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Joppe Venema (1998) is interested in how different forms of knowledge can overlap. His practice focuses in particular on historical experiments with electricity. Whereas in the eighteenth century electricity was regarded as a positive force capable of breaking the boundary between life and matter, today it often functions as a source of digital control, algorithmic extraction and cognitive exploitation.
Venema’s grandfather was a psychiatrist who wrote his dissertation on carbon dioxide inhalation therapy. In this research, he analysed the distinction between the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ human subject, the latter supposedly curable through the (controversial) treatment of carbon dioxide inhalation. In his art, Venema draws on this history to investigate the image of the human subject as a machine, a framework in which cybernetics plays a central role. This field of science examines how systems regulate themselves through continuous feedback – such as the regulation of body temperature or the functioning of ecosystems.
At Prospects, Venema presents a fictional laboratory that points to the effect of electricity on our world view. One of the sculptures in the installation refers to a ‘glovebox’, the laboratory instrument in which objects can be safely manipulated in a controlled atmosphere. In this particular box, however, a distinction is made between objects that are in fact harmless. Through the installation, Venema employs various techniques in which electricity acts as a co-creator, leaving its mark on the work – for instance through the use of Kirlian photography (photography in a high-voltage field) and a holographic video work. As a result, the will of the medium gains the upper hand, symbolic of the determining role electricity plays in our lives.
Written by Kelly-ann van Steveninck