César Escudero Andaluz
Critical Triggers

Exhibition
16 January – 15 February 2019

Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Traditionally, critical art practices developed artworks laying emphasis on uncovering problems hidden behind the user’s gaze. In 1936, Walter Benjamin argued that artists need to “enter into debate” with the apparatus instead of “thinking that they are in possession of an apparatus that in reality possesses them.”

The solo exhibition Critical Triggers by Linz-based Spanish artist César Escudero focuses on rethinking the relationship and perception of human-machine interaction (HCI) through speculative – and critical – art and design. It does so by exploring the multifaceted implications of interfaces, networked practices, new digital materiality and underlying algorithms, in order to understand and reflect the production of new aesthetics after, or in, the so-called digital revolution.

How do artefacts and interfaces affect our perceptions and change us? What are the social implications of invisible practices that cloud the way people and businesses are labelled and treated? How can we understand and describe the effects of interfaces and algorithms on society, economy and human relations? What kind of society will derive from this apparatus?

The exhibition’s selected artworks pose these relevant questions as they critique our current interfaces and their cultural, economical, political, social and environmental implications.

Interfight (2015) consists of a series of physical data polluters – displayed as bugs in bird cages – acting on the surface of a touch screen device clicking, scrolling and zooming in and out at will. In doing so, they pollute the data we provide to corporations and national agencies, helping us to resist online profiling and data surveillance. Two recent projects, done in collaboration with artist Martín Nadal, deal with the massive amount of time, electricity and computer power invested in mining a single Bitcoin and successfully registering it on the Blockchain.

BITTERCOIN – The worst miner ever (2016) is an old calculator machine hacked to be used as a miner validating the pending Bitcoin transactions on the Blockchain, thus increasing the time needed to produce a Bitcoin to almost an eternity. The operations are displayed on the calculator screen and printed, with the paper accumulating freely around the calculator.

Bitcoin of Things (BoT, 2017) features everyday objects – such as rubber stamps, maracas, hammers, salt shakers – transformed into mining devices equipped with a Wi-Fi microcontroller and different sensors in order to be able to generate a Bitcoin. For example, every time a visitor uses the rubber stamp, a number is sent to the Blockchain for validation, while the stamp returns an ironic message on a paper ticket. Thus, the process of generating Bitcoins is turned into a playful, and usually unsuccessful, lottery. Other works in the show also criticise interfaces, including prints of modified desktops (File_món, 2012); 3D-printed keys made from downloadable Open Source plans in order to liberate shopping trolleys from their commercial destiny (Shopping Trolleys Liberation Front – STLF, 2014); and a take on media archeology in which data extracted from personal profiles on social networks has been converted into audio documents and recorded on cassettes (Tapebook, 2014).