Neur-o-matic: analogue media-art installation

Neur-o-matic is a series of twelve identical situations depicting the average generic working environment of the cognitive precariate whose labour is embedded within the absurd static environment of communication capitalism. Sub-conscious gestures dictated by the information technology trigger ideological operations inside the time-space medium whose time is increasingly shorter and space increasingly dispresed.

The artists have stripped the phantasm of information and knowledge cornucopia to its naked essence, its absurdity, whose insatiable desire is directed towards destruction. They have done this in close collaboration with engineers Brane Ždralo, Simon Bergoč and Boris Košak, sculptress Neža Jurman and sound artist Staš Vrenko. The installation’s mechanism is set up in such a way that the installation will partially auto-destruct during the exhibiting period and portray the fragmented and destructive effects of excessive production. All twelve situations are connected to a network, which triggers the banging of hammers on clones. The main operating centre is similar to a web environment embedding each of twelve workstations. The visitor is like an operator who is unable to control his or her actions since every push of a key is destructive. The only means of resistance and transformation of inert excessive production and action is a radical departure from the system and complete inaction.

Text: Ida Hiršenfelder
Photo: N. Ivanović