Processing Progress, 2013
Collaborative project and exhibition with Orsolya Bajusz.
Mauve, Vienna.
...many of the most beautiful and inspiring things on our planet may have been created through destratification. A good example of this may be the emergence of bird songs: the mouth became destratified when it ceased to be a strictly alimentary organ, caught up in the day-to-day of eating flesh, and began to generate other flows (memes) and structures (songs) where the meshwork element dominated the hierarchical. -- Manuel De Landa, 1997.
For the first instalment of Processing Progress, we held a series of focus groups; in which we presented a number of processes that underlie the production, circulation, distribution, transportation and consumption of everyday products, for feedback and discussion. We asked questions in order to provoke a release of affects and sensations that respond to, or are embedded within, these synchronized movements of goods, funds and information that surround us and the bureaucracies that control such movements. Using the model of a market research focus group as a framework for applying these processes to redefined conceptions of use; we used the information and feedback generated from these sessions to write proposals for new artworks; attempting to re-situate these profit-generating and standardised flows, or divert their flows and potentials, in order to imagine different outcomes. The proposals formed the basis of the second installment of the project, the exhibition.
We invited a myna bird to play the role of 'chief processor'; provoking the bird to pick up on and mimic words and sounds that ocurred during the focus groups; and suggesting that the bird would be set free afterwards; distributing this feedback as birdsong in a flow throughout the sky.
You can watch the videos of the processes presented at the focus groups here.