The work, based on the works of Karl Marx, questions the role of the image in modern society. When making the video, Mercado used resources of image treating and inverted the number format of the video frames, creating a gray image between the artificial cruelimages and scenes of real corpses.
Marcello Mercado, video artist, performer and fine artist living in Germany, creates works that mix animation techniques with anthropological and political thought. He won the 12th edition of Videobrasil (International Festival of Electronic Art), in 1998, with the video The Warm Place. His most ambitious project has been to publish on the Web an animated comic strip with 200 chapters called Mutter.
Borderhack is a symbolic event, a festival of virtual and real activists, people that question the ways in which frontiers and the immigration laws are defined. Attachment is an online exhibition with Ilich acting as curator for Borderhack, in which artists and rebels related to the universe of cyber culture in general, such as Mark Amerika, Oliver Ressler and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer all take part.
Meet other art works that use technology as a form of urban expression.
Fran Ilich, a Mexican artist who has always been concerned about the use of computer science and the Internet in society and in the educational media, in 1975 held the position of Director of Cinemátik 1.0, the first cyber culture festival in Latin America. A filmmaker and writer, he is the author of the romance Metro-Pop. He currently works at the media center of the National Center of Arts, in Mexico City.
by Davide Grassi e Igor Stromajer (Italy – Slovenia, 2000)
A satire of the world of globally connected corporations. The artists founded a dummy corporation with headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia that manages funds on the Problem Stock Exchange, which is the stock market of problems generated by global capitalism. Problemarket.com operates like a “normal” company, issuing “balance sheets” and displaying its “accounting records” to the public.
Check out also Mejor Vida Corp (MVC), a Minerva Cuevas’s work that criticizes consumer society, political patronage and rampant consumerism.
Davide Grassi, has a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and develops works with strong political and social connotations, taking advantage of a number of digital media. He is an author of performances, videos, installations, documentaries and other works with new media. Of Italian origin, he moved to Ljubljana Liubliana, capital of Slovenia in 1995.
by Eduardo Kac (Brazil – United States, 1994-1996)
It is an installation in which the participants control via webcam, the intensity of a generator of luminous energy, necessary for a growing plant to perform photosynthesis. The photons of cameras throughout the world are transported to the installation area and used, during the period of the exhibition, to germinate a small plant. Thus the experience creates a virtual collective ecosystem.
Eduardo Kac, Brazilian visual artist, resident in the United States. He works with so-called “transgenic art”. His work, a genetically modified phosphorescent female bunny, was a highlight of the exhibition Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at the Henry Art Gallery, at Washington University, in Seattle, in 2002.
A video installation focused on models and utopias for several economies and societies that propose alternatives to the capitalist system and which lost their driving force after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Within the structure of the work, theoretical concepts of alternative societies, historical non-official models and utopian ideas are presented in videos that are between 20 and 37 minutes long.
See also Clemente Padin works that explore topics such as pacifism and document unusual forms of political demonstrations.
Oliver Ressler, born in Knittelfeld, in Austria, executes projects on social and political themes. Since 1994 his works have focused on racism, globalization, sustainable development, genetic engineering and forms of resistance. He has a degree from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and he spent a period as a resident artist at the Banff Centre, in Canada.
A deconstruction of the society of spectacles and the so-called “state terrorism”. It is an installation made up of three DVD screens: on the central one there are TV images of atrocities (political or not). On the side screens, the crowd applauds each time a powerful image enters or leaves the main screen.
See also Das Kapital, a Marcello Mercado’s work which questions the role of image in modern society.
Antoni Muntadas, Catalan artist, since the 70’s has been creating onwards, videos and installations that address issues related to the icons that represent power and the tricks of the communication systems. Since his first personal exhibition in Madrid, in 1971, he has often taken part in international exhibitions. He lives and works in New York.
Documentary about the famous competitive exhibition of artificial life and intelligence sponsored by Fundación Telefonica, in Madrid. Digital genetics, robotics, chaotic algorithms, computer viruses and virtual ecosystems are the main traits of Vida, which is already in its fifth edition.
by Andrei Ujica and Johannes Fischer (Romania – Germany, 2002)
The Romanian film-maker Andrei Ujica filmed a conversation about the Chernobyl accident between Paul Virilio and Svetlana Aleksievich, who is the author of a book with interviews of witnesses and victims of the tragedy in Russia. The conclusion is that Chernobyl transcended the factual sphere, becoming an “accident of knowledge”, due to the difficulty with which it was assimilated by public opinion. The audience literally “feels” that it is participating in on the conversation, which was put together by Fisher using a simple 3D projection technique.
Andrei Ujica was born in 1951 in Romania where he studied literature. Since 1968 he has worked as a writer. He taught literature and media theory in Heidelberg. He has lived in Germany since 1981. From 1990 onwards he has directed films and documentaries. He is currently a director of the Film Institute, audiovisual department of ZKM.
by Iain Mott, Experimenta Media Arts (Australia, 2001)
“Close developed in response to the death of a friend in 1998 and on viewing his body. I was, somewhat inevitably, powerfully struck by his absence – he was clearly elsewhere. I decided to produce a piece that would facilitate a meditation on death using conflicting phenomena associated with two methods of representation: spatial audio and the moving image.
Close is a multi-screen video projection installation that blurs the separation between viewer and subject by means of 3-dimensional sound. The viewer wears headphones and hears sound from the perspective of the subject. Close portrays a haircut as a kind of death. The hairdresser, in a gradual erasure of the subjects features, removes hair and eyebrows with scissors and razors. The viewer inhabits the body of the subject as if watching his or her own disappearance. The shared ritualistic experience explores territories of death and loss.” Iain Mott, artist.
by Piotr Wyrzykowski (also known as Peter Style), Wro Center for Media Art Foundation (Polonia, 2000)
“We live in times of immense scientific and technological progress which creates new conditions for our contacts with the world. Technology continues to change the world, and – although many things came to pass, it is not the end of the whole run: transformations will get even more fast-paced. These transformations exert enormous influence on human psychology, mentality and physiology; they also put their pressure on human bodies and interrelationships. The changes were so overwhelming and complex that many of you, without being aware of the process of transformation, attained cyborg status.” artist Piotr Wyrzykowski (also known as Peter Style)
