how we sensually and sexually engage with each other, which opens up a whole other set of questions.

Sorry for a question that will probably make me look silly but what does MTCD stand for exactly?

MTCD is basically my full name in its initial form but I like the way, it also sounds like ‘empty CD’ and looks it might be an acronym.

Teresa Dillon, Under New Moons, We Stand Strong, 2016. Image credit: Fraser Denholm

Teresa Dillon, Under New Moons, We Stand Strong, 2016. Image credit: Yvi Philipp


I love that you sometimes use super low-tech or no-tech materials (like cardboard) to comment on technology. Is that a conscious strategy?

Yes completely. I ‘grew up’ somewhat in the tradition of performance and live art, where for some documenting work was not considered appropriate, as performance is live, it happens in the moment, creating an artefact therefore was not in keeping with the medium. Of course the latter leads to questions of intention and economies but this temporal constraint really appeals to me, as does the affect that post a performance not much is left, aside from these energetic scars in the atmospheres so to speak. So when I found myself working more with objects, it seemed natural when coming from this background that I worked with leftover, discarded material, stuff found on the street that could disappear easily and be turned into material for lighting a fire if needed.


You are the principal investigator at Repair Acts. It is easy imagine what a hacker, an environmentalist or an engineer might bring to the culture of caring, repairing and maintaining. How about the artist then? What can an artistic perspective bring when it comes to stimulating that same culture?

Is it easy to imagine (*/*) or is this the provocation? I mean hacking and engineering are often exploiting the weakness, which is already seeking out the vulnerability and this may not automatically lead to care, particularly if we think how ethics and responsibility have not necessarily been central to the education or training of these professional practices.

More specifically when speaking to artistic practices, I often reference Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Art from 1969, which for me is a pivotal reference here, Laderman Ukeles, refers to two instincts the death and life instinct, she associates the death instinct to separation, individuality, ‘following one’s own path to death’; the life instinct is about unification, the eternal return, maintenance. Development and progression is linked to the death instinct the continual need for the new; maintenance, care and repair is linked to the life system, it’s the boring everyday stuff we need to do to keep the ‘things alive’. I’ve written a short piece for the Screen City Journal titled “Working the Break Point: Maintenance, Repair and Failure in Art” (2017) which goes some way to addressing your question, starting with Laderman Ukeles and linking her work to studies in repair from sociology, geography and other disciplines; and to the work of other artists working in the fields of glitch art, and on topics relating to planned obsoletism, systems esthetics and so forth. Artistic perspectives have lots then to bring to the table when it comes to repair cultures and their associated forms of attention, such as care, maintenance and recuperation. Repair Acts was a first step in bringing together different people, their skills and disciplinary knowledge’s together on the topic. The project is ongoing with collaborators and collaborations forming in various countries, so more will be happening in this space. The most recent of which has been the completion of a mapping exercise called “My Square Mile”, which explores changes in businesses registered as carrying out repairs between 1938-2018 in a square mile of around my neighbourhood in the UK, we will now be going forward with this in other cities. A square mile is a good lens through which to observe changes, the research also explores the visual identities associated with repair practices.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Washing/Tracks/Maintenance, 1973. Photo: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (via)

There seems to be a growing interest in repairing and taking care of our objects, whether they are electronics or items of clothing. Do you see the industry pushing back against it or are they trying to adapt and accommodate our growing concerns about waste and consumerism?

Phew have you got some hours Major shifts are simultaneously occurring, on one hand we have the Ecodesign Directive, which recently pushed through legislation that will kick off in 2021 and require manufacturers of washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, lights and fridges to make their products easier to repair. You have organisations like Restart in London, who are championing policy change and repair parties; iFixit, in the US established in 2003, they have been publishing manuals on how to repair everyday consumer items and produced the Repair Manifesto; on a corporate level, Patagonia consider repair as central to the brand identity and declare repair as a radical act.

When taken seriously repair pushes the question of how we make things in the first instance further up the production chain and demands we make better quality, open products from the start, rather than waiting to recycle or deal with an objects end of life, when it is in a more wasted state.

Across the US, since 2013 The Repair Association has been working on state and federal legislation. So all this is happening but it will be interesting to see when and where this legislation actually hits practice. As you note there is lots of industry kick back, with Apple, John Deere the tractor manufacturer and others finding loops holes, resisting and going in the opposition direction. Essentially they know how necessary and economically viable repair is and yet they want to not just control this market by locking out third parties, but they also want to lock us down into product cycles by gluing, screwing, scaling down parts, bumping you off software, so that objects cannot be repaired or become redundant. If we are to hit UN sustainability goals relating to responsible consumption and production by 2030 then it’s difficult to see how without some serious enforcement, such changes in practices can happen. In response to this creative work arounds will and are always emerging, as will new black markets, growing pressures, green workers movements and changes in practices and politics. All these elements play into this and so when you speak about adapts and accommodations it’s a very complex, involving diverse global flows and relations that become sited in for example laws, standards, scrap yards and workbenches and the square mile around your home and studio.


Any upcoming event, field of research or work you could share with us?


Sure! Some immediate stuff happening over this summer, which relates to all the above includes: Formats of Care with my colleagues in Soft Agency at Floating University, Berlin, 13-16 June 2019; NØ SCHOOL, International Summer School, Nevers, France, 1-14 July 2019 and the MTCD performance at Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana, 29-30 Aug 2019. I’ve also got some stuff cooking with artists Joana Moll and Jana Barthel and there are some publications coming out (hopefully soon), including ‘Listening Around: Sonic Extractions of the Electromagnetic Spectrum’ in the Journal of Sonic Studies and with colleagues from the University of the West of England, a paper titled ‘Interspecies Urban Planning, Reimagining City Infrastructures with Slime Mould’, which will be in an edited collection of works by Andrew Adamatzky titled Slime Mould in Arts and Architecture (River Publishers.)

Thanks Teresa!

While in Geneva for the Mapping festival a few days ago, i visited Prison at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum. The promise of the exhibition is bold: explain to us that incarceration is our shared responsibility and that “We too are the punishers”.

The show looks at incarceration from various perspectives: the many roles of guards, the characteristics of healthcare inside prisons, social reintegration, the inhumanity of isolation cells, the high rates of suicide but also inmates inventiveness when it comes to escape, cook and resist restrictions.

Devoid of any judgement and stereotypes, Prison helps visitors reflect on the possible alternatives to an institution that clearly doesn’t work.

Instead of a proper review, i’ll leave you with an injunction (“Don’t miss it if you’re around Geneva this Spring!”), many photos and a couple of comments beneath some of them:

Valerio Bispuri, Prison Poggioreale, 2015 Naples, Italy – © Valerio Bispuri

Valerio Bispuri, Prison Poggioreale, 2015 Naples, Italy – © Valerio Bispuri

“Don’t look at these photos thinking that people who made a mistake have to pay,” wrote Roberto Saviano in an essay about Valerio Bispuri‘s photo reportage from the Poggioreale prison in Naples. You don’t pay like this. You don’t pay by defecating and cooking in the same square meter. You don’t pay by living without hot water and heating. You don’t pay by losing your dignity.”

Bad Boy, direction by Janusz Mrozowski, production by Andana Films, 2012

Bad Boy (film still), direction by Janusz Mrozowski, production by Andana Films, 2012

The “Bad Boy” of this documentary is a rather amiable and frustrated 28-year-old Polish bank robber named Damian, who had been living in solitary confinement for two years when the documentary was shot. He has no privacy, no human contact other than with his guards but still maintains a certain sense of humour. Damian lives the same day over and over again under the scrutiny of the CCTV camera and with only bad tv shows to distract him from the soul-crushing routine.

Just Detention, Survivor Program 2005, United States

In 2005, Just Detention launched a campaign calling for greater protection of the victims of sexual violence inside prison – whether inflicted by fellow inmates or prison staff.

Artificial penis, before 1989, German Democratic Republic. Silicone with heating coil, Saxon Prison Museum at Waldheim, Germany

This artificial penis was made by female prisoners in the GDR for purposes of self-gratification but also to smuggle in sperm from the outside and get pregnant by artificial means, hoping to benefit from the suspended prison term to which pregnant women are entitled under provisions of the Penal Code.

Objects swallowed by prisoners

Basic pizza oven belonging to Jan-Carl Raspe, 1975, Stuttgart-Stammheim – © Ludwigsburg Prison Museum, Germany

Grégoire Korganow, Setting off for a Stroll, 2012, France

Grégoire Korganow, Visiting room, 2012 – © Grégoire Korganow

“Away from public view, prisons are the stuff of fantasy, but there’s nothing spectacular about the reality I experienced there,” writes Grégoire Korganow in the intro to his Prisons series. “What really turns the ordinary into a nightmare and creates the hell of incarceration are the multiple and repeated acts of degrading treatment: demeaning rules, solitude, promiscuity, insalubrity, idleness, absence of prospect, discomfort… In addition, there is violence, which is perpetrated in shady corners and the exercise yard.”

Robert Sturman, Yoga at San Quentin State Prison, Prison Yoga Project, 2104, US

Mathieu Pernot, The Screamers (Les Hurleurs), 2001-2004

Les Hurleurs portrays people screaming to communicate at a distance messages to their relatives held in prisons.

Cosmin Bumbut, Camera Intima, 2014. Bucharest-Rahova, Romania

Since the entry of Romania into the European Union in January 2007 and a reform of the prison system, married detainees are allowed to meet their spouse in private and for two hours every two months. The place dedicated to these visits is the Camera Intima.

Cosmin Bumbut, Degetoaice/Girlboys, 2011, Tirgsor Women’s Penitentiary, Romania

“Girlboys are women who, during prison detention, assume a male identity,” photographer Cosmin Bumbut explains. “They have “wives” who tidy up, do the laundry and wash the dishes. Girlboys protect them, fulfill their emotional need and offer them sexual pleasure. They have men nicknames, cut their hair short and wear masculine clothes, clench their fists and demand respect. Some of them have children at home and they do this only while they are imprisoned. Other, continue their relationships after they are released. Most of them are old offenders. Almost all have suffered sexual abuse.”

Lili Kobielski, Cook County Jail, Chicago, 2015, United States

Lili Kobielski photographed Cook County Jail in Chicago where more than a third of the inmates suffer from mental illness. Over time, it has become one of the largest, if not the largest, mental health care provider in the United States. Yet, the lack of financial and human resources means that often no adequate care can be provided.

Lloyd DeGrane, Cook County Jail, Chicago, 2010

Dirty Protest, from the documentary Notorious Prisons, Episode 9: The Maze, Northern Ireland (image)

The dirty protest took place at the Maze Prison outside Belfast between 1978 and 1981. Political prisoners refused to wash in protest at their treatment (which included attacks by prison officers). They rejected all forms of hygiene and smeared the wall of their cells with faeces, urines and left-over food.

Inmates at Attica State Prison in Attica, N.Y., raise their hands in clenched fists in a show of unity, Sept. 1971, during the Attica uprising, which took the lives of 43 people. AP Photo

Klaus Pichler, Marked for Life (Fürs Leben gezeichnet) No.144 and No.410, 2012/13, Vienna, Austria

Arrangement of Yoyos by the artist Ernest Pignon Ernest, 2012 Saint-Paul and Saint-Joseph, Lyon, France (shut down 2009) – © Bruno Paccard

View of the exhibition – ©MICR, photos Reprosolution

View of the exhibition – ©MICR, photos Reprosolution

Prison remains open until 18 August 2019 at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva. The exhibition will travel to the (wonderful) Musée des Confluences in Lyon and then to the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden.

The Cotard delusion was first described by French neurologist Jules Cotard in the late 19th century. One of his patients, whom he called Mademoiselle X, believed that she had “no brain, nerves, chest or entrails, and was just skin and bone.” She was also convinced that she did not need food for “she was eternal and would live for ever.” The lady, Dr. Cotard claimed, was suffering from a neurological condition he called le délire de negation (negation delirium).

The disorder -sometimes also called ‘Walking Corpse syndrome’- is so rare that it largely remains a mystery today. People affected by the syndrome believe that they or part of their body parts are dead, dying or don’t exist at all. It is usually accompanied by severe depression and some psychotic disorders. But what intrigues neuroscientists and neurologists is not just the uncommonness of the syndrome, it is that the brain of the patients may hold the key to understanding the mysteries of human consciousness.

Research at Radboud University. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

Marleine van der Werf, a filmmaker and visual artist whose work explores ideas about reality and the perception of reality, is currently researching how she could use immersive cinema to visualise this type (dis)embodiment.

The Living Dead will be an ‘out-of-body experience’, a multi-sensory installation that allows you to feel what it is like to have Cotard’s syndrome. Using wearables, sound, smell and virtual reality, the experience is inspired by the true stories of people who suffer from the Cotard syndrome.

I discovered the project at the STRP festival in Eindhoven where Marleine van der Werf was showing the trailer of the installation she is still developing. I’m really looking forward to (hopefully) experience the work one day. In the meantime, i had a little chat with the artist about the project:

Screening of the teaser during the STRP festival. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

Hi Marleine! What drove you to explore the Cotard syndrome. Was there any particular event, person or discovery that inspired you to develop the installation?

When I was a child I saw from up close how it is to loose your mind and I always thought that ‘owning a body’ is one of the few certainties we have as humans. But when I read The Disembodied Lady by neurologist Oliver Sacks combined with ideas about exoskeletons and uploading consciousness I started to question this. This sparked my artistic research in the domains of body ownership and the sense of our self the last few years.

Still from the teaser featuring Dr. Jesús Ramirez-Bermudez. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

How do you gather information about what it feels to suffer from this very rare condition? By speaking with doctors? Patients?

Both. I met patients who suffer from cotard and studied different cases. I also visited physicians like Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez, who is Head of the Neuropsychiatry Unit of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City. He is an expert in his field and has seen the most patients who suffer from Cotard syndrome and could provide very important insights.

I obviously have no idea of what it feels to believe i am dead. Or that parts of my body are dead. Do all people who suffer from Cotard have similar experiences and ways of describing them?

It is difficult to say yes or no to this question. But what I gather from the patients experience and Dr. Ramirez-Bermudez is that there are definitely similarities. For example, that certain organs are missing or dead and that they feel detached from their environment. But of course experiences are very subjective and influenced by their background. For example, the patient I met experienced it as if she was between heaven and hell. Since she had a very religious background this seems like a logical explanation. Someone with a non-religious background could explain this feeling in a different way.

Research at We make VR. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

Filming in hospital during surgery. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

Will the final installation reflect what one person in particular feels or will it give a general impression of the syndromes?

To create the experience we research and collect as many different stories as we can. Since it is a rare syndrome this is a difficult task, because it has not been documented as well as other syndromes. After that process, we filter and structure it in a narrative that reflects all the stories, but is still an intimate experience.

Collage in the artist’s notebook of Manos Tsakiris and his research on the body. Image courtesy of Marleine van der Werf

The installation looks very ambitious. It will use wearables, sound, smell and virtual reality to immerse the public in the story of the people who experience Cotard. Apart from doctors who work with Cotard patients, are you collaborating with other scientists or research institutes?

Yes, at the moment we are in the process of forming the whole team and are talking with leading neuroscientist that research body ownership, perception and empathy. For example Professor Floris de Lange of the Predictive brain lab of the Radboud University in Nijmegen (NL) and Professor Manos Tsakiris who established the Lab of Action & Body in Royal Holloway University in London (UK). Of course tools like wearables and virtual reality can contribute to create this immersive stories, but analogue tools are very important as well. That is the reason why we not only collaborate with artists, neuroscientist and engineers, but also with dancers. They use their body as instruments to convey stories and are vital in our process of creating the installation.

What are the biggest challenges you are encountering when trying to convey this out-of-body experience?

Having Cotard syndrome is very distressing and questions the most basic assumptions we have about our self.

The fact that the syndrome, as scientist say, could give an answer to where consciousness lies intrigues me on this journey. It is my aim to create an experience that is not a horror show, but an invitation for a wide audience to think about the relation with our body and where we as a society are heading.

I only saw the trailer during STRP and now i’m intrigued about what the final installation will be like. Could you already describe what it will look and feel like?

Creating a new work and going on a quest is always an adventure. Part of that journey is that the answer might not be the one you are looking for, but the one you actually find. But when I think about the encounters I had with the patients until now, I feel that it will be a haunting experience for sure. In which you will be challenged to rediscover the relationship with your body.

Thanks Marleine!

Previously: STRP, the festival that’s not afraid of the future .

Isabelle Arvers is a curator, art critic and artist specialized in independent video games. She is also the Director of Kareron, a non-profit organization that supports artistic and educational projects in the fields of art, digital creation and video games.

Momo Pixel, Hair Nah (photo)

Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED], GTAV intervention, 2014

To celebrate her 20 years as curator in the fields of art and video games, Isabelle Arvers is about to embark on a world tour that will take her to over 15 countries, each of them “outside the American and European beaten paths”. She’s planning to meet digital artists and independent developers and come back with a richer, non Western-centric and more nuanced overview of the different ways gaming communities across the world are exploring the issue of diversity, with an emphasis on female, queer and decolonial practices.

Her expedition will also investigate how we can create new concepts of “working together” and new connections within the worlds of game art, independent games, games DIY art in non-Western countries.

Isabelle Arvers

I’m a bit embarrassed to say that it’s the third time i’m interviewing Isabelle Arvers. Simply because she’s smart, genuinely passionate and an expert in everything art & games. There will also be a fourth interview obviously. As soon as she’s back from her Art Games World Tour, i’ll be waiting for her to tell us what and who she’s discovered in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Colombia, Argentina, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.

Hi Isabelle! Let’s start with what has been the biggest surprise for me when i was reading the programme of the Art+Games WorldTour. You’ve been a curator in the fields of art and video games for 20 years!?? You must have been one of the pioneers in that profession at the time. How did you realize that was what you’d want to dedicate your energy and mind to? 

It came from a discussion I had with teenagers in the 90′, telling me that they were dreaming in video games and that they loved so much video games images that they would have preferred to see them on TV. It made me realize the power of games on our imagination and their capacity to manipulate people’s mind. I decided that games were a very serious question and that we – cultural producers, curators, intellectuals – had to pay attention to it. That’s why I decided to offer an alternative to AAA – big commercial – games and to promote alternative and artistic uses of video games and to distribute other types of games, games done by artists but not only, also what we now call experimental games, creative or indie games. 

In 1999, I was working as a partnership manager for Art 3000, a non profit organization which was organizing the General Meetings of Interactive Writing. I selected an interactive graphic and music table created by Andre Ktori (Founder of the sound music collective Audiorom in London), as well as 2 PC games. One was a pervasive game In Memoriam by Eric Viennot (edited in 2003 by Ubisoft) and the second game, Isabelle by Thomas Cheysson, was a game using Artificial Intelligence.

The year after, I was in charge of the image and computer games content for an online gallery – Gizmoland – where we were selling music, games, digital art, and animation, only by downloads. My job consisted in persuading game companies, little independent game studios to sell their games online, which at that time wasn’t their business model at all!! The year after, I curated my first big exhibition in a huge “physical” space. It was the gaming room of Villette Numerique: Playtime (2002) – combining 30 years of computer games history, games created by artists and sound games in an online gallery.

For this exhibition I was inspired by the exhibition Let’s Entertain curated by Philippe Vergne at the Walker Art Center which was investigating what cultural industries had to learn from super attractive big malls. The same year, the exhibition “Game On” was hosted at the Barbican Center in London. Playtime is the true beginning of what would become my main practice: mixing the art and the game world with other disciplines: music, dance, online performances and break mind and cultural ghettos. Last December, as I had to leave my house, cleaning and ordering my archives, I realized that 20 had passed and I felt a huge need to renew my practice

Nomada Studio, Gris

How has the profession evolved over time? Do you find, for example, that you can now present yourself as a curator in the fields of art and video games and that people understand immediately what you do (both in France and in other countries)? That some circles take art and video game more seriously than 20 years ago?  

The profession evolved a lot as there are now Curatorial studies as well as games studies. There are academic studies on games as an art form and the art world is paying more attention to games both as a medium or as an art form. In France, what is funny is that games became interesting for cultural structures through the prism of cultural heritage and preservation and thanks to serious games. Then the growing benefits from the game industry made the rest! But the particularity of my work consists in the meeting between different artistic disciplines and universes and when you want to cross cultural ghettos it still remains a bit suspicious, both from the art side than from the game world. However, artists and game designers are more and more using the same tools or software, the language/vocabulary/objectives are still different, but we can create the encounter and break the last walls remaining between art + games and indie games events.

In other countries the contexts are slightly different depending on which countries we are talking about. Cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York mix art and games. I wrote a report about my last trip in New York and what was the state of the art+ games world there in 2017.

In Brazil, connections between the art world and the game world also exist, with a strong tradition of promoting interactivity in big events like File. Last year, I organized a special edition of Art Games Demos in Medellin and it was quite hard to find artists working with videogames as a medium or even referring to computer games. We discussed it with the artist Miltos Manetas who now lives in Bogota and he told me that Colombia was “Pre-Internet and computer games”. The indie games scene is more developed, but there is a huge interest for it in Universities or in the art schools where I gave talks about the art + games relationship. The same in Egypt, where I gave machinima workshops with the artist Ahmed El Shaer to most of the times women students.

Students and artists are often really interested by game engines as a medium. There is just a need to show that games can be used in art schools to create hybrid artworks and push the creation in that direction. In the case of Egypt, what local structures also told me is that they need permanent spaces to learn and practice, not only temporary workshops, without an access to mentoring after these workshops. On the indie game world, the easiest access to open game engines, the dematerialization of games platform, the game jams and indie meetups opened the doors to more creative and diverse videogames.

Isabelle Arvers, Art Games Demos at La Jaquer EsCool in Medellin

I love that Sébastien Acker has described you as an “Activist of an art that is emancipated from the international majors of the genre.” Can you tell me something about this type of video games? Is it just a question of being less professional or having less money than the majors? Or is more a question of content, audacity and creativity that make this type of video game so fascinating to you and their public? 

In 2011, I presented the Pirate Kart at the Art Gallery of The Aix en Provence Art School invited by the Festival Gamerz. The Pirate Kart is a compilation of 1005 games created by 378 developers: an indie games presentation and experimentation inside a game art festival intended to show the mind-blowing evolution of game creation in the indie games scene, and to show the diversity and the originality of these games, quite different from the AAA games but which need to be considered as well. This compilation was made possible by Mike Meyer, a game developer in Florida, and to quote his reference to the Scratchware manifesto:”It is time for revolution. Walk into your local bookstore; you’ll find tens of thousands of titles. Walk into your local record store; you’ll find thousands of albums. Walk into your local software store; you’ll find perhaps 40 games. Yet thousands of games are released each year.” Wikipedia defines a scratchware as “If a game has original content, offers great gameplay and replayability, has a professional look, is bug free, costs $25 or less for the complete program, and was made by three people or less, it is scratchware.”

We need to show these games and give an alternative to the traditional places of games distribution. We need to give exposure and to promote these games, because they also represent the state of the art of today games production. For me, it doesn’t mean that they are less professional, but ten thousand times more diverse in terms of representation, aesthetics, concepts and messages. As Anna Anthropy urges in her book Rise of the Videogames Zinesters: everybody should create games to enhance diversity of aesthetics and subjects, indeed, she recently published Make your own Twine Games in March 2019 and “Make your own Scratch Games” which will be published in July 2019.

David OReilly, Everything (Gameplay Film)

Penumbra Black Plague in-game screenshot

Concrete Games, Matter (PC Trailer)

I used to discover a lot of video games ideas and talents through the game section you used to curate for the GAMERZ festival in Aix-en-Provence. It always allowed me to catch up with an art form i’m not so versed into. Which works or creators would you recommend are worth looking at at the moment? 

I went to an amazing festival in Netherlands, The Overkill Festival in 2018, invited to curate a machinima exhibition dedicated to Immortality. I was extremely lucky to meet Robin Baumgarten and his quantic inspired games as well as Alistair Hutchinson and his interactive theater play. I would also recommend to go on Itch.io where you can discover a great amount of indie games online. Oujevipo, the website created by Pierre Corbinais is also a fantastic resource to discover short games. I am currently preparing a workshop for ISEA 2019 in South Korea untitled Games as lights and colors on canvas for which I selected games focusing on light and darkness and had the pleasure to play to Reflections by Broken Window Studios, as well as Penumbra by Frictional Games or Matter by Concrete Games. Each of them presents a different type of gameplay and pretty different aesthetics. Otherwise my last preferred games are Everything by David O’Reilly, or Hair Nah by Momo Pixel.

Pierre Corbinais, Bury Me, My Love

Lucas Pope, Papers, Please

Molle Industria, Nova Alea gameplay

Then, it is hard to speak about all the games we had the pleasure to present during the 6 editions of Art Games Demos we curated with Chloé Desmoineaux. Some of them were thematized on queer and feminism, others on borders and migration or on the city, generative city, utopic city… Enterre moi mon amour is a mobile game created by Pierre Corbinais in which you discuss with a Syrian migrant, in the game Papers, Please by Lucas Pope you play a guard at the border of a fictious state, Nova Alea, a game about gentrification made by Paolo Pedercini from Molle Industria is also amazing, The game The Game, a game about sexual harassment by Angela Washko looks more like an interactive fiction. Lately I found beautiful the game Gris by the Spanish studio Nomada Studio and I discovered yesterday the game What Remains by Aymeric Mansoux, “an 8-bit interactive fiction and adventure video game by Aymeric Mansoux about environmental issues, the manipulation of public opinion, and whistleblowing».

Aymeric Mansoux, What Remains, 2019

Aymeric Mansoux, What Remains, 2019

Angela Washko, The game The Game

Angela Washko, The game The Game

The Art+Games WorldTour you are about to embark on looks very ambitious: you’ll be spending several months traveling, meeting, discovering, working in very different cultures. How much of what you will be doing once over there will rely on preparation and existing contacts and how much on pure chance and improvisation?  

I decided for this World Tour to discover art and games scenes I do not know already. The only places where I already went to are Brazil and Colombia, where I do have some contacts now and where they are people I love and want to see again. For the other countries I will travel to – South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, India, Argentina and Mexico which are the first steps of my trip in 2019 before I go to Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Middle East countries in 2020, I mostly rely on friends’ contacts and on my online researches, before my departure. My main fear is that people won’t have the desire or the time to meet me, because I won’t stay very long in each country, so it might be difficult to be at the right time at the right moment. People are not waiting for me and that’s totally understandable. To give you an idea, for my first step in South Korea, I think that I sent more than 60 emails and only got 6 replies. Hopefully, thanks to IRL meetings, it will open the doors to other contacts and meetings. That’s totally part of the game. I know it will be hard, a mix of fear and excitement. Like when you learn how to play a game: big and numerous failures, for few little successes! For this world tour, I am asking support from women in games – I just partnered with Women in Games – LGBTQI networks in art, DIY and feminist networks as well as from the game art network or the indie game scene. Let’s hope I will be lucky. And that the communities will support me by giving me more contacts.

Art Games Demos, Une Quinzaine de Féminisme(s), 2017

What make the Art+Games World Tour project so interesting is that it is looking at the diversity of video game, trying to give more visibility to the female, queer and decolonial practices and works. I’m particularly curious about the decolonial practices. Could you give some examples of them?  

I think that games are a good reflection of our surrounding world, they can give us a good overview of our current society, they are also a perfect medium to talk about games and the game industry. In 2011, I curated a machinima exhibition on feminism and on player’s freedom inside a videogame. I showed the work of Angela Washko and Georgies Roxbie Smith, both renowned for their feminist actions inside WOW or GTA Online. Some years after, we curated an Art Games Demos on queer and feminist movements in videogames during The feminist fortnight in Marseille. A way for us to raise awareness on sexism in the videogames industry and community. Women are still underrepresented in the industry and even if things changed a lot after the Gamergate in the US, there is still a need to change the representation of women in videogames and to give more attention to games created by women or trans persons. In western countries, there is a quite new consciousness about it, with conferences on diversity in events like the Game Developers Conference or at Amaze, but I am really interested to discover and meet other feminists in the non western world as well as LGBTQI organizations around the world in order to connect with other realities and create new paths and connections between networks.

I worked a lot abroad but it was a “western” abroad: I mostly worked in the US, in Europe, in Canada and in Australia. Western and white…

There is a strong network for our practices in the western world, but diversity is a very recent concept in these worlds. It is great to feel that recently it even became a new “trend”, a “tendency”, people even mentioned feminism or diversity as a new “fashion”… Interesting but dangerous when you see the power of evangelism growing in countries like Brasil, USA or South Korea as well as abortion bans around the world. Our emancipation is still young and might be weak so we need to defend it and to connect around the world.

Trying to promote decolonial practices is something very important when you think about games as a globalized culture. When I traveled to Brazil or Egypt to give machinima workshops, I was surprised to discover that youngsters were all playing to the same games: GTA, FIFA, Call of Duty, Fortnite, etc… even if the local culture was powerful. In my workshops, I tried to push youngsters to play Indie Games or games related to their local culture, but it appeared as less fascinating to them… less “beautiful”. It made me realize that we almost play the same games everywhere, which mean that the moral, ethics, concepts of these games are globalized. So, are they universal? Not at all.

Universalization is a colonialist heritage. I want to decentralize my point of view. I want to go against my own beliefs and mind constructions. I want to better understand the counter forces to the capitalist model. How can we put the idea of commons in this? The first thing I know is that I don’t know anything, I am not traveling with prior ideas in my mind, as I truly don’t know the situation where I am going to travel, but I know where I come from and the possible damages of what we call good intentions. So my first aim is to learn, learn from the others and discover other ways of working together.

Lipstrike Chloé Desmoineaux at Art Games Demos in Medellin (photo)

Rehabilitation Game presented by Arango Chavarría, EAFIT Virtual Lab, at Art Games Demos in Medellin (photo)

Noisk8 at Art Games Demos in Medellin (photo)

Art+Games WorldTour is not just looking at games and creators. It is also concerned with innovative and inspiring modes of exchanges and collaborations developed in parts of the world the Western art+game community tends to overlook. Could you already tell us about some of these methods and what we might learn from them?

To give you a concrete example, when I was in Colombia last year in a residency at Platohedro in Medellin (an amazing art and residency space dedicated to feminism, technology and open culture). While I was there, we talked about a European festival that wanted to collaborate with Platohedro. It ended by only inviting a Colombian artist in Europe and paying for his trip, which was felt as a neocolonial attitude and not as a true collaboration.

Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED], GTAV intervention, 2014

Introduction by Isabelle Arvers at Art Game Demos in Medellin (photo)

To collaborate is not just a question of an invitation to promote artists or creators outside of their countries… It is more about sharing and mixing practices, intentions, responsibilities and giving back to the people.

Also, during my residency, I wanted to investigate the question of gender racism and meet trans persons while I was there. The community feedback was: what do you do in return for the community? We agreed that I would give a machinima workshop on identity and gender to Mesa Diversa Comuna 4, a LGBTQI organization just before to leave to Bogota. Cultural structures like Platohedro, Moravia, El Museo de Antioquia or El Exploratorio in Medellin work and learn with and from the communities: food, gardening, technology, sustainability, etc. Everyone is a bank of knowledge that needs to be heard and shared. In 2011, I wrote a text about collaboration vs participation for the online Journal Archee dealing with collaborative practice in the artworld, let’s see how this world tour will enrich or modify my thoughts.

When I was hosted in Rural.scapes for my first artist residency in Santa Tereza Fazenda in Brasil by the artists Rachel Rosalen and Rafael Marchetti, I super enjoyed all the collaborations we had with the local communities: children, women, farmers and how the point of the residency was to mix local knowledge and technics with artistic practices, electronics, sound or even games. So I want to focus on this type of practices and attitudes for a field that is globalized and still dominated by capitalism and mind gentrification to quote the amazing book by Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind. Then, for this world tour, I partnered with Mehdi Derfoufi, a specialist of post colonial cinema and games studies, who offered me to analyze and apply a postcolonial approach to the games I will find and meet on my road. I will also keep a travelogue/logbook of my feelings and thoughts about this particular and very personal research and quest. These notes will be published monthly on the website of the French journal Immersion.

Thanks Isabelle!

Previously: Games Reflexions, Machinimas at the GAMERZ festival, 8 Bit Movie – Some fast and messy notes.

Peru is one of fastest-growing economies in South America, with mining regarded as one of the key drivers behind the growth record.

Edi Hirose has dedicated the past few years to documenting how his country is grappling with the many transformations brought about by the economic boom. First, he turned his gaze to the construction frenzy in urban areas. His images show how bleak brick buildings, quickly erected skyscrapers, soulless concrete and “blind walls” are slowly eating up Peruvian cities and their surrounding territory.

Edi Hirose, Expansion 1, 2013

Edi Hirose, Expansion 1, 2013

Soon enough though, the photographer left the urban context to investigate the industry that makes modern life possible and yet, remains invisible to city dwellers: mining. He and his camera thus ventured into the Amazonian region. Last year, gold mining deforestation destroyed an estimated 22,930 acres of Peru’s Amazon, at the expense of its fragile ecosystem. Although most of the metal extraction is made by international mining companies, a significant amount of gold is also produced illegally by small operators in protected areas in and around the region of Madre de Dios.

Edi Hirose, from the series Dominio

Edi Hirose, Pallaqueras, from the series Ananay, 2018

Edi Hirose, La Rinconada view, from the series Ananay, 2018

Despite government efforts to put an end to illegal mining activities, the devastation continues. The Peruvian landscape is now marred by heavy machinery, quarries, tailing basins, polluted water sources, eroded hills, etc.

You can barely see any human figure in Hirose’s photos. Yet, their footprint is everywhere. Thanks to the Peruvian economic boom, men have modified landscapes and our perception of what constitutes them.

Edi Hirose, Expansion 1, 2013

Edi Hirose, Poste eléctrico (electric pole), from the series Ananay

Without ever judging what he portrays, the photographer manages to subtly raise questions about the future of the Andean space, climate change, toxic waste and the ruthless extraction of non-renewable natural resources from pristine rainforest. I discovered his work a few months ago (while reading Artishock magazine) and since i couldn’t stop going back to his photos, i decided to get in touch and ask Edi Hirose to tell us more about his photo projects:

Hi Edi! First of all, i was wondering how you got interested in exploring and documenting mining in Peru. It’s not a very visible problem if you live in cities. Besides, mines are usually located off the beaten tracks (including in the Amazonian forest as the Dominio series shows.) So what brought you to this topic in the first place?

The interest on mining was almost parallel to the interest I had in the transformations of cities around the country. Since 2000, Peru had an accelerated economic growth and the sectors that benefited the most from it were the mining and the real estate sectors.
Mining may not be close to the capital, but it is a subject that is very critical, especially informal and illegal gold mining.

Edi Hirose, Baños (toilets), from the series Ananay

Edi Hirose, Basural (garbage), from the series Ananay

I’m very curious about your working process. For example: do you have to do a lot of preliminary research and investigation? Do you engage and talk with the people who work and live there? And how much time do you typically spend on the location of a mine before you are happy with the project?

Illegal mining is a very sensitive topic and it´s not easy to get to talk with affected people. Fortunately, I met people who were involved in the issue, both from a social aspect and from the aspect of the environmental impact.

Every year the situation is getting more complicated and illegal mining is increasing. The level of danger is high so my stays in the zone were very short. Miners often take violent actions against all those who want to photograph or make videos, even with cellphones. The mere presence of a tourist can become very tense situation.

I have to think about all possible situations to photograph (thus to visualize situations) and be clear about what situations or elements are important to include in the photos.

Edi Hirose, Moving Mountains

If i were the manager of a mine i would probably be very worried about your presence. I wouldn’t want you to bring too much attention to the destruction of the ecosystems and landscapes. How visible are you when you photograph the mining infrastructure and the traces it leaves behind? And how open can you be about your motivations if someone sees you photographing the area?

I have only worked in Madre de Dios and Puno. Both cases were very different, not only because of their geography. Madre de Dios is full jungle. There are many small extraction sites and it is easier to move between those areas. The presence of someone photographing can remain unnoticed in the vast landscape.

In Puno, it was complicated because the mining is inside a mountain next to the town. I had to work in the middle of the population (70 thousand inhabitants). I had to negotiate with certain people to be able to photograph.

On the way, I have to do with whom I can talk to. I think everything is based on behaviors and gestures, although nothing guarantees that you can get what you want. In Puno I was able to negotiate with some people, but in the end they asked me to leave.
I find it more important to avoid disturbing people more than to get a great picture.

The main idea was to work on the landscape. The Expansión project contains many works related to the landscape and its transformation.

Edi Hirose, Expansion 2, 2016

This one is probably going to sound like a very naive and ignorant question: your recent works has explored illegal mining. If it is illegal and is clearly having devastating effects on natural resources, how come the government doesn’t intervene and make these activities stop?

Yes, it is informal and illegal and only for the extraction of gold.
Despite the excesses of destruction, pollution, crime, etc., nobody knows why the government does not act drastically to stop it. As with the drug (being the first producer of cocaine) it seems clear that there is a lot of power behind gold mining.

Edi Hirose, Expansion 2, 2016

Edi Hirose, Expansion 2, 2016

Is the scale of informal mining very modest in terms of social impact and technology used compared to industrial mining?

The extraction methods are basic. Depending on the case, extraction is supported by machines or done manually. It is difficult to get precise figures about how much illegal gold is extracted but the consequences will affect the whole country and who knows, the world. We are a country that depends a lot on its rivers.
The devastation of the Amazon is not being taken seriously.

The most surprising thing about your work is to realise how much aesthetic pleasure you manage to create. The images are obviously distressing but they are also beautiful to contemplate. How do you manage to keep the balance between on the one hand, a visual fascination and on the other had, a sense of urgency and a series of realities that are not very pleasant to see?

I am not a journalist or documentary photographer in the traditional sense. In fact, my works are not shown in the press or in magazines. I had a more art-oriented education. The discourses in these works avoid the sensationalism and try to play with a double reading or layers around the landscape to document a tragic human behavior in relation to its environment.
Most people know how tragic it is (or they can imagine it) and I think it is not necessary to show it. In any case, I find it more interesting to show it in another way, like working certain absences, because absences help generate questions.

Something i noticed about the Ananay photos uploaded on your website is that people appear in some of the photos, even though you seem to have kept a distance between them and your photographic lens. In other series, however, human figures never seem to appear. Why don’t you show more people in these series and why do they suddenly emerge in Ananay?

In Ananay (also Pozuzo) I made an exception. The issue of illegal mining is similar throughout the country, but in Puno it is very particular. It is the first time I felt important to include people (strictly women.) The employment situation of male miners is quite precarious, but that of women is worse because they can not work directly in the mine. There is an Andean belief that says that the Earth becomes jealous if a woman enters it, creating destruction. That’s why they work in the dumps outside the mine, trying to get gold where there is almost none.

I would like to continue with women miners in Puno, but due to the difficulties I had to focus on other issues.

Do you think that, as a photographer, you can play a meaningful role in the kind of environmental or political issues that your work exposes? I imagine that you bring a lot of awareness but have you ever noticed that people have started thinking differently after having discovered your images? Or maybe attempted to act or launch campaigns?

Somehow, I feel that photography has lost the ability to generate interest and, on the other hand, that people have lost the ability to be attracted to an image. Maybe I am very pessimistic but in these times I don´t think that photography can change anyone. There are many factors that have modified the forms of communication in the image, not just the photographic image.

Any other upcoming events, fields of research or projects you could share with us?

I have several jobs in progress and I still can not define which one to start with. There are many factors that affect the projects I want to work on and everything depends on how I resolve them.

Thanks Edi!

Digital Cash. The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency, by Finn Brunton, assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is also the co-author of another book i reviewed, Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest.

Publisher Princeton University Press writes: Bitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold—until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal.

The incredible story of the pioneers of cryptocurrency takes us from autonomous zones on the high seas to the world’s most valuable dump, from bank runs to idea coupons, from time travelers in a San Francisco bar to the pattern securing every twenty-dollar bill, and from marketplaces for dangerous secrets to a tank of frozen heads awaiting revival in the far future. Along the way, Digital Cash explores the hard questions and challenges that these innovators faced: How do we learn to trust and use different kinds of money? What makes digital objects valuable? How does currency prove itself as real to us? What would it take to make a digital equivalent to cash, something that could be created but not forged, exchanged but not copied, and which reveals nothing about its users?

Joey Colombo, from the series This is your God

Joey Colombo, from the series This is your God

The presentation of the book promises a lot: futures, adventures, subcultures, technology and thrill. And it does deliver.

Finn Brunton traces with brio what he calls the prehistory of Bitcoin. From Friedrich von Hayek, who in his 1976 book Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined argued that the right of issuing currency should shift from central banks to a decentralized mechanism, up to subcultures whose name i had never heard before: the Cypherpunks and the Extropians. The latter yearn for a posthuman future where they’ll be enjoying super intelligence and super longevity thanks to technology. Some of them even hope to become immortal. Which means playing a long term game that requires cryonics, experimental pharmacology but also financial structures and payment systems that would enable them to store money and recover it whenever they are brought back to life in a future society that is likely to be very different from the one they had left. Such monetary independence needs to be accompanied by specific insurance schemes and an anonymous reputational system that would enable them to exchange forbidden scientific studies, tools for rating secret clinics, marketplaces for unauthorized pills and covert support communities for illegal practices.

As the book demonstrates, the development of digital cash was not driven by technology only but by social beliefs, by a desire for greater privacy, for new forms of liberty, for personal post-humanity and other wider agendas.

Along the way, the author explains (in easy to digest terms) how cryptocurrencies and blockchain work, how they are able to change societies and how developers of computational currencies have attempted to solve problems like spam, fraud and forged digital cash. Which still leaves him space for baffling stories such as the one of the rabbit (almost) frozen and brought back to life and the t-shirt legally classified as munitions in the USA.

Joey Colombo, from the series This is your God

Since i’m not no authority in digital cash, i’d recommend you also have a look at the review of the same book by expert in digital economy Rachel O’Dwyer. Or spend some time listening to this interview with Finn Brunton.

I have to confess that i found the cover of the book as irresistible as its description. The artwork on the dustjacket was created by Joey Colombo.

On amazon UK and USA.

The ongoing edition of the MOMENTUM biennial opened a couple of weeks ago. The air was a bit nippy but the company and the artworks were good. MOMENTUM was founded 20 years ago in Moss, a coastal town an hour drive away from Oslo. The first few editions had a resolute focus on Nordic art, an ambition to showcase the cultural “Nordic Miracle.” Over time, however, curators realized that pinpointing a precise sense of “nordicness” was not opportune. Not in this interconnected world, not when society and the art sphere in Nordic countries were becoming more and more multi-cultural. Today, you can still sense a Nordic feeling but the event has opened up to international contributors.

Knut Åsdam, Murmansk Kirkenes, 2018

Ina Hagen, In the Before Over Shore, 2019. Performance for MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

Pepo Salazar, Frozen, 2015. Installation view during the opening of MOMENTUM10

MOMENTUM10: The Emotional Exhibition intends to literally go back to emotions in order to move beyond the rational and embrace a more nuanced, more complex reality. That is exactly what art is supposed to do anyway which might explain why i didn’t find this biennial more emotional than many other ones.

MOMENTUM10 nevertheless stands out from other similar events thanks to curator Marti Manen‘s brilliant idea to mark the 20th anniversary of MOMENTUM with a hybrid exhibition that mixes new artworks with works that were developed and shown in previous editions. Some of them were brought back exactly as they had been shown in Moss years ago. Others had to be adapted for practical reasons or simply to respond better to the contemporary context. The mini-retrospective is both a reaction to the current speed of artistic production and an invitation to reflect on what MOMENTUM should keep from its history.

Anne de Vries, Ex, 2017. Installation viewat MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

Because of the curatorial choice, this year’s edition of the biennial is accompanied by the usual catalogue but also by a reader. I read the latter on my way back from Moss. The book gathers memories from the curators of the previous editions of the biennial. Reading through the pages, i realized two things. First, that many of the artists who participated to the early editions of MOMENTUM have since become well-known names across the world: Olafur Eliasson, Ragnar Kjartansson, N55, Elmgreen & Dragset, Annika Larsson, Nathalie Djurberg, Jeppe Hein, Tue Greenford… They’ve all shown in Moss at the beginning of their careers.

More interestingly, the interviews with the curators of previous editions reveal how much a biennial, its message, atmosphere, ethos and preparation can collide with local politics and international crises.

Over the years, curators and artists of MOMENTUM had to grapple with various issues. Post 9/11 anxiety, the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse, the election of Trump and other international events had a clear impact on the mood and profile of the biennials. At times, local sociopolitical affairs also influenced what visitors saw. The event thus went through a music event that almost no one attended because there was no funding left to advertise it, the necessity to use part of the curatorial budget to install a lift for people with disabilities inside the Momentum Kunsthall, the frustration of visitors when some of the artworks where buried inside a time capsule that will only be opened in 2061 and projects that were never allowed to be realized (one of them consisted in Wooloo’s seemingly innocuous proposal for a garden that would have been left untouched for two years), etc. Still, all the curators interviewed seem to have fond memories of their experience in Moss though.

And so did i! Here’s a quick run-through some of the works i found particularly interesting this year (more to come!):

Hannaleena Heiska, In My Kingdom Cold, from the series Not of this World, 2009

Hannaleena Heiska, Beyond The Great Vast Forest, from the series Not of this World, 2009

Hannaleena Heiska, from the series Not of this World, 2009

Hannaleena Heiska, Stargazer, 2007. Installation view at MOMENTUM10. Photo: Vegard Kleven

Hannaleena Heiska‘s work was the best discovery of the biennale for me. Her oil paintings bring us closer to a kind of northern mindset inhabited by mysterious creatures, light made brighter by snowy landscapes and black metal music. The non-human animals in the paintings are covered in tattoos, the human ones wear masks. Unless they are hybrid creatures. What is certain is that each of them has an almost mythical aura.

Ragnar Kjartansson, Scandinavian Pain, 2006. Installation commissioned for Momentum 4th Nordic Festival of Contemporary Art, Moss, Norway. Photographer Terje Holm

In 2006, Ragnar Kjartansson installed an eleven-metre long pink neon sign on top of a dilapidated barn outside a gallery in Moss. I remember seeing a photo of it at the time. I was fascinated by the words “Scandinavian Pain ” and kept wondering what it meant. It alluded to the impression (or maybe the cliché) of a Nordic identity characterised by a propensity to pain and melancholia, fed by Munch’s scenes, long dark winter hours and gloomy scandi-drama. Kjartansson spent a week in the barn performing all the stereotypes associated with broody machismo.

MOMENTUM10 intended to show the neon work again in Moss. However, the piece now belongs to the Malmö Moderna Museet collection. The museum decided that the neon was too fragile to be shown outside. Kjartansson is still part of MOMENTUM10 but in the form of a photography.

Ilkka Halso, Kitka River, 2004

Ilkka Halso, Kitka River, 2004. Installation view from the opening of MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

Fifteen years ago already, photographer Ilkka Halso envisioned a world where radical measures have been taken to protect nature from human ruthlessness. Forests, lakes and rivers and other pieces of landscapes will be confined to museums, massive greenhouses, amusements parks.

Nature is reduced to a series of islands disconnected from each other and from their surrounding, each of them put in an artificial state of suspension for the visual pleasure of the human spectator.

Annika Larsson, 40-15, 1999

Annika Larsson, 40-15, 1999

Annika Larsson, 40-15, 1999. Installation view from the opening of MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

Annika Larsson must be one of my favourite video artists in the world. 40-15 captures a tennis match played by men in front of a mirror inside a white, claustrophobic interior. The tiny shorts, the absence of dialogue, the slow-motion tempo and the camera close-ups turn the men into sexualised objects. The gestures are casual but one can sense an underlying edginess too. You’ll never get the full story, you can only speculate on the narcissism, tensions and the power struggles behind these men’s mundane sports rituals.

Sissel Tolaas, Molecule MOVX_015, 2015. Installation view and VERY flattering photo of myself at MOMENTUM10. Thank you BelinArtLink!

Another work brought back from past editions is Sissel Tolaas’ Molecule MOVX_015, a scent she created for the 8th edition of the biennale. She coated the walls of a small room of Momentum Kunsthall with a paint that you can’t detect unless you scratch and sniff the surface. The scent is meant to evoke a feeling of being isolated (because Nordic people are supposed to cherish isolation and their little cabins in the countryside) as well as an awareness that art can take an olfactory form.

Johanna Billing, In Purple, 2019

Johanna Billing, In Purple (trailer), 2019

Johanna Billing’s In Purple video pays homage to a group of women who run a hip-hop/afro and dance school called the Mix Dancers Academy for young women and girls in Råslätt, a suburb of Jönköping in Sweden.

Local politicians and media hail the group as a successful example of a self-organised initiative. Yet, they provide the school with little to no support. The school runs on a voluntary basis and struggles to continue providing hundreds of children with dance lessons from a rented basement. The video also hints at a urban environment that never truly welcomes the community of dancers. Like many estates built in the 60s and 70s, outdoor spaces in Råslätt have been designed with male sporting activities in mind.

The film follows a physically demanding parade. A group of young dancers move slowly through the housing area’s pedestrian paths and greenery, collectively carrying large heavy sheets of purple coloured glass. The glass plays with the pink, green and purple from the surrounding concrete facades made by artists Jon Pärson and Lennart Joanson, who in the 1980s painted 80 000 square metres of building surface to soften the concrete architecture. At some point, the glass panes are transferred to a group younger dancers, in a move that symbolises the responsibility of ‘passing on’ their role to the young women who will need to take over and run the school when the older generation leaves for paid jobs.

The performance raise questions around precarious working conditions for non-profit organisations and associations in the area (and elsewhere.)

Pauline Fondevila, The Promise by the Sea, 2018. Performance at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Texas AS

Pauline Fondevila, The Promise by the Sea, 2018. Performance at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Texas AS

The Promise by the Sea was a performance for young boys who braved the turbulent sea in small boats, sails painted with words in Norwegian that said “We will never come back”, “The world is burning,” “Never work,” etc. The strong wind and the spontaneous movements of the boys mix and match the slogans over the course of the performance, creating an improvised, almost random poetry.

More images from MOMENTUM10:

MOMENTUM10 – The Emotional Exhibition

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Today, 1996-1997

Saskia Holmkvist, Blind Understanding, 2009/2019

Salla TykKä, Victoria, 2008

Knut Âsdam, Psychasthenia, 1998. Installation view from the opening of MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

Eirik Senje, Installation view from the opening of MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Ingeborg Øien Thorsland

The tenth edition of Momentum, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Marti Manen with the assistance of Anne Klontz, remains open until 9 October 2019 in Moss, Norway. The locations of MOMENTUM10. The Emotional Exhibition are: Momentum Kunsthalle, Gallery F15, House//of//Foundation. Besides, a few public art pieces are scattered around the city.

I covered MOMENTUM9 two years ago: MOMENTUM9 – “Alienation is our contemporary condition”, MOMENTUM9. Maybe none of this is science fiction, MOMENTUM 9: A case for user-alienating design and The scars left by electronic culture on indigenous lands.

Flattening, futanari, genitalia in unusual places, detachable head, hundred sexes, milliard sexes, hyperpregnancy, male pregnancy, toilette, inflation, visual bondage, metal tip, etc. No matter how eccentric your fetish, it has a space in Francesc Ruiz‘ extraordinary collection of underground comics. And if you’re not finding anything there that reflects your own fantasies, you can always enroll in the Institute of Porn Studies training program he is running together with Ona Bros and Lucía Egaña Rojas.

I discovered Ruiz’ alternative porn publications during the press view of the 10th edition of the MOMENTUM biennial in Moss, Norway. The artist has opened the House of Fun bookshop on top of the bookshop and café House of Foundation in Moss. You climb the stairs to the first floor and find yourself inside a colourful and entertaining bookshop selling small comics ordered alphabetically or according to fetishes.

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

Comics, according to Ruiz, is the ideal medium to imagine new types of bodies and sexualities. It is flexible, quick and affordable. It offers a safe space to test the limits of representation and build new imaginaries and mythologies that escape normative representations. Furthermore, because comics books are so small and mundane, they can travel from hand to hand and facilitate exchanges of ideas about sexual diversity.

Part of these explorations of radical sexualities already exist on the internet but Ruiz gives them a physical space in his bookshop. And i’m going to send them back online again thanks to this interview with the artist:

Hi Francesc! I’ve been wondering how important it is for you to print the porno comic books on what looks like a very humble material: cheap printed paper that visitors can even touch and read through. Why did you decide to use such a mundane material?

House of Fun is a comic bookshop hidden on the top of another bookshop: House of Foundation, an independent cultural space in the city of Moss, Norway.

House of Fun is also a fiction, even if it looks like an actual bookshop, it is an art work created entirely by me, trying to convert the alternative hentai subculture that inhabits some internet boards into something physical: a very specialised erotic comic bookshop.

I’ve been always interested in the power of drawing and comics to depict sexuality and create new desires, expanding our minds through imagination and bringing new fashions and trends into the real world, I always think about Tom of Finland‘s erotic drawing production and how it helped to crystallize the imagery of gay leather fetish culture.

Comic bookshops connect me with past times when paper and cheap printed matter were the main way of distributing images. I’m thinking about newsstands or sex shops filled with porn magazines, the kind of spaces that doesn’t exist anymore. Comics are still creating some resistance to the internet space by creating networks and very strong communities. That’s why I wanted to bring porn back into reality by using the comic bookshop structure, a non individualistic space, where a community of producers and consumers can meet in the real world and be at the same time in a safe space.

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

During your short presentation of the installation in Moss you mentioned that the comic books refer to the hentai tradition. What else or who else influenced the work we can see in the House of Fun? Promises of technologically or genetically-enhanced bodies? Other works of printed porn?

I discovered alternative hentai five years ago. Since then I’ve been trying to embody this whole new world of radical imagery myself, doing research, giving lectures on the subject and organizing drawing workshops. All this process brought me to some very interesting readings on queer porn and non-prohibitionist feminist perspectives on pornography.

I also discovered a whole genealogy of alternative drawn pornography connecting ancient Pompeii graffiti, Sade, French libertine prints from the 18th century, Japanese Shunga prints and Tijuana Bibles.

I started understanding porn drawing as a technology that helps to imagine future bodies and desires, sometimes more sophisticated than the 3D or virtual reality porn that is now emerging on the Internet. That understanding of drawing as a technology able to create and develop new identities also connected me with Paul Preciado‘s thought and his description of our current pharmacopornographic regime and more recently to Laboria Cuboniks‘ Xenofeminist manifesto specially their antinaturalistic approach to sexuality and gender.

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

In a description of Institute of Porno Studies, you explain that the Institute “focuses mainly on non-Anglo-Saxon thought and production” and that Barcelona plays a role in the identity of the comics. Could you explain us what you mean by that?

The Instituto de Estudios del Porno is a collective project run by Ona Bros, Lucia Egaña and yours truly. We’re interested in developing a critical approach on pornography from a very located place, Barcelona, a city with a long tradition as a production and distribution center of porn imagery.

The city holds its own porn festival, many porn producers have their headquarters here, Private Film and Magazine Emporium moved their headquarters to Barcelona in the late 80’s. More recently, the gay porn company Tim Tales and Erika Lust’s feminist porn company also decided to operate from Barcelona. On the other side, Barcelona is also the city where all the post porn movement emerged in the 2000’s as a very strong voice to rethink and defy mainstream porn, with people like Maria Llopis or Diana Pornoterrorista, collectives like Post-Op and events like La Muestra Marrana.

If we talk about drawn porn, Barcelona has been also a very important place for the production and distribution of porn comics: from the protoqueer underground comics of Nazario in the 70’s to alternative comic magazines like El Víbora or publishing houses as La Cúpula. I think it’s also important to mention that Barcelona was one of the main distributors of Italian porn comics in the 80’s and that under the shadow of this massive production, that also circulated in the Latin American countries, some other small companies developed new comic magazines where people like Sebas Martín, one of the more prolific and established gay cartoonist, started publishing with total freedom.

Instituto de Estudios del porno wants to work form that decentralized perspective where Barcelona has still a lot to tell and offer.

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition. Photo by Francesc Ruiz and Pepo Salazar

I’m very curious about the workshops you organised with Hangar and Hamaca. Who participates to these workshops? Do you need to have crazy weird fetish in order to want to engage with alternative porn? Or is it more a question of being open to exploring more radical scenarios and imaginaries?

The whole program of the Instituto de Estudios del Porno is for people who, for various reasons, want to learn about porn. Lucia Egaña has developed a reading and study program that will provide partecipants with a theoretical background to the Instituto workshops, with sessions focused on porn manifestos, the porn debate in the feminist agendas in the Kingdom of Spain or the lesbian BDSM perspectives on pornography.

The workshop by Ona Bros wants to think critically about the audiovisual production of porn, its nature, structure and active agents, in order to dissect the porn image by giving theoretical and practical tools to confront it.

My workshops, for instance, are focused on exploring collectively and through drawing all kinds of new fetishes, more as a creative research on the richness of sexual diversity than as a sexual activity.

Among the people who enroll in our courses we find artists who are interested in or who work with porn, people who have a professional relationship with porn or want to have it, people who -for one reason or another- want to learn what’s behind porn and in which ways they can approach the pornographic production. Most of the workshops have both a practical and an experimental approach to porn so after them, knowledge is transformed into texts, performances, drawings… or 3D printed objects which will be the case of the sex toys workshop we will develop with Belén Soto.

I found the House of Fun charming, amusing, seriously weird but not “in your face” nor shocking. It wasn’t too hard-core. Was there any form of self-censorship at work when you decided which comics to print and present in Moss?

I agree. I decided no to show some of the alternative hentai threads that exist on the internet boards. I wanted to balance the content by focusing on those categories I found more creative and closer to creative processes like objectualization, inflation, flattening, melting… categories more related to a link of flesh plasticity and what I call new sexual mythologies like futanari cock vore, definitely not naturalistic at all.

Another thing about this project is that I really wanted to draw all the content by myself, that meant that I had to adapt my own drawing style to the alternative hentai manga style, embodying it into my practice, the final result is more cartoonish or flat and less shiny, humid or sweaty.

Finally I decided no to show lolicon or shotacon, which involve children. That is a very difficult issue and one of the actual boundaries of image representation. Even if it’s not an actual image, there are some specific laws in some countries that do not allow such representations and I didn’t want to break them,

In the other hand, I’m very happy to have introduced inside my alternative hentai point of view some issues that were not so present on the hentai alternative subcultures like exploring other genitalia, creating new sexes and situating bodies and genders on other levels.

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition

House of Fun, House of Fun, 2019. Exhibition view at MOMENTUM10, The Emotional Exhibition

Thanks Francesc!

The tenth edition of Momentum, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Marti Manen with the assistance of Anne Klontz, remains open until 9 October 2019 in Moss, Norway. The locations of MOMENTUM10. The Emotional Exhibition are: Momentum Kunsthalle, Gallery F15, House//of//Foundation. Besides, a few public art pieces are scattered around the city.

Previously: MOMENTUM10, the Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art.

The world of computing was powered by women until men, realizing how profitable the industry was becoming, pushed women out.

The first person to be what we would now call a coder was a woman: Lady Ada Lovelace. During WWII, women were pioneers in writing software for early computers. When the number of coding jobs exploded in the ’50s and ’60s, companies looked for programmers who were logical, good at math and meticulous. And for once, gender stereotypes worked in women’s favour.

The assumption that technology is inherently male is not only historically inaccurate, it is also unhealthy, to say the least. A technology designed by white males who had access to higher education serves mostly white men, at the expense of individuals with other skin colour, gender, background, etc. And since technology is playing an increasingly crucial role in the way society is being shaped, it is important that it doesn’t reflect the mindset of only a portion of the human race. But i’m sure you already know that.

Barbara Kapusta, The Giant, 2018. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019, Photo: Jorit Aust

ENIAC, the world’s first digital computer, at the University of Pennsylvania, had six primary programmers: Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman. They were initially called “operators.”

A exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, ironically titled Hysterical Mining, examines with depth and subtlety the tensions brought about by a very male techno-chauvinism. The artworks are mining, no for data or minerals, but for new meanings and strategies to approach the production and use of technologies.

“The exhibition analyses the material worlds we are creating through technology and technology’s role in shaping local and global configurations of power, forms of identity and ways of living. It draws on radical feminist and techno-feminist theories from the 1970s until now that criticised and revised the nexus tying new technologies and technoscience to patriarchal ideas.”

Hysterical Mining is a visually captivating exhibition. But it requires time if you want to fully engage with all the ideas, knowledge and nuances deployed by the artists. Any effort will be rewarded though.

Here’s a couple of artworks i found particularly thought-provoking:

Katrin Hornek, Casting Haze, 2018–2030. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019, Photo: Jorit Aust

Katrin Hornek, Casting Haze, 2018–2030

Katrin Hornek’s Casting Haze explores the technologies of CO2 mineralization, an emerging approach which, instead of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, would remove it from the air, store it and re-implement it into productive cycles in order to make profit out of it. The idea that such technologies could help us reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic point sources is seducing but it would probably be interpreted by many nations and corporations as a green light to emit even more industrial carbon dioxide, a 21st century, geo-engineered version of the Jevons paradox.

Hornek’s work not only explore the geographies, economies, industrial entanglement and philosophical grounding of the various fixations methods, she is also combining research-based analysis and artistic speculation to embody the technology in a sculpture.

With the help of scientists, the artist is planning to capture CO2 out of air or water and re-mineralize it into a sculpture. The object will be awarded (hopefully in 2030) as a trophy for the individuals or research groups who will have helped to reshape the world’s climate in the most sustainable way. The weight of the sculpture will correspond to the average one-month CO2 emission by a single human body at rest, roughly 14 kilos.

The exhibition shows a promotional video for the future award ceremony, a curtain featuring logos of companies currently involved in carbon capture, utilisation and/or storage, on a background that pictures fossils of nummulites, amoeba-like organisms that lived 55 millions years ago. The arid clay surface on the floor alludes to the changing perceptions of the relation between humans and the Earth through the ages, at a time when humans have become a powerful but uncontrollable geological force.

Louise Drulhe, Critical Atlas of Internet, 2015; The Two Webs, 2017. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019, Photo: Jorit Aust

Louise Drulhe, Path taken by information (network packet), depending on the service involved. Data recovered on opendatacity.de. From Critical Atlas of Internet, 2015

Louise Drulhe, Topographical Map. Map of the top websites (and all their derived activities), according to Alexa. From Critical Atlas of Internet, 2015

“Most people do not consider Internet as a territory,” explained Louise Drulhe in an interview with Chloe Stavrou for Furtherfield. “This idea of cyberspace is a bit old fashioned. But, I think it is still pertinent today to study Internet as a real space.”

The Critical Atlas of Internet is an eye-opening investigation of the Internet space, an attempt to represent its invisible geography and architecture.

Drulhe has developed 15 conceptual exercises that rely on drawings, schemas, objects, 3D models and videos to map the internet and give more visibility to its social, political and economic dimensions.

Though apparently whimsical, her spatialization exercises shed light on issues such as the monetization of our online gestures; the evolution from a decentralized and democratic Internet to one dominated by the GAFA; the many walls erected online (from the Great Firewall of China, to the one that separates the deep web and the “surface” web, to the borders defined by Facebook and other private networks that leave you out if you’re not registered with them); the physical occupation of the internet on earth and its hardware geography, etc.

I spent half an afternoon exploring Drulhe’s topography of Internet space and i don’t think i’ve exhausted all its lessons.

Louise Drulhe, The Two Webs, 2017. Image: © vinciane lebrun-verguethen/voyez-vous

In The Two Webs, Drulhe continues her research into the covert realities of the web.

Based on data she gathered, the artist created a series of pencil drawings that depict the disturbing symmetry between the web and the tracking-web, between the web you see and the web that is looking back at you. 90% of websites leak data to third parties, reminding you that nothing’s ever as free as it seems in the sleek world of Silicon Valley.

Delphine Reist, Étagère, 2007. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019, Photo: Jorit Aust

Étagère (“shelf” in English) is filled with dozens of electrical power tools that come to life as you go nearer. Behind a plexiglass sheet, the drill, circular saw, pneumatic hammer, sanding machine shake, spin, swirl, growl, roar following a kind of noisy choreography written by the artist.

They are the ultimate masculine instruments. The only time when these devices are tolerated inside the white museum and galleries rooms is before exhibitions open, when the artworks are assembled, the space refreshed and prepped for the show.

By animating the appliances in an overblown, almost frantic manner, Delphine Reist pushes our tendency to anthopomorphise the non-human to its most absurd limits. Moreover, Reist performs a work of “de-scription” (a term coined by Madeleine Akrich and Bruno Latour). In contrast to the process of “inscription” by the engineer, manufacturer or designer of a device that inscribes the object with the uses, interactions as well as the privileged user profile of the designer, “de-scription” frees the object from its initial script, decodes the alleged neutrality of the processes of manufacturing and circulation.

Judith Fegerl, The Kitchen Was What She Had Given of Herself to the World, 2019

Judith Fegerl’s sculpture, on the other hand, refers to the kind of tools and technology that are assigned to women: the kitchen appliances.

The artist subjects rectangular structures made of magnetic stain-less steel in the standardized dimensions of European kitchen modules (60 x 60 x 90 cm) to induction heating. Her intervention destabilizes their shapes and cover the surfaces with circular patterns that evoke induction cooktops. Fegerl uses the technology to leave her marks on the smooth, metallic surface, customizing the structures to her own specifications and deriding the idea that the freedom and happiness of a woman can be boosted by yet another piece of sophisticated domestic apparatus (often designed by men.)

Marlies Pöschl, Aurore (videostill), 2018

Marlies Pöschl, Aurore (videostill), 2018

Marlies Pöschl, Aurore (Trailer), 2018

How much can you automate affect? Can compassion, kindness and competence in care for the elderly be programmed? And can the human patients perceive it? Can artificial empathy assuage our fears about artificial intelligence?

Two years ago, Marlies Pöschl organised a workshop with primary-school pupils, graduating secondary-school students and senior citizens to reflect on robots that would care for our seniors. Based on the conversations, Pöschl created a semi-documentary science fiction film about Aurore, an intelligent nursing operating system that remains invisible in the film. She is the perfect carer: on call around the clock, skillful and affectionate. Yet, the film suggests, Aurore has dreams and imaginary landscapes of her own. She’s just too professional to share them.

It has often been said that the jobs that machines won’t “steal” from us are the ones that require softer skills. Nursing, for example. Yet, nursing machines might still become a necessity as populations in Western countries are ageing and less and less younger workers are eager to address the needs of the elderly. The suggestion that robots will take care of our bodies during the last years of our life remains odious to most of us but the characters in the film look happy enough to have someone to chat with.

More image from the exhibition:

Trisha Baga, Hamilton Beach, 2016; Brother Making an Impressionist Painting, 2016; Dog Bowl with Boobs, 2016; Optical 88, 2016; Thelma and Louise, 2016; William’s Wonder Bread, 2016; Microscope, 2016. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019

Veronika Eberhart, 9 is 1 and 10 is none (filmstill), 2017

Veronika Eberhart, 9 is 1 and 10 is none (filmstill), 2017

Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, 1922 – The Uncomputable (The Unmanned, Season 1, Episode 4), videostill, 2016

Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, 1953 – The Outlawed (The Unmanned, Season 1, Episode 3). Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019

Louise Drulhe, Critical Atlas of Internet, 2015; The Two Webs, 2017; Barbara Kapusta, The Giant, 2018; Judith Fegerl, the kitchen was what she had given of herself to the world, 2019. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019. Photo: Jorit Aust

Pratchaya Phinthong, 2017, 2009; Barbara Kapusta, The Giant, 2018; Tabita Rezaire, The Song of the Spheres, 2018. Installation view: Hysterical Mining, Kunsthalle Wien 2019, Photo: Jorit Aust

Tabita Rezaire, Ultra Wet – Recapitulation (film still), 2017–2018

Hysterical Mining has two location: the Museumsquartier one immerses visitors inside a blue desktop background; the smaller one at Karlsplatz features a series of books anyone can browse to further investigate the topic of the exhibition. I highly recommend having a look exhibition guide, it is available as a PDF.

Hysterical Mining, curated by Anne Faucheret and Vanessa Joan Müller, remains open until 6 October 2019 at the Kunsthalle Wien in context of the VIENNA BIENNALE FOR CHANGE.

Related stories: Gaming Masculinity. Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture and Algorithms of Oppression. How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

How to Secure a Country. From Border Policing via Weather Forecast to Social Engineering—A Visual Study of 21st-Century Statehood, edited by Salvatore Vitale and Lars Willumeit. With essays by Roland Bleiker, Philip Di Salvo, Jonas Hagmann, Salvatore Vitale and Lars Willumeit.

Amazon USA and UK.

Lars Müller Publishers writes: Switzerland is well-known as one of the safest countries on earth and as a prime example of efficiency and efficacy. One of the central reasons that such a country exists is the development of a culture based on protection, which is supported by the presence and production of national security. When in 2014 Swiss people voted in favor of a federal popular initiative “against massive immigration,” Salvatore Vitale, an immigrant living in Switzerland felt the need to research this phenomenon in order to comprehend where the motives for this constant need for security originate and how they became part of Swiss culture.

In How to Secure a Country Vitale explores this country’s national security measures by focusing on “matter-of-fact” types of instructions, protocols, bureaucracies, and clear-cut solutions which he visualizes in photographs, diagrams, and graphical illustrations. The result is a case study that can be used to explain the global context and the functioning of contemporary societies.

Fake injured people during a military exercise while staging a terrorist attack happening in Switzerland, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Entrance of a bunker in an apartment building. Until the 80’s it was mandatory to build bunkers in private and public spaces to be ready for a possible nuclear war, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Photographer Salvatore Vitale spent 4 years investigating the security apparatus that ensures that Switzerland remains “the safest country in the world”. Both for its own citizens and for the private banks, pharmaceutical films, multinational companies and cryptocurrencies that rely on its data bunkers to keep their secrets safe.

How to Secure a Country is not a manual. Neither is it a documentary work or a piece of agenda-based activism. It is a visual research project made of photos, essays by political scientists and data visualisation works. Together, these elements give a presence to social, political, technological and psychological mechanisms that are otherwise invisible or simply too complex and abstract to flesh out.

Vitale gained access to places that are otherwise closed to the public. The ways he details the procedures followed by the police, the military, migration authorities, weather services, research institutions for AI build up an atmosphere of protection inhabited by dilemmas and tensions: How much freedom do citizens accept to relinquish in exchange for security and protection? And how do you determine which threats should be prioritized? Is the overuse of natural resources more alarming than cyberterrorism? Declining birth rate more dangerous than energy shortage?

A customised assault rifle transformed for sport purposes, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Lake police agent going on a patrol during a rescue mission, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

The book is compelling, both visually and conceptually. It is about Switzerland with all its idiosyncrasies (a Swiss army knife is not considered weapon by the law, the country has enough nuclear fallout shelters to accommodate its entire population) but its content also concerns inhabitants of other parts of the world where predictive policing-software extensive is trusted more than human common sense, where digitalisation is accompanied by cyberterrorism and security practices are increasingly subject to political agenda-setting and influence-seeking.

Sign of a custom at the CH–IT border, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Fingerprint registration during an immigration control at the Italian border for an Eritrean asylum seeker, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

A sign written in Eritrean language at the border saying: “Here we are in Switzerland”. Placing these signs is needed as the majority of migrants aren’t aware they are crossing a border entering another country and they don’t speak any other language than their mother tongue, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

A canine unit’s dog looking for drug during an operation in the Canton Zürich, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Security cell in a custom at the border, seeker, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Reproduction of the positions indicated in the official instruction manual of the Swiss assault rifle SIG SG 550, the most common rifle between army and civilians in Switzerland, from the series ‘How to secure a country’ © Salvatore Vitale

Spreads from the book:

Het Nieuwe Instituut, a museum in Rotterdam dedicated to architecture, design and digital culture, has recently opened an exhibition that challenges visitors to look at the inventive and creative side of cybercrime. What if malware were not just damaging pieces of software but also anonymous works of design?

CryptoLocker. Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Ewout Huibers

Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Astin le Clercq

Curated by designer Bas van de Poel together with architect, researcher and curator Marina Otero Verzier, Malware: Symptoms of Viral Infection charts the eventful history of computer viruses. Harmful software started infecting our devices over 30 years ago. They started as experimental pranks and underground activism but they soon became nifty works of social engineering that incorporated the human in the scripting language, exploiting our weaknesses and making us behave as they wished. Nowadays, their playground is politics and warfare. Malware have grown to become painfully sophisticated spying tools and geopolitical weapon developed by governments.

Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Ewout Huibers

Malware – exhibition about the history and evolution of the computer virus. A video by Marit Geluk

As the exhibition demonstrates, the future of malware is bright. But not for us. We might feel that we, as individuals, are less exposed to virus misdeeds than in the early days but we should not underestimate the Damocles Sword hanging over our head. A depressingly high number of serious ransomware, data breaches, state-backed hacking cam­paigns and other cybersecurity incidents have already marked 2019 and reminded us that technology has always grown in close connection with conflicts. And as we increasingly rely on AI algorithms, on the comfort of the so-called “smart” cities and on connected medical devices implanted inside our bodies, malware will come back to haunt us personally, invading our private spaces and potentially manipulating our behaviours and emotions.

Kenzero, 2010. Artistic interpretations by Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

In her presentation during the opening night, Svitlana Matviyenko, a media scholar and the co-author of Cyberwar and Revolution, highlighted the cultural and strategic importance of malware. She made the bold but pertinent suggestion that internet might seem to have become unfriendly, almost impossible to use, to the point that some have claimed that the internet is “broken”. Maybe, she continued, the internet isn’t broken, maybe it has come to its true realization as a malicious environment. It’s finally reached its perfect stage and we’re not the receiver of the message anymore, we’ve become a relay in the war.

Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Ewout Huibers

I learnt a lot while visiting Malware. Through its brief but dense history of malicious software, the exhibition not only inform visitors about the many challenges related to security, warfare and geopolitics in times of rapid technological advance, it also invites designers and other creative minds to reflect on the role they can play to counter theses forms of innovative but malignant digital practices.

Most of the malware cases highlighted in Rotterdam are illustrated by an artistic interpretation designed by Bas Van de Poel and Bureau Tomorrow. They used screenshot of the viruses, news footage, images of the type of facilities infiltrated and other visual clues to help visitors understand the power and creativity behind malicious software. Here’s a small selections of the viruses exhibited:

DOS Virus BRAIN, part of the Malware exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut

Brain: Searching for the first PC virus in Pakistan. Mikko Hypponen traveled to Lahore to find the authors of BRAIN

Also known as “Pakistani flu”, Brain was created in 1986 by Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, two brothers based in Lahore. Considered the first computer virus for Microsoft disk operating system, the code was designed to protect their medical software from piracy. Brain corrupted IBM PCs by replacing the boot sector of a floppy disk. The virus was accompanied by the brothers’ address, phone numbers and a message informing the user that their machine was infected and to call them for inoculation.

The brothers intention was not malicious so they were surprised to receive phone calls from people in the UK, the United States and elsewhere, demanding that they disinfect their machines. Their telecommunications company Brain still exists at the same address. They had to change their phone numbers though.

Artistic interpretation of the Anna Kournikova virus by Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

The Anna Kournikova computer worm hit computers on 11 February 2001, when some people received a short e-mail that tricked them into opening a file allegedly containing a picture of the Russian tennis player. Millions of them spread the virus in a short time. The designer of the malware, 20-year old Jan de Wit, was caught and sentenced to 150 hours of community service. The mayor of De Wit’s hometown, Sneek, offered him a position at the local IT department, mirroring the case of several hackers who, once caught, were offered lower sentences and even a job if they accepted to collaborate with the FBI.

What makes this virus (maybe we would even call it “clickbait” these days) particularly interesting is that the short statement De Wit posted on a website: “I never intended to harm the people who opened the attachment. But in the end it’s their own fault that they got infected.”

In his talk during the opening night, Jussi Parikka, a new media theorist and the author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses, echoed that statement when he suggested that a computer user nowadays who doesn’t know how things work becomes part of the problem.

Coffeeshop DOS computer virus, part of the Malware exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut

Coffeeshop would have failed into oblivion were it not for the fact that it demonstrated in the early 1990s that computers could be used to make a political statement. One of the earliest manifestations of hacktivism, this DOS virus spread through floppy disks and inserted the text string “CoffeeShop” into infected files, prompting the message “Legalize cannabis” and an 8-bit marijuana leaf to appear on computer screens.

Stuxnet, artistic interpretation. Image by Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

Stuxnet, artistic interpretation by Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

Stuxnet was a malicious worm that changed global military strategy in the 21st century. Delivered via a USB drive, it was designed to disrupt programming instructions that control assembly lines and industrial plants. Regarded as the first weapon made entirely from code, Stuxnet has been linked to a policy of covert warfare against Iran’s nuclear armament that might have been led by the U.S. and Israel.

Stuxnet paved the way for digital viruses that have a direct impact on the physical world. On nuclear power stations and soon on self-driving cars and every single component of the Internet of Things.

Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Ewout Huibers

Regin (also known as Prax or QWERTY) was a sophisticated malware and hacking toolkit. According to Die Welt, security experts at Microsoft gave it the name “Regin” in 2011, after the smart and crafty character in Norse mythology.

Designed as a weapon for mass surveillance, Regin captured screenshots, stole passwords, recovered deleted files and intercepted traffic without being easily detected. The data collection had been deployed for targeted operations against government organisations, business, infrastructures, financial institutions and individuals. Its impact and complexity raised suspicions that it was used by NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ. The Trojan was reportedly found on the network of telecom provider Belgacom and on a USB flash drive used by a staff member of Chancellor Angela Merkel in December 2014.

Artistic interpretation of Ransomware Pollocrypt. Image: Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

In 2015, PolloCrypt silently encrypted all the data on infected hard drives, then demanded that their owner pay a “ransom” of several hundred dollars in Bitcoin to a group of hackers. In case of refusal to pay, the files remained encrypted and the users had no access to them. This ransomware used the logo from Los Pollos Hermanos, the chicken restaurant from the Breaking Bad tv show. The most stressful aspect of PolloCrypt was that it suggested that the money had to be paid as quickly as possible, because the price increased as time went on.

More images from the show:

NotPetya, artistic interpretation. Image by Tomorrow Bureau and Bas van de Poel

Malware, exhibition view at Het Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Ewout Huibers

DOS Virus AIDS, part of the Malware exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut

Malware is the first episode of a trilogy that will explore phenomena that are barely visible but have an impact on our personal space (the next one sounds very promising: it will be about ghosts and real estate!)

Malware, curated by Bas van de Poel and Marina Otero Verzier, remains open until 10 November 2019 at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.

Over a week ago, i was in Antwerp. My first stop was FOMU, the Photography Museum and one of the few cultural spaces where i’m sure i’ll always get to discover something curious and eye-opening. My intention was to visit the show dedicated to young Belgian photographers and the one about The Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. After that i thought i’d haughtily snob the MAAN/MOON and make my way to another exciting art space in town. Fortunately, i was accompanied by a friend whose enthusiasm for celestial bodies hasn’t been damped by the current media frenzy about the anniversary of the Moon landing.

Edwin Reichert, People stand in front of a television shop and look through the window to witness the start of the Apollo 11 space mission, Berlin, Germany. Photo AP, via

© Vincent Fournier, Atacama Desert, Lunar Robotic Research (Nasa), Chile, 2017

© Vincent Fournier, Space Odyssey spacesuit#1, Sylmar, USA, 2019

MAAN/MOON is an uplifting exhibition about humanity’s fascination for the Moon. It’s so good that even i, the only person on Earth stupid enough to profess a total indifference for space travel, decided it was worth coming back to it with a blog review.

By mixing science, NASA archives, astronaut’s wives drama, contemporary artworks, humour, poetry and politics, curators Maarten Dings and Joachim Naudts present an enchanting perspective on our only permanent natural satellite.

Here’s a quick tour of some of the works and facts i discovered while i was visiting the exhibition:

Gil Scott-Heron, Whitey On The Moon, 1970

In “Whitey on the Moon,” Gil Scott-Heron brings technological achievements into the context of racial inequality in the USA. Instead of joining the chorus that celebrated the space race, the poet denounces the distressing conditions in which urban African-American communities live and questions the economic priorities of his country.

Scott-Heron wasn’t the only American citizens who challenged the extravagance of a trip to the Moon. Testifying to the US Senate on race and urban poverty in 1966, Martin Luther King declared that “in a few years we can be assured that we will set a man on the Moon and with an adequate telescope he will be able to see the slums on Earth with their intensified congestion, decay and turbulence”.

Katie Paterson, Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon), 2007

Earth-Moon-Earth or “moon bounce” is a radio communication system that consists in sending messages in Morse code from Earth to the Moon where it is reflected off the surface and then received back on Earth. The Moon sends back most of the information but some of it can also get lost in the process.

Katie Paterson translated Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into Morse code and sent it to the Moon. Once back on our planet, the composition was re-translated into a new score, the gaps and absences becoming intervals and rests. The “Moon-altered” piece is played on an automated grand piano.

What makes the work so moving is the way it embraces the distortions, loss and imperfections of the technique, subtly reinventing the sonata and giving it a celestial dimension.

Joan Fontcuberta, Sputnik (Official portrait of the astronaut Ivan Istochnikov, 1997), 1998

Joan Fontcuberta, Sputnik (detail of the installation), 1997

In a series that mixes historical documents and fabricated evidence, Joan Fontcuberta chronicles the tragedy of astronaut Ivan Istochnikov (the closest Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta), lost in space under mysterious circumstances on October 25, 1968.

Fontcuberta reconstructs the life of the cosmonaut, his childhood, military career, family life and the journey together with Kloka the dog on the Soyuz 2 spacecraft. The artist then shows how Soviet officials deleted Istochnikov from official Soviet history to avoid embarrassment.

On 24 April 1967, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was killed in the Soyuz 1 as it re-entered the atmosphere. He was the first man to die during a space mission. In this photo, taken during his funeral, Soviet officials regard Komarov’s charred remains in an open casket. Photo

Paul Van Hoeydonck, Fallen Astronaut, 1971

I had no idea that Apollo 15 had left the first (official) artwork on the Moon during its mission. Fallen Astronaut is a 8.5 cm high aluminium sculpture commissioned by the Apollo 15 crew to commemorate the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who had thus far lost their lives in the exploration of space. It was placed on the Moon next to a plaque listing the men known at the time to have died.

© Sjoerd Knibbeler, Friede, 2017

For the Lunacy project, Sjoerd Knibbeler made wooden scale models of various spacecraft and photographed them by moonlight in an open-air studio. The image above recreates Friede, the fictitious rocket from the first science fiction film to be based on actual scientific research (Frau im Mond, a silent movie by Fritz Lang, 1929).

© Jojakim Cortis & Adrian Sonderegger, Making of AS11-40-5878 (by Edwin Aldrin, 1969), 2014

Photographers Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger carefully recreate iconic photographs as miniature 3D models, pulling back the camera to reveal the behind-the-scene construction work. A work that perhaps allude to the Moon landing conspiracy theories.

Harry Gruyaert, Apollo XIV on BBC II, from the series TV Shots, 1971

Harry Gruyaert raised controversy when he exhibited his TV Shots for the first time in 1974. He had photographed sitcoms, dog shows, news bulletins, ad breaks, the Apollo flights and other programs as they appeared on television screens at the time. The result is garish, distorted and was seen as a disrespectful assault on both the culture of television and the conventions of photography.

Giorgio de Finis and Fabrizio Boni, Space Metropoliz, 2013

Giorgio de Finis and Fabrizio Boni, Space Metropoliz (trailer), 2013

A former salami factory on the outskirts of Rome, home to immigrants from around the world, is housing an art gallery called MAAM (Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz, in english Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere of Metropoliz).

A few years ago, Fabrizio Boni and Giorgio de Finis collaborated with the residents of Metropoliz on a documentary that follows them as they are building a rocket to go to the Moon. The residents worked to build sets, act as extras, etc. The film is of course also a poignant comment on the issues these individuals face everyday in Italy: discrimination, xenophobia and the threat of being evicted.

Margaret Hamilton standing next to the Apollo Guidance Computer Source Code, 1969. MIT Archive

American computer scientist Margaret Hamilton and her team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote the source code which allowed astronauts to land safely on the Moon. An enormous achievement given that, back in the 1960s, the colossal computers were powered by just 72KB of computer memory (a smartphone nowadays has a million times more storage space) and relied upon analogue punched cards for input.

John Adams Whipple, Image of the Moon, 1852

Working with astronomer William Cranch Bond in the mid-19th Century, John Adams Whipple made daguerreotypes of the Moon using a telescope from the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Great Refractor telescope was the largest of its kind at the time, and it took three years for the duo to overcome the many technical and meteorological challenges to achieve a usable image. At the time, the picture was praised throughout the world for being the most accurate and sublime image of the Moon.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, The Moon Goose Analogue (documentation), 2012

Léon Gimpel, Hyperstereoscopie de la lune, 1923 © Léon Gimpel \ Archive of Modern Conflict

Léon Gimpel used two existing photographs to create the stereo photo above. Both photographs were taken from the Observatoire de Paris with a gap of almost three years (9 May 1897 and 7 February 1900). In 1923, Gimpel converted the images into autochromes. He later used the anaglyph method to give the illusion of a three dimensional image. Two images are displayed on top of each other: a red image for the left eye and a cyan image for the right eye. Wearing special glasses turns the composition into a grey floating Moon.

Lee Balterman, Joan Aldrin sobs with joy and relief as she learns of the successful completion of the husband’s mission, July 1969 (via)

A crowd gathers to watch the launch, Merritt Island, Florida. July 16, 1969. Photo: NASA/Flickr via

Joel Meyerowitz, A young couple sitting on their Plymouth Satellite on the eve of the launch of the Apollo 11. It is estimated that around one million people gathered neat Cape Kennedy in Florida to witness the launch

Lunar Orbiter 1 Frame 1117, 1966 © NASA

The Lunar Orbiter programme consisted of five unmanned spaceships sent between 1966 and 1967 to the Moon’s surface and help select Apollo landing sites. The Orbiters were equipped with a system that allowed the images to be developed and scanned on board. While the spacecraft flew over the surface of the Moon, 70-mm long film strips were exposed in a twin-lens camera. The photographs were sent as analogue signals to earth where the strips were assembled into mosaic images.

© Roberto Pufleb & Nadine Schlieper, Alternative Moons, 2017

Fritz Goro, NASA engineer Allyn Hazard testing the prototype of a spacesuit, 1962. The outfit was designed by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and was intended for use in the Apollo lunar landing programme. Photo

© Penelope Umbrico, Everyone’s Photos Any License – 654 of 1.146.034 Full Moons on Flickr in November 2015

© Annemie Augustijns, The Moon Poland, 2006

© Pierre Puiseux & Maurice Loewy, Atlas photographique de la lune, 1896 – 1910

MAAN/MOON is curated by Maarten Dings & Joachim Naudts. The exhibition remains open until 6 October 2019 at FOMU, the photography museum in Antwerp, Belgium.

Related stories: KOSMICA: Full moon politics, Should We Colonise the Moon?, The Moon Goose Analogue: Lunar Migration Bird Facility, Interview with ‘We Colonised the Moon’, etc.

Trees and other plants give off chemicals, called volatile organic compounds (VOCs.) The emission rate of these gases and molecules enables plants to communicate, contributes to cloud formation and affects air quality as well as the health of forests. VOCs are also responsible for what we associate as the fragrance of a forest. These emissions are very specific for each individual plant so each tree generates its own cloud.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

One Tree ID, by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, transforms the ID of a specific tree into a perfume that can then be applied to the human body.

When wearing that perfume, a person can not only borrow some of the characteristics of the tree he/she is standing next to, but also use parts of its communication system and potentially have a conversation that —although imperceptible for the human communicator— might still take place on the biochemical level plants use for information exchange.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree (measurement of VOC emissions of the needles), 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

Working together with bioscientists Prof. Dr. Birgit Piechulla and Dr. Uta Effmert from Rostock University, the artist chose a Himalayan Cedar for the first experiment and analyzed its molecule clouds and most of their components. Because the roots and its bacteria, the tree stem and needles emit different VOCs, the team measured the cloud of the roots, the cloud of the tree stem and the cloud of the needles separately. Over 100 different compounds were identified. Later on, the artist also invited perfumer Marc vom Ende to smell the tree. The data collected using science and a “professional” human nose were combined to create three perfumes: “Cloud of the Roots,” “Cloud of the Tree Stem,” and “Cloud of the Tree Crown.” Together they compose the unique One Tree ID perfume.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019

Towards the end of the interview, she also got to talk briefly about Office for Tree Migration, a response to a U.S. Forest Service study that found that some tree species are migrating North at a rate not seen before, likely due to global warming.

Hi Agnes! Is the cloud of a tree different from its smell? Or is smell just one part of the cloud?

Each tree and plant emit VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds.) VOCs are very small and short lived molecules / gases. This is what we can smell when we go into a forest. These VOCs also contribute to aerosol formation thus also to cloud formation in general. But what we smell is just a part of this cloud, the cloud and VOC emission can contain also molecules which we cannot smell, at least not directly. They are also contained in the One Tree ID of course.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

I’m curious about the fact that 3 clouds were collected: one for the roots, one for the stem and one for the tree needles. Does that mean that a tree carries several clouds? How different are they from each other? this is so mysterious…

Yes, this is amazing to me as well. The needles, the tree stem, the roots and their bacteria, they all emit different VOCs and thus make different molecule clouds. We have measured the roots, the stem and the needles separately and could identify more than 100 compounds, some appeared only in the roots, some only in the tree stem or needles. From these data we synthesised the perfumes “Cloud of the Roots”, “Cloud of the Tree Stem” and “Cloud of the Tree Crone” and they smell really very different from each other. To my surprise, the roots smell quite sweet. The “One Tree ID” was fused from these 3 perfumes.

I would love to go even in more detail, so to say into higher resolution. I was wondering “Does each needle, each bacteria, each little branch make its own cloud?” For sure there is a difference between young and older needles, but to measure in that high resolution is also a question of capacities & resources. In sum, a tree is home to many lifeforms and clouds in all its parts.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

Cedar trees smell very nice if i remember correctly. Does the VOC have that same smell?

Yes, exactly what we can smell of cedars are part of its VOC composition, these are small molecules which go into our nose and dock onto its receptors. The single VOC molecule can smell terrible but in combination it creates its specific good smelling cedar odour. I didn´t know how our data – transformed into a perfume would smell. The measured VOC compounds which were the basis for our perfume recipe could also have created some bad smell. I was especially curious about the roots. Luckily, they smell good.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, One Tree ID – How To Become A Tree For Another Tree, 2019 © Agnes Meyer-Brandis, VG-Bild Kunst 2019

And does the perfume you created affect human beings too? A bit like aromatherapy maybe?

We didn´t measure this, .. but I believe it does. A bit like what happens with forest bathing. In Japan, you can even buy tickets for this.

By wearing that perfume, a person can “potentially have a conversation that – although invisible and inaudible by nature – might still take place on the biochemical level plants use for information exchange.” But communication is a two way process! Would wearing the perfume trigger kind of reaction from the tree that might in theory be perceived (even unconsciously) by the human being?

Yes – it might be possible, the communication is something I really would love to explore further, but it is still very hard and expensive and until now not even possible to measure. However, I am in contact with some scientists, searching for a method to do so. It would be wonderful to create an instant translation and communication system.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, How to Become A Tree For Another Tree (measuring chamber). Photo: © 2018 | ITMZ | Universität Rostock

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, How to Become A Tree For Another Tree (Measuring VOC emissions of the roots), Rostock 2018

Can you tell us about the tools you and the scientists used to collect and identify the cloud? there are photos with big glass bubbles! Are they scientific instruments or are they one of your artistic contraptions?

These are the measurement chambers, with the help of these chambers we collect the air / gases and molecule samples which then are analysed by a special gas chromatograph (GCMS) with mass spectrometer.

These chamber measurements are quite common as scientific method, though how a chamber looks like always differs as each chamber is designed by its scientist, so i also designed my tree stem chamber myself, for example.

Could you describe briefly the installation you were showing as part of Experiment Zukunft at Kunsthalle Rostock? Could visitors try out the cloud perfume?

Yes, the installation consisted of an experimental set up with the tree, a Himalayan Cedar, which we were measuring, and its synthesized One Tree ID, as well as the other 3 perfumes “Cloud of the Roots”, “Cloud of the Tree Stem” and “Cloud of the Tree Crone”. The visitors can apply the perfume and then have a talk with the tree, following an experiment routine, with a start and stop, so we could potentially track and measure the dialogue between tree and human.
As the VOC emissions are a dynamic system, there was also a board with One Tree IDs of each exhibition day.

Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Office for Tree Migration (OTM)

Quick question about another of your projects! You explained in an interview with Interaliamag that you were working on “a possible system by using options of synthetic biology that allows the trees to move faster and simply walk away from the changed climate”. This sounds very exciting! Are you still working on this Office for Tree Migration project? Did scientists slam the door at your face and told you you were crazy?

It is a longterm project manifesting itself in various artistic outputs and formats. For example, we have designed small tree molecules to observe tree migration on molecular level, in cooperation with Alex de Vries from the University in Groningen without any door slamming.

So far, I’ve been researching on this topic and possible investigation, adaption and migration methods on the northern hemisphere, but at the moment I am doing research on that topic in California where drought and warmer climate are a problem. So the Office for Tree Migration is temporarily settled at the Marin Headlands, where I do longterm observations of plants climbing up hills.

Actually scientist didn’t slam the door, I had several interesting discussions, as in any field of work there people who are more and less open-minded people. I am apparently lucky with my science encounters. What I heard is both interesting and very open thinking. However, I also heard that to find a solution and create walking trees, we would need to combine all human knowledge for the next 30 years, something that’s obviously not existing yet. Nevertheless, it is do-able.

Anyhow, i am working on finding out, getting all sorts of necessary preliminary experiments defined which may pave the way towards walking trees but we have to start small and hopefully create a tiny walking tree arboretum in the near future.

The exhibition in Rostock is over, but the project had received an honorary mention at Ars Electronica this year and will be shown there as well (hopefully! It is not easy to exhibit as it is not only site- but even tree specific!)

Thanks Agnes!

Project Credits: In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Birgit Piechulla and Dr. Uta Effmert, Biochemistry, Institute for BioSciences, University Rostock and Marc vom Ende, Senior Perfumer, Symrise. With kind support by the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Symrise AG and Universität Rostock.

The works was part of Experiment Zukunft, a show curated by Susanne Jaschko at Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany.
Also part of the exhibition: Semina Aeternitatis: can you inscribe human nostalgia onto foreign DNA?