Double conscious space / 2018

Mirroring foil, art-fair walls, led-screens

Site specific installation

Prospects & Concepts / Art Rotterdam

Marjet Zwaans (1988) searches for a demeanour to deal with our complex and increasingly abstract reality. In this environment, which apparently seems to become more and more transparent, repeatedly a situation arises that is hard to overview.

In order to understand complexity, she feels the need to simplify and reduce as well as to transcend existing boundaries and structures. She recognizes abstraction as a method from her academic background in economics, in which a model is used for the selection of and reflection on information. Abstraction is used here as a means for decision processes. The way in which 'to abstract' is described in A Hacker Manifesto now appeals to her more: To abstract is to construct a plane upon which otherwise different and unrelated matters may be brought into many possible relations (...) to manifest the manifold (McKenzie Wark, Hacker Manifesto, 2004).

Double conscious space reflects on developments in blockchain technology and a theoretical model called Doughnut Economics, and questions the apparent transparency. Technological development and its influence in communication and information systems carry a (false) promise of transparency. This work asks for whom the information is accessible. And if accessible, who makes meaningful interpretations from it? 

The one-way-mirroring foil changes its surface from reflective to transparent, and vice versa, through the presence or absence of light. It wishes to allude to double consciousness and the societal clash between increasing individualism and need for collective belonging.