LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

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DANIEL G. ANDÚJAR / TECHNOLOGIES TO THE PEOPLE

Postcapital Archive (1989-2001). Borders / Library (2006-2009)

Installation: wooden tower, collages, multimedia archive, computer stations.
Acknowledgements: Württembergisher Kunstverein Stuttgart; La Virreina, Barcelona; Hangar, Barcelona

Postcapital Archive (1989–2001) is a multimedia installation that both presents and provides access to his "Postcapital Archive” –over 250,000 text, video, and audio documents compiled by the artist from the Internet over the past ten years. The chronological parameters of the archive are the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks on September 11. Andújar’s methodology for this investigation is not the archive per se but active participation in and interaction with it. Hence the wooden tower in the installation is inaccessible – there is no single, overarching view of knowledge – and visitors are invited to produce their own sets of knowledge by selectively navigating the archive as well as contributing to it.

CHRISTOPHER BAKER

Hello World! Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise (2008)

Multi-channel video projection, sound. Courtesy: the artist

Hello World! features thousands of video diaries gathered from the Internet. Each video consists of a single individual speaking to a potentially massive audience from a private space. The sound shifts between individuals and the group, allowing viewers to listen in on unique speakers or become immersed in the cacophony of oices. Hello World! explores the potential and reality of Web 2.0 technologies and social media. On the one hand, sites such as YouTube promise to create a participatory, democratizing platform that answers to the human desire to be heard. On the other hand, the sheer mass of public speakers makes it impossible to listen to all the individual voices. Baker’s project questions the language of media, its possibilities for participation and agency, and the democratic process.

FERNANDO GARCÍA-DORY

Museum’s Pastoral – Encuentro de la Federación de Pastores (2009)

Shepherd’s meeting. Installation with video documentation and commissioned visual works by Eduardo Díaz Hevia and Manu Griñón. Production: LABoral. Acknowledgements: FEP shepherds; Andra Piskaer; Rikrit Tiravanija/Fundación ARQ ART-Galería Salvador Díaz; Abitita

García-Dory organized a meeting of the National Federation of Shepherds (an organization he initiated in 2008) during Feedforward and created an installation accompanying and documenting the event. At a time when small farms in Europe are disappearing at a rapid pace, shepherds more than ever represent food sovereignty and sustainability. Yet the inherent solitude of their profession makes it difficult for them to have agency as a collective. Museum’s Pastoral strives to create a social system design that allows a marginalized community to share views, analyze problems, and occupy an institutional space. The art space provides a framework for the social system, for exploring the genre of the pastoral and the projection of ideals on the figure of the shepherd.

ALI MOMENI + ROBIN MANDEL

Smoke and Hot Air (2007-2008)

Smoke, electronics, sound. Courtesy: the artists. Acknowledgements: Matt Brackett

Smoke and Hot Air is the artists’ response to the frequent threats against Iran by other countries in recent years. The project searches for sentences including the words “attack Iran” on Google News, which are then spoken using a text-to-speech synthesizer. The voice is in turn picked up by a microphone, analyzed and translated into rhythmically corresponding smoke rings from a quartet of smoke ring makers. Translating the news into old-fashioned smoke signals, the project illustrates how the complexities of national and political identity can get reduced to false impressions, deceit and posturing.

CARLOS MOTTA

The Good Life (2005-2008)
Wooden structure, multi-channel video, photos.

Courtesy: the artist

The Good Life is a multi-part video project composed of over 360 video interviews with pedestrians on the streets of 12 cities in Latin America: Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Guatemala, La Paz, Managua, México City, Panamá, Santiago, San Salvador, São Paulo and Tegucigalpa. The work examines processes of democratization as they relate to US interventionist policies in the region, and the interviews cover topics such as individuals’ perceptions of US foreign policy, democracy, leadership, and governance. The result is a wide spectrum of responses and opinions, which vary according to local situations and specifi c forms of government in each country. Viewers encounter a multi-channel video installation, where 12 monitors are mounted on a four-part, two-tiered wooden structure that is an abstracted formal reference to the Priene, the theater and the general space of the Athenian agora, in which citizens were entitled to meet, debate, and participate in legislative and judicial decisions. The position of the monitors on the structure allows them to metaphorically function as speaking subjects –citizens– in the space, addressing their comments to a wider forum.

PIOTR SZYHALSKI

Labor Camp Study Room: D (2009)

Installation: sound, custom software, electronics and physical interfaces.

Production: LABoral

This is the fourth instalment in an ongoing series of Labor Camp Study Rooms. Study Room: D consists of four all-mounted panels with physical interfaces allowing the users to meander through a vast database of historical voice recordings from throughout the 20th century, including Mao, Stalin and Hitler, as well as September 11 and
the Iraq War. Constructed with custom software, hardware and various electronics, the work offers an opportunity for both the study as well as manipulation of archival audio artefacts. Study Rooms are often presented in relation to other Labor Camp projects, and Study Room: D provides direct references and insight into the White Star Cluster installation.

T+T (TAMIKO THIEL & TERESA REUTER)

Virtuelle Mauer / Reconstructing the Wall (2009)
3D interactive installation

Developed in close cooperation and with the support of the Berlin Senate Chancellary for Cultural Affairs as an integral part of its Memorial Concept for the Berlin Wall. Acknowledgements: Hauptstadt Kulturfonds (Berlin Capital City Cultural Fund); Bitmanagement Software GmbH; Lunatic Interactive GmbH; Softline
JSC; metroGap e.v.; MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

For decades the Berlin Wall was a symbol of repression and of the division of Germany, Europe, and indeed the entire world into two politically opposing systems. Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall, recreates a kilometre-long section of the Wall and its surrounding neighbourhoods in East and West Berlin. By exploring the virtual space, users’ movements and actions trigger dramatic encounters with events spanning the 1960s to the turn of the millennium. They become protagonists in a surrealist dream in the role of normal Berlin residents living in the shadow of the Wall.