Rituals of Wasted Technology
Marco Barotti
Speaking to Ancestors 2/7
11.01 to 15.01.2023
Silent Green
In market-driven cycles of planned obsolescence, technological communication products are regularly replaced by better, faster and smarter successors. Televisions, satellite dishes, PCs, smartphones and antennas are produced and consumed before ending up in landfill mountains of abandoned tech waste. Marco Barotti disrupts this cycle by giving former satellite dishes and recycled Wi-Fi sector antennas a novel tech life. He creates post-apocalyptic landscapes in which the animal world exists as an electronic replica, as described by Philip K. Dick in his 1969 book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In his installations, audio technology and e-waste form kinetic sculptures triggered by data inputs, which are analyzed and translated into sound. His works creates a "tech ecosystem" that plays with technology’s similarities to animals and plants. In minimalist bodies, data transcends the boundaries of visibility and manifests itself in alien yet somehow familiar kinetic beings.
In the domed hall of Silent Green, Marco Barotti presents an expansive sound installation consisting of APES & SWANS. Both species symbiotically relate to each other: APES are sound sculptures made of recycled Wi-Fi sector antennas. They are driven by algorithms showing dynamic counters of data consumption and cyber-attacks: from Facebook likes, Google searches, tinder swipes, internet energy consumed, and emails sent, to the adverse cyber events happening in real-time. By encoding these algorithms, his tower-mounted APES gain the ability to generate specific behaviour patterns, quasi-rituals. Barotti's SWANs, on the other hand, "float" on an artificial pool in the domed hall. They are made of used satellite dishes. Two sound sources - a bass frequency and human breath- streaming through brass instruments give them their voice and set them in motion.
Driven by interdisciplinary research on data science, surveillance capitalism, cyber security, connectivity, human and non-human behaviour, and cryptology in cooperation with the scientists of CASA - Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Marco Barotti's work questions whether we, as a society, are ready to act as intelligently as the machines we created. Can the new, digital evolution guide us toward a respectful and sustainable cohabitation with our fellow humans, the planet, and other species?
The exhibition "Rituals of Wasted Technology" will feature talks by Johannes Paul Raether, Asia Biega, and Dorothea von Hantelmann, followed by roundtable discussions with artist Marco Barotti and exhibition curators Pauline Doutreluingne and Keumhwa Kim. They will ask how technologies affect the rituals of our everyday lives and how they influence artistic exhibition practices.
The exhbition Rituals of Wasted Technology takes place as part of the exhibition series Speaking to Ancestors curated by Pauline Doutreluingne and Keumhwa Kim. The two-year exhibition series, Speaking to Ancestors, brings together seven artistic positions that deal with the search for genealogies, origins and ritual (image) practices. The invited artists have in common that they develop their own narration about their ancestors, starting from ceremonial, ritual traditions or based on intimate, familial sto-ries. They create a new symbolic and social field of action situated between faded myths and handed-down imagination. They strive to heal societal wounds, resurrect forgotten histories of marginalized groups, and coun-ter patriarchal, colonial power structures through ancestral and magical ritual powers. Speaking to Ancestors explores how our global society responds to ancestor worship, shamanism, animism and myth.
Co-curated with Pauline Doutreluingne
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