Archaeology of Silicon2023
IInstallation
Various pieces with variable dimensions
The installation Wherever You Want to Go / Archaeology of Silicon is set in a post-utopian moment where the Internet has devolved into the digitization of everyday life under the framework of platform capitalism —with digital platforms such as Amazon, Google, or Meta— and "silicolonization," a term coined by French philosopher Éric Sadin to describe the silent, yet desired, implementation of algorithmic accompaniment in life.
In this scene, vegetation takes on agency and begins to reclaim a space once stripped from it. At its center lies a telephone booth in a horizontal position, evoking a coffin. Beside it, there is an electric scooter, an iPhone 4, a Glovo (spanish delivery platform) backpack, and a hologram projecting images of vanished telephone booths onto an Uber car door emblazoned with the slogan: Wherever you want to go (“A donde quieras llegar”). This neoliberal mantra shifts the responsibility for success or failure onto the atomized individual, perpetuating the idea that "you are the master of your own life" and that limits are merely a matter of personal will. These limits, however, are systematically reframed within the "platform-capitalist silicolonized realism" (articulated with Fisher, Srnicek, and Sadin) to appear endlessly expandable, often to the point of exhaustion.
Plant-based art: María Eugenia Diego.
Sound: Fragments from Zumbido by Marta Galindo and Álvaro Chior.
Photo: Goro Studio ©