Happy to have arrived at Schießl-Haus in Kollnburg for an artist residency with the wonderful Mariia Mytrofanova & Zayse.

Currently getting the library sorted for my project focusing on ideals of the broken.

Starting point is the book ‘The Ideal of the Broken’ by the philosopher Alfred Sohn-Rethel, in which he emphasized that the phase in which we start to modify things is the time when technology becomes interesting. He even goes so far as to say that this is where the technology actually starts to work. In his book, he focuses on the technology of the Neapolitans, whom he encounters using a car engine to make coffee or starting their car with a piece of wood. One of the conclusions he draws is that “the essence of Technology [lies] in the functioning of the broken” (Sohn-Rethel, 1990, p.33). Thus the meaning of a device is (also) failure, damage, repair, reuse.

The aim of my residency project is to consider failure as form of resistance to the artefacts' function in the global cycle of production and economic relations. Apparent in obsolete, defective or broken everyday objects and people's stories going along with them, potentially revealing them as emotional and intellectual companions that can preserve memories, sustain relationships and provoking various forms of usage.

#Kaputt #Broken #Artifacts #Objects #TechnologicalObjects #Relationships #Individuation #RelationalOntology #Artistresidency #Kollnburg #Schiesslhaus #BayrischerWald