Digital Landscapes
17 november 2018 – 17 february 2019
We Communicate Globally – a restaurant review in Bangkok, a pair of designed shoes from Stockholm, or an apartment for sale in Umeå – are just a click away. With four billion users in 2018, the internet is changing our perception of places, landscapes, and distances. Reality merges with the virtual world, instantly becoming accessible information in various ways. We constantly experience new combinations of an analog reality mixed with digital information, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish them as each generation of technology advances.
The virtual and almost infinite landscape creates a state of translocality, where proximity still represents reality through binary code that reaches us from the greatest machine humanity has ever created – the internet.
Data centers have become factories in our era. They connect people and machines from all over the globe, and information becomes resources that we can refine and utilize. Norrbotten is one of these industrial hubs in this immaterial and global complex, where the internet and the digital economy can manifest in the physical world. Boden has become a hosting city for bitcoin mines, and in Luleå one of the world’s largest data centers is now located. Both cities are flourishing startups in the county. Meanwhile, rural areas in Norrbotten see new economic prospects, creating job opportunities in virtual offices where there is functional internet connectivity. Additionally, regional authorities continue to work towards attracting more data center establishments in Norrbotten, hoping to strengthen the digital industry that generates jobs and attracts more players to the digital sector.
The exhibition is curated by Emily Fahlén, Asrin Haidari and Thomas Hämén.
More information can be found in the Folder (available only in Swedish).
Participating artists
Henrik Andersson, Marwa Arsanios, Monira Al-Qadiri, Filipa César, Anna Dacqué, Vishal K Dar, Ingela Ihrman, Isak Hall, Louis Henderson, Susanna Jablonski, Lap-See Lam, Hiwa K, Hanni Kamaly, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Nikos Markou, Olof Marsja, Didem Pekün, Katarina Pirak Sikku, Agnieszka Polska, Raqs Media Collective, Residence-in-Nature (Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Ingvild Holm, Hans Isaksson, Åsa Jungnelius, Oscar Männikkö, Esko Männikkö, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, Lisa Torell, Markus Vallien), Neda Saeedi, Karl Sjölund, Zhou Tao, Alexandros Tzannis, Ulla Wiggen, Susanne M. Winterling and Anja Örn.
Artists exhibiting at Havremagasinet:
Erik Holmstedt. In Erik Holmstedt’s photographic works, he explores the progress of the (post)industrial society and how it manifests itself in the landscapes of Norrbotten. It is a way to reflect on our present time, an investigation into the merging of a decaying artificial environment with newly developed structures.
EEEFFF is a collaborative initiative consisting of two individuals, Nicolay Spesivtsev (artist, researcher and computer scientist) and Dzina Zhuk (writer, artist and researcher) based in Moscow and Minsk. The artist duo EEEFFF explores the emotional effects accompanying an economic regime driven by calculated calculations. The group maintains an ongoing dialogue with a focus on science fiction and our contemporary technological environment, approaching imaginative scenarios of the future. EEEFFF combines their artistic expression with IT technology and science fiction, exploring the concept of data intrusion in both hardware and software.
Igor Samolet is a Russian artist, born in 1984 in Kotlas. In his work, Samolet addresses what is natural in human relationships, deconstructing and examining it through social, political and digital filters. All of his projects have a complex dramaturgy, ranging from comedy reminiscent of sitcoms to the personality of true drama, which is often seen as marginalized due to new social norms in Russia after a relatively short period of freedom of expression with the opportunity for personal expression. Samolet interprets the image of a postmodern personality through emotional instability, highlighting a comparable vulnerability in the global information process of the digital virtual space, which we refer to as post-digital.
Susanne M. Winterlings artistic practice is a negotiation between representation and reality. Through primarily time-based works, she plays with our expectations and predetermined ideas about what is natural and artificial, what is considered nature and culture. For several years, Winterling has closely studied dinoflagellates, a type of microscopic organisms found in both lakes and oceans, particularly common in tropical areas. Interacting with human movements, such as those generated by boats and swimmers, dinoflagellates create a bioluminescent blue light at night.
