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This research project focuses on the performativity of the materials that underlie historical and contemporary, electronic and digital media. A combination of media archaeology and speculation is used in an attempt to pry ourselves loose from the problematic origins of these materials and technologies.

The research starts from the working assumption that all materials are artificial, and that calling material 'raw' only serves to make a distinction between visible and invisible labour. By exploring and showing material processes in films and installations, I will investigate the technologies, social structures, concepts and narratives around the agency of the materials that are central to our current technologies.

The aim is to develop procedures and devices that produce images, but which also stage a specific technological presence. By developing speculative perspectives and technologies, I hope to reflect on some of the ways in which the human, the non-human and technology articulate each other.

Artificial crystal grown in the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use in electronics, late 1940s.

Systems that Matter

project team
Joost Rekveld, Joost Rekveld
duration
15.11.2024 – 14.11.2030
keywords
technology, media archaeology, materiality, speculation, performativity