Submitted by richard on Wed, 2008-06-04 06:14.
“Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction”
a new artwork by Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji
01SJ Biennial: “Superlight” at the San Jose Museum of Art
May 10th - August 31st, 2008
“Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction” is the first in a series of telephony-based memorials by the artists group Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji. The title of the work refers to the metal tantalum, an essential component of mobile phones, and is a memorial to the Congolese who have died from wars over the mining of this metal. The work is constructed from redundant electromechanical Strowger switches - the basis of the first automatic telephone exchanges. Members of London's Congolese community trigger the switches when they make phone calls through “Telephone Trottoire” - a “social telephony” project also designed by the artists with the Congolese radio programme Nostalgie Ya Mboka. The precisely poised movements and sounds of the switches create a sculptural presence for this otherwise intangible network of circulating conversations. In “Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction”, Harwood, Wright, and Yokoji weave together the ambiguities of globalisation, transnational migration and our addiction to constant communication.
The “Coltan Wars”
Since August 1998 there have been 3.9 million deaths and over 361,000 refugees created by the so-called “coltan wars” in the Congo region. Coltan ore is mined for the metal tantalum - an essential component of mobile phones and other communication devices that is now coveted by dozens of international mining companies and warring local militias. Although the conflict has continued up to the present day it remains almost entirely unknown outside of Africa.
Almon Strowger
Almon Brown Strowger was born in Penfield near Rochester, New York. An
undertaker by profession, he believed that the wife of a rival undertaker who worked at his local telephone exchange was routing customers through to her husband. His automatic telephone exchange made it possible to call someone directly instead of going through a human operator. The invention, patented on the 10th March 1891, is thought responsible for the conceptualization of modern telephone networks. His switches were in service until the 1990s when they were replaced by digital technologies made from tantalum.
“Telephone Trottoire”
“Telephone Trottoire” is a “social telephony” network aimed at the Congolese community in London, approximately 90% of whom are refugees or asylum seekers. In the Congo, where free speech has been censored for over forty years, people spread information while standing on street corners – by “radio trottoire” or “pavement radio”. Produced by the artists in collaboration with the Congolese radio programme “Nostalgie Ya Mboka”, “Telephone Trottoire” calls people up and invites them to pass around stories or topical news items over their phones.
“Tantalum Memorial – Residue” (courtesy Manifesta7) will be the second in the series, this time utilizing a 1938 telephone exchange rescued from the old Alumix factory in Bolzano, Italy. This is also the site of Manifesta 7 - the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, 19th July to 2nd November, 2008.
“Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction” will next be shown at The Science Museum in London UK in October 2008. This version will be triggered by the phone calls of a new telephony project created during workshops that will bring together young people from a Greenwich school with Congolese asylum seekers. The installation will then travel to Chalkwell Hall in Southend-on-Sea, Essex where it will launch the new centre for international arts organization Metal.
“Tantalum Memorial – Reconstruction” May 10 - August 31, 2008 is A FUSE Commissioned Residency for the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, ZERO1, CADRE Laboratory and the Lucas Artists Program, Montalvo Arts Center.
About the Artists:
Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji
The artists Harwood, Richard Wright and Matsuko Yokokoji have worked together since 2004, firstly as part of ‘Mongrel’ - an internationally recognised artists collective. Working in a fusion of art, digital media and open networks, they aim to reach beyond the hierarchies of power and knowledge to involve those normally excluded from expression and collaboration. Previous projects include the first online commission from the Tate Gallery, London, a BAFTA award nomination and work in the permanent collections of the Pompidou Centre Paris and the Centre for Media Arts in Karlsruhe (ZKM).
“Our approach to media is to set up a series of ways that allow it to become strange to people, to allow it to become a space of fun and experimentation, of expanded thoughts and actions... It is about opening up the implicit meaning of media itself – to mediate not by controlling and ordering what can be said, shown or heard but by providing the means to unblock channels of access, release currents of energy and reveal the margins of what people can feel, sense, reason and imagine.”
[Mongrel] were among the most talked about, high-impact artists of the late 1990s technoart scene... I am not sure if any other artists groups merited such attention.
Rachel Greene, Adjunct Curator, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
Author of INTERNET ART, Thames & Hudson’s World of Art series, 2003.
The fact that Mongrel has often chosen to work with immigrant communities, and in depressed neighbourhoods, where artists and art projects rarely reach in more than token ways, is evidence of how seriously the group takes it's social role as artists.
Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective)
The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India
…the work of Mongrel impresses me so much not just because of its political or critical sensitivity, but first and foremost because despite of this Mongrel also make very moving and breathtaking work.
Josephine Bosma
Art critic, Amsterdam
…you would be hard pressed to find a group who had developed such a significant body of work in digital art across Europe.
Dr. Matthew Fuller
David Gee Reader in New Media, Goldsmiths College, London
For more information contact:
Harwood,Wright, Yokokoji at hwy@mediashed.org
Links
http://www.mongrel.org.uk
http://www.mediashed.org
Telephone Trottoire: http://www.telephonetrottoire.net
ZERO1 Biennial: http://01sj.org
Manifesta7: http://www.manifesta7.it
Tantalum Memorial - Reconstruction 1
Tantalum Memorial - Reconstruction 2
Tantalum Memorial - Reconstruction 3
