Martin HowsePeter FlemmingDissolutions
P. Flemming, 2015
Exhibition
December 1-8, 2016 at PERTE DE SIGNAL
Opening
December 1, 2016 at PERTE DE SIGNAL
Dissolutions is an artistic research residency and exhibition project initiated by Berlin-based artist Martin Howse, curated by Peter Flemming in collaboration with OBORO and PERTE DE SIGNAL, with support from the Goethe-Institut Montréal. Dissolutions is a series of playfully experimental situations (open labs, workshops, talks, field trips) that explore the material-basis of contemporary cultures, focusing on the transition from large-scale industrial technologies to the seemingly invisible realm of the digital. This research will lead to the Montreal world premiere of an intriguing new installation by Howse.
A sprawling system of glass cells and tubes, this installation visibly performs the slow biological and chemical extraction of acids from the air and earth using historical electro-chemical processes, in parallel with the gradual dissolution of fully articulated technological objects (waste electronics) and raw materials used to make them (metal and mineral ores). Dissolutions literally describes an earth-technological cycle of mineral extraction and material transformation, mirroring cycles of technological consumption: copper, gold and silver are pulled from the earth, used to create technology, junked tech is dissolved and returned to the earth.
Just as industrial sites are disappearing from the Western metropolitan landscape, subsequently reappearing in many non-Western cities, so digital technology effaces its material origin and eventual earthly destination, as e-waste. These erasures are parts of our culture: they supply our way of life and impact greatly on the terrestrial ecosystem, yet tend to remain submerged from collective awareness. Dissolutions acknowledges these traces, allowing their processes of dissolution and transformation to emerge for conscious examination.
P. Flemming, 2015
Martin Howse is occupied with an artistic investigation of the links between the earth, software and the human psyche, proposing a return to animism within a critical misuse of scientific technology. Howse constructs experimental situations (within process-driven performance, laboratories, walks, and workshops), material art works and texts. From 1998 to 2005 he was director of ap, a software performance group working with electronic waste, and pioneering an early approach to digital glitch.
Peter Flemming is a Montréal based artist and curator. As an internationally exhibiting artist, Flemming has garnered numerous merits to support both his research and creative practice. Current curatorial projects include the the Montréal premieres of Dissolutions (Fall 2016) by Berlin artist Martin Howse. He is Vice President of the Board of Directors at OBORO, and part-time Professor at Concordia University where he is principal co-facilitator of the interdisclinary art + science Embedded Research Initiative.
