“Third spectral atomic,” by Florencia Levy in Cott Gallery, explores the invisible structures of contemporary extractivism and reflects on “technofeudalism”
The individual sample of Florencia Levy In Cott explores the invisible structures of contemporary extractivism, taking as a axis lithium as cosmic residue and strategic resource. It has been produced since 2015 and the Australian company Allkem, its owner, is of Australian origin. In the Atacamas communities in that area, the government and companies had exercised a collection policy but the population is seeing with concern the issue of water and has joined the current claims.
Levy He moved to Olaroz Salar in Palpalá, Jujuy, at 4500 m. On sea level where he filmed sound spectral records and satellite prospecting data that, through video, painting and ceramics, draws a material and symbolic cartography where cosmology, topographies of power and technology are intertwined.
The current sample “Third spectral atomic”, has curatorial text of Sofia Dourrón entitled “Conversation with a stone” (or the spectral brine) in which he cites the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923- 2012), Nobel Prize for Literature 1996: “I am made of stone/ Says the stone and therefore I must show a stone face/ wield/ I do not have the muscles to laugh.”
So, from the beginning, what follows is ominous. Dourón He also quotes the Finnish writer JUSSI PARICKAnew media technician that escurres in the geological memory of the planet to banish the foundational myths of digital culture, “increasingly automaton, less and less human” could not be absent from this text Harum Farocki (1944-2014), born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Germany, which described those created for military and surveillance purposes as “operational images”.
Levy Investigate what the expansion of extractive activity means for the planet, either in oceans as on Earth. Committed artist, we remember the memorable exhibition he will perform in Arthaus in 2023 “Last architecture “. In his current sample, he points out Dourón“Levy recovers the aesthetic potential of abstraction to draw mineral itineraries with the earth and with life.” The artist mixes oils with brine residues of an extractive site in the Salar already mentioned. Hence the arid, dry image of the surface of the pictures exposed with a layout of lines indicative of the routes furrowed by trucks with their load of minerals and the people who are displaced from their habitat.
There are, in a sector of the room, a vessel with a currency that rolls endlessly and without apparent destination by the edges of a bowl. Thus alludes to a former Minister of Finance of Greece, Yanis varoufakisborn in 1961, politician, book writer on politics and economy who coined the term technofeudalism for which technology companies have a similar power to that of the feudal lords of the past, they controlled the land and the companies control digital platforms, data and online markets.
According to Varoufakistechnofeudalism is sustained for its subordination to metals, lithium, used for drones, satellites, artificial intelligences, autonomous vehicles, rare earths and the captive attention of Internet users, as well as on screens, mobile phones, LED screens, components, components for airplanes, missiles.
We must be alert to artists who point out such hot issues and that should not be avoided for a better understanding of what happens in the world and that will change our lives, something that is already happening, almost substitiously.
Closing on November 8. Cott Gallery, Peru 973. From Tuesday to Saturday from 14 to 18.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
