Rear view of the Lenin statue with antenna coming out of its back.
A Lenin statue in Seattle was turned into an antenna that broadcast the real resonances of the environment captured by a microphone inside it, and the symbolic resonances within it. Sound from other times and places were triggered by the activity of Taco del Mar’s cash register machine. The transmission had an approximate range of 300 feet and went on for a week, 24/7. A performer incarnating an Ethernaut placed signs in the borders of the sector and produced a series of actions next to the statue.
A transparent curtain has descended upon us. What yesterday took the form of an impenetrable wall of ideology that distributed geopolitical power on both sides of it, today disappears as transparent curtain of information that invisibly installs the logic of the market in everything. Space is now organized through the new immaterial dialectics of Signal/No Signal. As a way to transcend it, the statue has been turned into an antenna that broadcasts the real resonances of the environment inside it and the symbolic resonances within it, paced by the activity of the nearby Taco del Mar’s cash register machine. This transmission creates a void in this invisible curtain establishing an ethereal space of memory in real time in which what returns is not the past as such, but as possibility.
Audio excerpts from the live broadcast:
Video excerpts from the Ethernaut performance:
[ + INFO ] – An online journal about the making of Radio Volodia Sector
Production Credits:
Sculptor and research consultant: Pete Bevis
Ethernaut’s costume design: Elizabeth Buscmann.
Code assistant and video documentation: Michael McCrea.
Voice recordings: Mariya Minzer, Annie Wan and Eunsu Kang.
Produced by DXARTS (The Center for the Digital Arts and Experimental Media) and Archivo PAIS (Programa Teatro Acústico – Universidad Nacional de Quilmes)
With thanks to James Coupe and the DX473 Mechatronics class (spring 08), Fremont Arts Council, Fremont Chamber of Commerce, Anne Slope, Mark Tubic, John at Taco del Mar, Jay at Royal Grinders, Max Keene, Eric Parr.