CONTEMPORARY PLASTIC

ctrl_alt_del / Contemporary Plastic

As a multi-layered analogy, the title ctrl-alt-del has been chosen to underline several interrelated phenomena which comprise the entire project. The first and direct connotation is the reference to the ‘re-start’, thus ‘re-set’ function in the most ordinary operating system of a common computer. After restarting the computer, a new session begins, fresh for new possibilities. Immersed in digital technologies and computer processes, sound art today is on the brink of such a turn, ripe with new possibilities. This new milieu is about to emerge out of the current situation, standing on a freshly flattened and compressed ground. Yet from beneath this ground surface previous processes and past heritage continue to breathe life. This new formation is an attempt at the redefinition of sonic processes; therefore at one level it is conscious. Secondly, taking the analogy further and deeper, we look at the mechanism of restarting. During the restarting of the computer, the operating system initiates a series of unpredictable and unrecorded operations. This process can be well defined by the accidental and mysterious nature of technology. It also signifies a rupture, which dilutes knowledge from technology. It is such a rupture that points out the basis of this formation by blurring the boundaries of perceptual habits and aural experimentation. ctrl_alt_del aims to occupy just this uncharted time-zone of re­start­ing.

There is sufficient evidence that a good number of artists stand at this time-zone, producing works that signal the new plateau, yet borne out of their undefined, mysterious, idiosyncratic, non-prescriptive conditions enmeshed in electronic processes. This entire formation should not be perceived as something framed by digital and electronic constraints of the computer realm. Most of the works originate from rawness of actual sound materials of daily-life, nature, and bricolage collections, whereas some come up as the end products and processes of computer generated experiments. At this new plateau, most of the influences are not necessarily musical: they could be verbal, architectural, urban, scientific or technical. This is a plateau where most of the boundaries start to dissolve into each other.

ctrl_alt_del brings forth a series of symptomatic conditions which have to be manifest and studied and then documented. Parallel to the links that are pertinent to the production process of the artist, there is a re-mapping of geography with regard to this production and performance. Performance in this new topology becomes one event in a series of events that could be characterized as intensification. A time-zone similar to what ctrl_alt_del seeks to inquire: after the restarting, intensification disappears to be reassembled at a new node in the network. After the realization of the  project, the node, the city is left with a possibility to keep a certain momentum inside. An event is without doubt an infusion of external presence, be it another culture or an exotic individual idiosyncrasy. Maastricht and Istanbul will serve as a couple, a resonance could create more repercussion than any other single point. The actualisation of ctrl_alt_del on the map should echo the new network topology.

“Contemporary Plastic” by ROR (Revolutions on Request)

ROR (Revolutions on Request) is a Helsinki based artist collective. Klaus Nyqvist, Karoliina Taipale, Panu Puolakka and Jiri Geller are the core members of this collective. They are producing strategies, works, spaces, and ideas by collaborating with other artists (This time, for ctrl_alt_del project they collaborated with Marco Roininen).Their art production is an amalgamation of graphic and industrial design, arts and craft, and art.

Their nihilist approach against all meta-narratives and ideologies can be easily read through their technologically driven, well-designed and profoundly crafted fetish pop objects. These objects are indeed all familiar for the receiver and they are bizarrely all functioning. Yet, the clash comes with the micro mechanisms that they implement in each of them, which literally collides the expectations. These are all dysfunctioning and/or unexpectedly functioning objects extracted from daily life.

Consequently, all of the works in the exhibition “Contemporary Plastic” operate as disintegrated parts of a giant machinery; in all probability such attitudes and positions could be well defined as the visual dublication of the concept of the project.