+LIFE PATTERNS 6-7+AN INTERVIEW WITH PRODUCTLANEEVOL 6-13+DEATH MONUMENTS 14-15+THE JET AS A MODERN HYBRID 24-27+THE TECHNO-SUIT: AN OLD WORLD SCULPTURE 24-27+DEATH MONUMENTS 2 26-27

CONTENTS

HYBRID

This book represents a narrative “tumble” through time and space, tumbling is the new collage aesthetic to emerge from the 21st Century virtual world, and one that allows us to draw links between the aesthetics and zeitgeists of past and present civilisations, comparing and contrasting and creating new juxtapositions of im-ages which jar and inform each others contexts.

In this publication we explore the monumental awe that is inspired by the pyramids or the pantheon and the mir-ror it finds in the glossy modern world of luxury, leisure, death, sex and technology, looking at the artefacts of the present as relics from the future.

I can’t help but feel there is a strong focus on the object/ornamentation in your work. What place do you feel these objects have within the shift we are going through as a society towards de-materialization? You could argue that these Dinosaur brands like Phillips and Sony holding huge expos demonstrating physical products (and not ones like apple) are part of a kind of spectacle that belongs to another era.

+ Yes, I see Sony and Toshiba purely as End Time brands – unapologetically dark and sinister. Their output is entirely focused on Old Earth concepts and this becomes explicitly apparent when so many other commodities are becoming services and applications. In essence they perpetuate a macabre array of consumer products, which are perhaps the great phenomena of our age – for which we are witnessing such a large-scale worship of death and decay.

So part of my work is to collect and present this phenomenon in object form and part of the reason I present this material within the context of rocks, quartz and obsidian is because I’m interested in how all these products, items and substances which are so specific to our age, obtain within them, a resonating energy or aura that holds in-formation about our times. I think that there has been a sudden surge in the reassessment of this material of late, where the aura that surrounds commodities is now seen as something that goes beyond its relation to a mere fetish quality or market value and we are now starting to understand that there is something more metaphysical at work, which lies within the very fabric of our culture.

± ( : PRODUCTLANEEVOL : ) ±an interview with

Phillips 2013 (2010)

What will Phillips be making if we are still here in 2022?

+ Philips is perhaps the first of those dinosaur brands which has started to recognize that it cant keep on perpetu-ating what is has been involved in up to now and has become somewhat the Brave New World of the consumer electronics giants. But rather than make functional and innovative products like apple it has become stuck in a paradoxical limbo of materialism and dream world – making products that act as responsive to both the ecological crisis and consumer culture. Despite its affluence and purity it could be the darkest of them all. Its hard to believe that there is any future in some of these consumer electronics, so in Philips2013 I am trying to present a reworked or unveiled representation of the company and channel a kind of expanded idea of a ‘brand concept’ which has gone to radical and neurotic lengths in order to sustain itself. It’s this really enveloped idea of a black swan event and the concept of ‘negative messianic time’ as a response to the late capitalist condition, recession, ecology and belief systems.

Phillips 2013 (2010)

Because the images on your tumblr are posted without any context it gives them an almost archeologi-cal context that can be quite haunting, like I’m looking at relics from the last age of man. Is this inten-tional? Would you agree that there is a sort of apocalyptic angst that pervades your work and the way in which we are meant to view these products?

+ I think that there is a certain nostalgia about apocalypticism because it yearns for the forms of our world to ‘go out with a bang rather than whimper’ as was stated in Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales. Sometimes all I want to do is hold products to the sky in honor and for two years during 2008 and 2009 I carried that green air freshener that I use as my logo everywhere I went. But I think that now this would only satisfy a sporadic and sensational angst. My university tutor, Shelley Sacks who works with developing Joseph Beuys’s idea of Social Sculpture is concerned with developing ‘new organs of perception’ though ways to re-connect with the natural world, so in many ways, although from the outset, that kind of response poles with the work I’m doing, I’ve realized it is also very much concerned with the same issues. I think that if we are going to move through our current state we have to take a good look at technology and those who control it. The reworking and rethinking of brands, economy and the shape of late capitalism is one way we can take back control. So in many ways I want to give mass culture a death mask, I want it to choke on its own fumes. Walter Benjamin wanted to dispel the idea of progress as a transitory illusion and I think that today in the global arena we have a chance to reclaim and re-think the influx of media and material we are experiencing and this really becomes apparent in all sorts of activities people are involved in today through the sharing and re-assessment of all this information and media.

Sanyo Now (2009)

These late-mankind relics have this air of opulence and excess about them too, like we’ve gone too far...they have a real air of menace about them

+ I do agree and much of the treatment I am giving to some of these relics has been very much about making visible or highlighting these aspects which really become apparent when they are placed within different environ-mental contexts and conditions. I also want to re-address the previous question because I feel that this ques-tion of context and menace is also relates to, say household plants, palm trees in shopping centers and natural elements within supermarkets – which might assist Marc Auge’s concept of ‘non places’ where objects acts as symptoms of all the decentralization we are experiencing and are literally suspended in space and time. The same thing is found when we see electronic devices in {old) nature. There is a real emphasis of the primitive and archaic not because new products and technologies becomes obsolete at such a fast rate but rather that their simplistic mimicry of the natural world obscures our understanding of the ‘new’.

If a hybrid a thousands of years ago was a minotaur, what would constitute one now? Would technology re-place an animal in terms of what we can merge with? I’m also thinking of the quote on R-U-IN?s about every red “record” button we see actually being blood...

+ I’m a big fan of Zacheria Stitchin and the whole concept of ancient astronaut theory. I actually grew up with loads of books on ancient technology and Ufology because my Mum was really into it at some point. So I’ve always regarded mythologies as somewhat related to actual events – extra terrestrials creating genetic hybrids with advanced technol-ogy in ancient Greece and Rome – The Immaculate Conception, things like that. The amazing thing about our idea of history is that myth, allegory, symbolism and reality all get thrown together in one big melting pot that makes the present seem really ordered and scientific in comparison to a seemingly mysterious and esoteric past. The inter-esting thing about the Internet is that in many ways this sense mythology is becoming re-emergent in our present culture.

Conventional ideas totally dominate our thoughts and there are so many interesting questions that need to be more widely addressed about the nature of development and where we have really come from – unfortunately these are kept down by all the dominant institutions in science, religion and the corporate world and this is something that re-ally needs to be addressed if artists, or anyone, else are going to respond to technology in more meaningful ways than say, anything Selarc has done. So I think that planting alternate ideas about everyday stuff, like what Kari (Alt-mann) is doing by attaching symbolic nature to the record button, can alter the way we perceive these products and technologies, and that’s really useful because it challenges us to re-think what we are actually interacting with. It’s re-ally amazing to see how society adapts and melts into all this technology and commodities and we really do live in a world which has totally merged with products and devices, even in the way that people associate with certain brands.

The Old Earth Seminar(2009)

What is it that draws you to these objects? The shiny black plastic looks really fetishized and sexual, not even in a gender-centric or phallic way, it’s really ambiguous, like these products are pleasure objects that transcend genders?

+ I’ve been drawn to certain, for the lack of a better word, ‘blob-like’ objects since I was a kid – washing liquid/power balls, tampons, and bubble bath. So there has been a really long process of trying to understand and work with this fascination, which can open the objects up to multiple layers of meaning or interpretation. And what I mean by ‘blob like’ is that their ambiguity creates multiple narratives – the Sony Rolly for example, when compared to the AIBO, which is totally unambiguous, has a specific quality, which is similar to the Philips Sensual Massager. I agree that the fetish quality they posses transcends our idea of sexuality. In essence, just as robots which no longer mim-ic old forms (dogs, humans) become organic elements, the product sexuality becomes something in and of itself. It becomes its own nature and this is really evident when we look at the Sensual Massager, which is marketed as a device to encourage and enhance sexual play between couples but really when you look at the way it is advertised, the product is taking centre stage and there is a total role reversal.

Old Earth Objects (Series 2009-2010)

Is there a hint of irony in the image of an HD screen showing a beautiful waterfall? Or is this a kind of perfect harmony between nature and technology?

+ HD is a really old concept if we are to look at say, the Elizabethan or romantic periods which are both examples of a ‘Highly defined’ representation of reality and its clear that every period expresses its own romanticized or perfect representation of itself, so I think that all these televisions are a great way of understanding the spirit of the age.

But yet, It is important to take into account the elements of irony and separation from nature because there is, maybe, something slightly disconcerting about HD Television and ‘3D’ which is likely to be causing some kind of synaptic misalignment and this today becomes apparent in how we have become obsessed with a perfect image surface. So When I go into an AV store and I see LED TV’s playing monsters Inc. I feel nauseas and unbalanced, which was also how I felt when I went to see Avatar (which is more than ironic considering the films message).

There’s something that reeks of past mistakes (petro chemicals, hormonal drugs, anti-perspiring) in the hyperreal surface area of HD television that suggests have not yet learnt how to connect the conditions this planet has to of-fer and the ‘real3D’ experience seems flatter and stagnant than ever. This seems to be the antisepsis of the kind of consciousness people are experiencing from their use of networked devices or any ‘new age’ re-connection with {old} nature.So I feel that however romantic HD is, its romance is burnt with the want for a perfectly stagnant experience of the world and if anything it symbolizes how far we have got to go if there is going to be less focus on consumer products and wider scope for new technology which works in sync with the conditions of this planet.

Old Earth Objects (Series 2009-2010)

All the content in this book started out being inspired by the Guttari quote “The forms of thought assisted by computer are mutant”. How much does the actual physical process of making something on a computer screen affect the way you work? What about the Internet itself? Do you benefit alot from the process of mutation and collaboration that it brings?

+ Its true that there has been this huge shift in what Nicholas bourrioud has called postproduction and relational art – and this idea expands into how everyone is DJ’ing information media today, which is causing a kind of viscosity in our social relationships. But I think we have to take a second look at the interface we are actually interacting with because in lot of ways we are at a really difficult time in terms of how we relate to our own, individual experience. Human experience in general, largely due to the rise of the Internet and social networking has shifted into a com-pletely different realm.Despite being an artist who used web 2.0 as a primary medium for representation/expression, I’m slightly critical of the webs ability to take away from our old idea of directly lived, human experience. I’m aware of my reaction-ary tone here and I’m sure that there are lots who would say that engagement with the web is directly lived and surfing is a derive or even that a spiritual web, hive mind or even that a new era of consciousness has come into existence. Which I am inclined to agree with to some extent. But the problem is that noting really exists in the same way anymore unless it has a presence within this web 2.0 arena. So this is a problem because at present it favors only that which can only be communicated via screen based, networked devices and in many ways it renders the physicality of the world, singularity and human emotion irrelevent.

I sometimes feel that most artists work is either stuck in the past or is frustratingly time-less (universal, era-less concepts about space, perception etc) but what I love most about your work and all of the output from R-U-IN?s is that you guys really work with the aesthetics of THE NOW. How does THE NOW feel to you? It seems that alot of people feel (and this is a very 20th century way of thinking) cheated 2010 isn’t “futuristic” enough because we don’t have jetpacks or flying cars and sometimes I feel the same, but then other times I look at R-U-IN?s, or a photo of Shanghai’s skyline, or I take a train ride through the Isle of Dogs and get a really giddy feeling of “future shock”, like “wow, I really do live in “the future””. Are you happy with how 2010 looks?

+ Well, I want to re-address my apocalipticism because I really don’t see any future if we are to carry on like this. I have been considering spending a year living in some kind of alternative community that embraces sustainable technologies and engagement with the natural world because I don’t know how much longer I can go on turning things out without having some kind of new experience before I re-engage with the forms of mass culture. After Philips 2013 we’ll see what happens, I’m less excited about the internet than I was 3 months ago and one thing is certain, we are not living any where near our potential.

iconoplasm.comr-u-ins.tumblr.com

Old Earth Objects (Series 2009-2010)

Jack Lathamjack.l.latham@gmail.commountolympusblog.blogspot.com