Edition 2: Soften My Hardware: Agape and Eco-Futurities
Participating Artists: Fadl Fakhouri, Philip Errico, Ines Yahiaoui, Mschyen (Sascha Tier Olsen) & Thit Vienberg, Cy X, :3lon, Carbon A.
connectedmatter is pleased to present Soften My Hardware: Agape & Eco-Futurities, a one-day exhibition featuring installations by Fadl Fakhouri, Philip Errico, Ines Yahiaoui, and the duo Mschyen & Thit Vienberg. The event will also showcase live performances by Cy X and :3lon, along with a talk where curator Elia-Rosa Guirous engages in dialogue with Cop City eco-activist and artist Carbon A. This exhibition explores questions of sustainability, cyber healing practices, decoloniality, and collective organization/resistance in relation to technology. It posits central questions: How do we collectively organize to envision our future(s)? And, can the fight for a sustainable future ever be separated from a decolonial practice?
Recent works on the history of capitalism and fossil production have hindered the connection between Western hegemony in the 19th century and carbon emissions*. The imposition of steam production and coal extraction on newly occupied territories by the United Kingdom, followed by the United States and other Western and Northern European countries, accelerated the global energetic transition from local production to mass extinction. Today, the United States is responsible for nearly thirty percent of carbon emissions, despite comprising only 4.5% of the world’s population. Indigenous and BIPOC activists in the U.S. and beyond have been at the forefront of organizing against global warming and raising awareness about ecosystem destruction. Cop City, for instance, is a controversial project planning the construction of a police training facility designed to suppress climate and social protests, built over the South River forest in Atlanta, Georgia—a former Muscogee territory. This complex would become the largest of its kind in the USA. In February 2023, climate activist Tortuguita was murdered by police during a raid to reclaim the space. Cop City embodies the Leviathan set against the protection of ecosystems and living beings, accompanied by rigorous repression planning.
Positioning themselves against inherited colonial idiosyncrasies, the artists in this edition analyze the past to forge a path toward the future, drawing from self-care as political agency, as theorized by Audre Lorde in the 1980s. By questioning our relationship to land, production, and the environment, this exhibition emphasizes radical care modes of action against neo-liberal individualism. Each artist is invited to explore these themes, crafting their own responses to the dystopian reality we inhabit.
*Andras Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (2016).
eros, thanatos, and the fish by Cy X (Participative performance, 2023) is a performance in process, choreographic essay, and attempt to find a tether to this world in the midst of ancestral grief and enforced disembodiment. drawing upon their eco-erotic connection to fish and research on their gullah geechee ancestry, cy demands access to their full aliveness and erotic possibilities as a method for more empathic, sustainable, collaborative world-building that necessarily involves water, land, humans, and other-than-human beings across multiple timelines.
Sur le lithium, les cyborgs, et ce pour quoi la vie vaut la peine d’être vécue [On Lithium, Cyborgs, and What Life is Worth Living For] by Inès Yahiaoui is a video piece inspired by a text published in December 2022. It explores the intricate connections between the tech industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and geopolitics. Drawing from her own medical journey and experiences with mental illness, Yahiaoui examines the concepts of the cyborg and Otherness. She contends that the cyborg is not merely an entity enhanced with hardware and machinery; its emergence is closely linked to developments in pharmacology that began in the 1970s.
During this period, elements that had long been buried deep within the Earth were excavated under harsh conditions, serving both to stabilize patients' moods and to support profit-driven extraction practices. The oil crises of the post-WWII era further fueled the search for alternatives to combustion engines, ultimately leading to the rise of the tech-savvy companies we recognize today.
A Banned Surveillance by Fadl Fakhouri displaying footage of participants’ eyes from Trump’s Banned Countries, this work (2018) by Fadk Fakhouri brings unwelcome and surveilled communities to the US. Different formats include a human-sized projection or large monitor to interrogate scale as a determinant for the difference between intimacy and surveillance. This work was exhibited in Times Square, NYC, UC Berkeley, and The Jewish Museum, NYC in response to the exhibition ‘Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running’.
The installation by Philip Errico and Avatar Lilith, composed of trinkets, branches, and stones collected from Brooklyn's city parks, serves as a woven space for speakers, artists, and guests to engage with. This creation emerges from the local accumulation of materials and objects left behind by humanity. However, it also embodies the potential for envisioning future aesthetics rooted in sustainability. It demonstrates that we can derive beauty from locally sourced "natural" elements, incorporate digital arts, and repurpose items often dismissed as waste, thus promoting a more environmentally conscious and creative approach to art and design.
The dialogue between Carbon A., an artist, community organizer, and activist, and curator Elia-Rosa Guirous-Amasse revolved around strategies for uniting and organizing eco-activism efforts in response to rising police brutality and the project of Cop City in Atlanta. This conversation explored the challenges and opportunities presented by these issues and aimed to inspire collective action and social change within the community. It reflects the intersectionality of art, activism, and environmental concerns in the face of complex societal challenges.
The curatorial practice emphasizes participation and engagement. As part of this approach, guests are invited to participate in a collaborative drawing activity and to experience the innovative prototype of sensory-relieving goggles developed by Brooklyn-based composer and artist Jacob Rudin. This interactive experience aims to foster a shared sense of creativity, inspiration and exploration.