With Love (phone installation)

Materials: 7 refurbished smart phones

Duration: Duration varies 00:50-02:00

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Shown at: Berlin Science Gallery, TU Berlin 2024 as part of Pulling Blood from a Stone

LungA Festival, Seydisfjorder- Iceland, 2023

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Set through journeys across europe, With Love is a series of short films, each  centres around a voicenote, a one-way communication about train strikes, the hypocrisy of environmental concerns at an airport, or the priveledge of having an efficient public transport network. Filmed and recorded through the artist's own phone, signing off with 'Love you', the films reflect on climate anxieties within western europe, yet are filmed within the locations they are critiquing, quietly hypocritical, in the same way as much greenwashed literature.

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Funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat, with support from Science Gallery Berlin

Pulling Blood from a Stone, exhibition view, 2024, image credit Michael Setzpfandt

' Outside the sculpture, mobile phones can be found hanging from the ceiling on threads which are like umbilical cords. The woollen threads are dyed with mineral oxides too, inviting the visitor to reflect on the connection that mobile phones have to component-crucial minerals such as graphite and lithium, both of which feature in Act 4 of the radio play. On the eight mobile phones, visitors can view and listen to short, playful, 2-minute voice-note films by the artist. These informal yet intimate films lightly mock different forms of climate anxiety and the ironies of a ‘green’ Europe, while also introducing the idea that colonial history and climate justice are closely intertwined.'

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- Ariane Koek   -

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Ariane Koek's full curatorial text is available to read online.

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