STWST No Content Dptm.
NIK, OR: ALONE IN THE ELECTROSHOCK ROOM
SF-Exploitation-Draft on Screen
Servus Clubraum, 1st Floor: Continuous
Office, 2nd Floor: Fri, 18:00-24:00, Sat, 08:00-24:00, Sun, 08:00-18:00
'Nik, or: Alone in the Electroshock Room' is a word and sentence fragment scripting that works with analogue text creation methods and results in a clocking of tags and video sequences. Shown on screen.
The work relies on language and body as the first media - and in terms of content works with themes that point to an electric shock future. The text tells the project of an SF-exploitation story, a narrative about a society that has built its foundations on electricity since the 18th century. Now, in the future of the 21st century, the overall electrical body of the net confronts the individual bodies as follows: The electric Entity eats everything. It releases data and emotions from the non-human and human actors through weaker or stronger electric shocks. However, it must constantly feed itself with new data to keep itself alive. After it is on the verge of having calculated every single molecule of the universe into its digital version, it ultimately needs the 'raw individual human experience' of the protagonist Nik. It needs his feelings about the exploitative conditions, as a dark resource of resistance against itself - in order not to collapse within itself.
Nik' includes the theme of the body and consciousness in reduction mode as well as abstract technological coordinates. The work is reduced and fragmentary. The intention is to train form, content and perception in a fundamental mode of not being able to recognise; and to train to navigate irrationally. The presentation leads to a continuous reading process pulsed as tags of words and sentence fragments. 'Nik' poses the fundamental question of what kinds of form, content and consciousness are at all appropriate to the fully digitised mode, not to be reductive, but to transition into what is often called “immersive” in the context of technology, but in the end often only manipulates better. Eat or die. Content or non-content: It's the same when reading or standing in front of it: It' still the content, stupid. But the content can't be seen.
STWST No Content Dptm. is here Tanja Brandmayr and Claus Harringer.
Tanja Brandmayr is artist and writer and has been working for many years and in different contexts between text, media, staging and art. Art and context research Quasikunst in cooperation with STWST. Is working in STWST. Also editor and author for art and culture magazines. Lives in Linz/Austria.
'Nik, or: Alone in the Electroshock Room' has already been published as an SF Exploitation Draft as part of the servus publication series 'Nourishing Network' 2020/21.
‚Nik, oder: Allein im Elektroschock-Zimmer‘ is related to the art and research field Quasikunst.
Claus Harringer is a staff member of the STWST and editor of the Versorgerin.
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