CULTURAL ISOLATION

The first iteration of this work was made invisible, working silently in an underground gallery. Like hidden-away hardware of the many data centres popping up across Europe, just beyond the reach of the collective imagination, it was relentlessly working, documenting, processing data. Capturing the movements of all the potential guests, and quantifying them. Cataloguing unfulfilled encounters.

It is legal to photograph or videotape anything and anyone on any public property, within reasonable community standards. But where does the private space end and the public begin ? And what is reasonable ? Museums mine for data to sustain themselves ; to track visitors’ patterns, to turn visitors’ numbers into currency. Do customers of the gift shop and cafe count amongst visitors ? When does a passer-by become a visitor ? A viewer ? An image ? A number ?

Art viewing in vitrines. Window-shopping in museums. Momentary encounters mediated through glass – an obvious corona reference ? Think pre-corona : this phenomenon dates back much earlier. Unused tickets, unclaimed booked seats, ghost visitors, hundreds of unseen objects. All this invisible labour.

Now it is out, in the light, but not in the spotlight. It keeps on working, running background tasks. It transforms movement into light into code into image. It performs. And, perhaps unawares, you are part of this performance. The material proof is piling up, curling like a snake across the space. Perhaps you passed by without noticing it. But it noticed you.