The Brooklyn Rail

Note from the editor:

To diversify perspectives on art and technology would seem to be a prerequisite of our social milieu so deeply influenced by internet culture’s distributed nodal structure. As last month’s column by Helena Shaskevich (here) focused on recognizing how media artists decentralize creative and knowledge production through collaboration, and the ways that kind of labor gets marginalized in accordance with gendered presumptions, this month’s column by Doreen Rios presents screen culture emerging from the theories and practices of media art in Latin America. Her essay partly develops out of her work on the Espacios Líquidos: Políticas de la Pantalla (Liquid Spaces: Screen Politics) exhibition as part of the Bienal Universitaria de Arte Multimedial (University Biennial of Multimedia Art) by University of San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador in 2023. Rios asks us to see our screens reflect more than ourselves. She charges us to consider these devices—all too blithely associated with the Global North—as actually, and not just poetically, entangled with peoples and places… and to plug into ideas generated by a multitude of positionalities.

In the spirit of such relations, this column must be authored by many. Increasingly, I will act as editor, inviting voices whose work has informed, challenged, and encouraged my own impressions to become both sharper and more graceful. A generous mind does not preclude critical analysis and, as I expect you will observe here, a critical mind can be remarkably generous.

– Charlotte Kent

SCREENS: On Sabotage and Refusal in Latin American Art

Latin America provides a unique perspective on our relationship with screens, echoing concerns of the Global North while also adding a distinct perspective. Screens, beyond being mere technological artifacts, also represent cultural and artistic forms with which we interact, create, and experience our world. Shaped by historical legacies like colonialism and the process of mestizaje, as well as the shared experience of Spanish as a predominant language, Latin America’s cultural awareness is intricate and specific in relation to other geographies, while still being very nuanced. Yet, what remains as a shared condition at large is how its socio-political history is marked by tensions and contradictions, largely due to a constant struggle for autonomy against imperialism.

As computers and televisions announced the importance of screens, the smartphone became an intimate reflection of our relationship with technology, a screen-object that accompanies us everywhere. A quick internet search for “looking at phone” reveals videos of people engulfed in their devices. This phenomenon is often described as “inattentional blindness.” I would argue it is quite the opposite: we are consumed by attention, focused solely on the object in our hands, ignoring our immediate surroundings. Screens are omnipresent, from the first morning glance at our messages to the nightly doomscroll before bed. They witness our actions 24/7. Leaving behind the security of centralized perspectives propels us into a present where groundlessness defines our era. In this moment, politics and representation, exploitation and affect, intertwine unpredictably, tearing apart and reassembling repeatedly in unexpected ways.

So, what would screen politics be? Screen politics refers to how screens—on televisions, computers, smartphones, and other digital devices—shape political discourse, representation, and power dynamics. This includes the portrayal of different groups, issues of inclusion, bias, stereotyping, and the new forms of communication and expression that emerge in audiovisual media, such as memes and emojis as well as who controls these processes and their influence on public perception and access to information. It explores how screens facilitate or hinder political participation, activism, and public debate, and the role that media conglomerates and tech companies have in shaping political narratives and public opinion. It also entails the concrete labor and resources involved in the extraction, manufacturing, and distribution processes of digital devices.

How might aesthetics help us see these nodes more clearly? While it’s easy and valid to join critics who point out how screens have transformed our lives in recent decades, it is equally intriguing to explore their reappropriation and the multiple artistic interpretations that balance between horror and fascination, admiration and addiction.

In regards to artistic practices, the question remains how, and if, these interventions can transcend the limits of the devices and be integrated into a new socio-technical network. This was one of my main inquiries during my appointment as guest curator for the second edition of the University Biennial of Multimedia Art (BUAM) in 2023, initiated by the University of San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. I had the opportunity to engage in a year-long series of exchanges and conversations with BUAM’s team and the selected artists. This group of artists ranged from art students to well-established artists. Having spent the last eight years within the Mexican media arts community, I was curious to see if our artistic sensibilities were shared and how the Ecuadorian context might differ.

A Focus on the Ecuadorian media arts ecology

The Ecuadorian community echoes the Mexican one through a deep investment in practices based on technological disobedience and radical collectivity. Yet their visual and aesthetic sensibilities reflect certain distinct qualities too: their economic history, closely tied to the US, as their local currency has been the US dollar since 2000; the Asian diaspora that found a home in this country; the political agitation around their last presidential elections; their specific Indigenous communities and ancient knowledge; and, a relationship to their particular landscape marked by the Amazon, the Andes, the Pacific coastal area, and the volcanic archipelago of the Galapagos Islands.

Ronny Fernando Albuja in Llévame cielo, agárrame tierra (2023) prompts us to reflect on the transmission of information in the digital era and its consequences on the landscape and non-human beings. The biosculpture highlights how the connection between sender and receiver is established through screens, which dematerialize our bodies and creates a disconnection from the physical world. This virtualization affects our perception of nature, and Albuja urges us to reconsider our digital actions by reminding us of the environmental impact that each transmission has on Earth.

The installation Beyond Collapse (2023) by Luis Navas considers the conversation about the exploitation and modification of natural spaces, by presenting altered landscapes that represent the present and future consequence of an excessive extraction of natural resources. Through a hyperbolic representation, this video installation poses the crucial question: what will be humanity’s legacy in a world where we no longer exist? This work questions how consumption, work, and technology shape our needs and desires, confronting how these elements presume, promote, and impact our continued presence on the planet.

Each screen produced by different companies emerges from and develops within varying contexts. For instance, Samsung dedicates a significant part of its efforts to advancing display technology, creating high-resolution screens for devices like smartphones, tablets, televisions, and computer monitors. Samsung’s screens often introduce innovations in resolution, color accuracy, brightness, and other display metrics, enhancing visual experiences for users across different platforms. But do we really need these devices to be harder, better, faster, stronger? Many artists challenge the notion of techno-utopianism by repurposing older technical objects for sculptural installations, as seen in American Artist’s “Black Gooey Universe” series (2018–2021), or the hijacking of machines in many of !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s pieces such as Opera Calling (2007), CCTV-A Trail of Images (2008–14), or Surveillance Chess (2012). In Latin America, however, the reappropriation, reuse, and reinvention of technical objects is rooted in a specific type of technological consumption revolving around refurbished devices and a culture of repair and restoration over disposal. It is fundamental to a cultural orientation and yet also, amidst twentieth century endeavors to establish American capitalism, presents a form of resistance.

On technological disobedience

In 2005, Cuban researcher Ernesto Oroza coined the term technological disobedience to frame these practices. While not directly focused on artistic practice, this term resonates with artists like Marcela Armas, known for her performative DIY sound instruments in works like Ocupación (2007). It also reflects the practice of Arcángelo Constantini, who creates his own machines in artworks such as Semimscope (2005) and HoloDecon (2009). It encompasses the interdisciplinary approach of the Interspecifics collective, which extensively engages in software creation, tool-making, and the development of open pedagogical resources across their body of work. Moreover, this errant or mischievous approach emerges as a shared intuition in the academic work of Valentina Montero and her notion of hechizo, another very similar way of approaching technological disobedience in the arts, and Juliana Gontijo’s technological dystopias.

Such perverse tactics disrupt the progress and innovation narrative of tech companies. According to Samsung’s official website, they follow “a simple business philosophy: to devote its talent and technology to creating superior products and services that contribute to a better global society.” It is not hard to deduce, given their core values and mission as well as the history of the technological devices they produce, that by “superior products and services” they mean an idea of technological advancement closely tied to modern ideas of progress and that this is presumed to entail a “better global society.” Many critics of modernity like Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, and Sandra Harding challenge the idea of progress as a linear trajectory of improvement, particularly in the context of technological development and scientific advancement. In the context of Latin America, many artists argue that the notion of progress often ignores the consequences, uncertainties, and risks associated with innovation, leading to ecological and epistemological crises. Latin American theorists, like the ones I have mentioned, invoke disobedience to destabilize these notions of progress and superiority.

While lithium is the mineral that sets off all the alarms about tech industry extraction, many other minerals extracted from Latin America are largely ignored by the green movement, yet equally valuable. Copper, gold, silver, iron, tin, and rare earth minerals are key in the production of computers, smartphones, wearables, and more. These minerals are extracted from countries like Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico under extremely precarious conditions for workers, who are also severely underpaid, and which have terrible consequences for the environment.

Many artists in Latin America working with media have intimate knowledge of this entwinement and produce work considering it from multiple perspectives. Although I am focusing on the artworks presented by Ecuadorian artists at BUAM, this broader condition is also evident in the work of various agents across the region. For example, Chilean artist and researcher Josefina Buschmann explores extractivism; Colombian artist Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano investigates themes around water and telepathy; Paraguayan artist and writer Kira Xonorika examines the notion of re-Indigenization; and Brazilian artist and scholar Giselle Beiguelman researches the politics of the image on the digital age.

Screen and Shell (2023) by Rocío Soria unfolds as an anachronic archaeological piece. Through a sculptural installation with ritualistic undertones, Rocío explores our relationship with the screen-object and the matter that comprises it. Taking the mangrove as a starting point, the artist metaphorically works with the notion of an interwoven and protective ecosystem that becomes a natural barrier housing life. The installation is presented as an activation ritual, evoking an olfactory environment of eucalyptus that intensifies the sensory experience. The artist draws on elements of ancestral knowledge with the intention of breaking epistemological violence that has resulted in an asymmetrical relationship with nature and the spiritual realm and, with this, she reclaims a relationship with the other that we’ve missed.

Weaving relations

The interactive installation Biometric Landscapes (2023) by Estefanía Piñeiros was inspired by her hikes in the mountains. Piñeiros uses a smartwatch to capture biometric data and geo-coordinates during her mountain walks, reinterpreting this data to create virtual landscapes. The work includes a series of four short clips of virtual landscapes in loop, an interactive piece revealing new scenes on screen, and a diagram displaying the artist’s data capture process and walks. This reveals to viewers the process from data acquisition to final forms, highlighting the personal within data visualizations. These wearables require skin contact to track and analyze data, illustrating how each body is transformed into cumulative digital information used and abused by social networks and corporations.

It is important to consider how the politics of the screen overflow into other materialities that involve the body—the cords and chargers that tangle and trip us, or pockets and fingers that stretch to handle our coveted objects. Samantha Albuja’s Intimacy Devices (2023) asks how our relationship with digital devices evolves in an increasingly technological world. In this video-performance, the artist merges the body and technology using an experimental ornament—a sculpture reminiscent of a torture device designed to hold a smartphone. In three short videos, Samantha is depicted in various scenarios, always carrying a clay sculpture that keeps her gaze fixed on her phone. We see her on public transport, in her bedroom kissing her partner, and in an improvised shelter among trees. In these video-performances, the typically invisible ties that seduce and attract our attention to the screen are shown to be increasingly jealous and possessive of stimuli that do not emanate from its pixels. Albuja interacts and immerses herself in these fluid spaces, exploring socially accepted behaviors online. The work examines the construction of control through remote communication on the internet and navigates in search of the space of the personal in the public sphere.

The themes of accumulation, anxiety, and echo chambers presented by the piece Videographies (2022) by Andrés Marcial Coba are central to a discussion around political polarization. The installation consists of two interconnected parts. In one, twenty obsolete smartphones play a series of broken video narratives, recombining fragments of news reports with everyday scenes, creating a hypnotic environment. In the other, fifteen resin sculptures cover another set of smartphones. Each sculpture is made from virtual portraits generated by artificial intelligence algorithms. These sculptures reflect and refract the virtual images, creating the illusion of movement and depth as viewers move around them. Together, they dramatize the world of oversaturation and overstimulation that characterizes contemporary life, illustrating how screens feed and fuel an echo chamber. It points the finger towards the content shared on social media and its potential real-world consequences, including acts of violence as we’ve seen in recent years.

Screen politics are also present in off-screen practices such as painting. The representation of spaces beyond the limits in video games, especially those revealed through glitching, is the main focus of I’VE BEEN HIT (2023) by Juan Pablo Racines. In this particular series, Racines seeks to represent the moment when a player falls off the map after being hit, a common phenomenon in games like Battlefield or Call of Duty. This experience of being eliminated is amplified by the glitching of the map, leading players into an undefined world full of symbols and codes to explore. The work features two diptychs. In the first, three subjects with red skin and clothing are depicted in a process of transmutation, representing eliminated players who can no longer access the game world. Elements like the yellowish stars, common in role-playing games, suggest an experience or reward obtained even in defeat. This composition invites reflection on error and how it can lead us to new perceptions of inhabiting the digital realm. In the second, a landscape of forgotten objects merges into a mass that devours everything, fragmenting notions of stability, revealing the fragility of virtuality. Between the two diptychs, the artist introduced a series of white lines on the wall as a reverberation of the spaces evoked by the pieces in this series.

What makes Latin American media art so distinct is its commitment to addressing the concrete aspects of the technological devices used. Engaging directly with technical objects allows for a reintegration into the modes of production that animate them, and can even disrupt these processes by briefly pausing, sabotaging, and rejecting the accelerationist machine. Many tech companies, or rather, monopolies, including Google, Amazon, and Meta, operate manufacturing facilities in several countries, including Mexico and Brazil. Though much is made of interactivity in various media art practices, from VR to gaming to touch screen participation, considering these behaviors might help us think beyond ourselves as individuals interacting with an artwork, but acknowledge our participation in a globally linked productive, creative assembly.

In the Latin American context, rebelling against a soulless system of production is a prevalent part of artistic discourse. The ways in which art navigates, criticizes, and shapes screen politics and its potential expansions in this context are symptoms of a gap between technological advancement and socio-political dynamics. These are ways of reclaiming the human in the machine and challenging the fantasy of automation. We in Latin America experience first-hand the impact on our landscapes, loved ones, non-human companions, knowledge, communities, institutions, and bodies. We cannot ignore the consequences of this violence because we experience them daily. Perhaps, within these artistic practices, there is hope that we can find a fissure, or a whisper, that could reverberate into new ways of interacting with nature, others, and ourselves.