The Second iDisplacement
On the steps leading to the Czech Republic’s one-room temple of a flock of neon swans, a second iDisplacement was deployed. Dead leaves were swept off the gentle terraces of gravel banked by thin, worn bricks. In a corner of a flatter portion of the path, where bricks led in a perpendicular line towards the ground cover of dead leaves and dark green ivy, six handheld devices were arranged in a loose grid.
It was photographed first as a collection of hovered black rectangles, echoed with an architectural shadow. Casting its own tight shadows, the exacting geometry of the devices projected both boldness and precariousness.
The name of Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, translated from Nahuatl, means “Smoking Mirror.” Legend has it that he lost his foot in a battle with the earth at the time of creation and replaced his foot with a smooth, concave sphere of obsidian — a black mirror used for sorcery and divination. The original black mirror as a prosthetic limb, anticipating the sleek promise of the handheld device.
A mobile phone or tablet, simplified into a black mirror to interrupt the ground, nonetheless retains its near-appendage status, its essence as an technological extension of the self, a technological expansion of the mind’s abilities. With a shift of feet and gaze, the black planes appeared to ripple and pulse, the material thresholds revealing themselves. It was photographed again just as two visitors encroached, framing the devices —caught in the prismatic instant—with their elongated shadows. Isolated in iridescence, the inanimate appears to testify to the animating potentiality of their users’ touch, their fingerprints revealed.
A device at once captured the ridge of foliage against the sky and bleached it into pure and glinting white. Dust and oil obscure the illusion, but in doing so, makes the interface visible. While perceived to directly reflect, a mirror subtly distorts. However disguised, it has a material depth and texture with which it mediates the virtually seen. The mobile interface has its own embedded history, a tale of disparate site and whitewashed bloodshed.
In Venice, on the isle of glass, skilled artisans sworn to secrecy refined the mercury-coated looking glass, their risky metallic concoction a trade secret guarded, in turn, on pain of death. Today, in certain types of mobile devices, those potent, political materials include Tungsten and Tantalum, embedded and unrecognized talismans from an abused and shrouded source.
This post is part of a series that narrates nine iDisplacements implemented at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Follow the iDisplacements publication on Medium and/or the iDisplacements hashtag on Instagram to read and see the next instalments.
