SPAM, Metadata, N.N.nnnn, Data-clasm; since 2012
3D prints, polylactides; different sizes
Wires and entanglements, letters and algorithms are lent material form in Fabian Hesse’s series of data glitch sculptures such as „NSA“ from 2014. The 3D prints bespeak the furthest digital expanse and incursion of American civilization. The model would look the same for the NSA’s comrades in arms, Google, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, companies or ‚individuals‘ according to American law that are allowed to act in an imperialistic manner and remain impervious to public control in their conquest of digital and private space. The speed and dimension of the conquest is parlayed in the repetitive layering of hits or matches that seem metastasize outward in milliseconds from the center of this sculpture, whose actual core is obscured by the sheer mass of data. Herein we find the individuality so prominently put forward in an American Dream reduced to a nightmare of malicious algorithms and cool calculations, ones that are meant to be fed back and condition, or indeed to control their subjects. Targeted trolling gathers a surfeit of information that waits for deployment, while now and again leaking into public space, in ways that undermine the private sphere and old alliances. The sculpture hints at how this penetration and dissolution of the private works. Take a single line out of the matrix in the model and where does it lead you? „Trojan classic“: Now is that the brand name of a famous prophylactic „the Trojan rubber“, are we referring to the Iliad, or to trojans that can infect computers? Has someone cheated on her partner or displayed his learning? Or was an attempt being made to disrupt a power to undermine a state? Wires get crossed here as the private sphere is hollowed out and digital media made into a weapon. Fabian Hesse’s work allows for confrontation with the dangers of surveillance and misreadings executed at the margins of legality in America and with impunity outside of it.
Dr. John Czaplicka, Envisioning America, Galerie Hengevoss-Dürkop, 2019