Flight Mode

  • Emergency Mandala, Found objects, Dimensions variable, 2013
  • White vs Non-White, (Skymall Liberation series), Collage, 2013
  • Faces of Death, Digital prints, Dimensions variable, 2013
  • TSA Communication series, Polished Stainless Steel, 32.5cm x 25cm, 2008
  • TSA Communication: Paris & Detroit, Single Channel Video, 06:12, 2012
  • How To Keep Motherfuckers From Putting Their Seats Back, Single channel video, 00:35, 2008
  • See You See Me, Two channel video, 06:25, 2009

Info

Title:Flight Mode
Institution:Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art
Date:27 March - 12 April 2013
Location:Ljubljana, Slovenia

Text

Airports are the (non)places where the surveillance apparatus shows off its muscles. Airports are where security systems are first tested and fully employed. Airports are where privacy is immolated on the altars of control. Airports are the physical version of an information network. As such, airports have always fascinated artists, and they are the perfect playground for an artist who also happens to be a graffiti artist, a hacker and an open source coder, an artist such as Evan Roth.

Since 2007, Evan Roth – an American artist currently living in Paris and often traveling around the world – has been using airports as a platform on which to make art and deliver it to an audience in the form of micro-interventions that locate themselves between conceptual art, activism, media hacking and sabotage.

Skymall Liberation (2007 – ongoing), for example, is a series of collages using Skymall – a magazine distributed for free on American flights – as their source, and the small seat trays as their support. Roth organizes the images found on the magazine as starting points for ironic ethnographic data visualizations, such as “White vs Non-White”, or “Apple Products vs Non-Apple Products”. How To Keep Motherfuckers From Putting Their Seats Back (2008) is a short video tutorial showing us how to resist against economy class discomfort. See You See Me (2009) is a two-channel video taken from inside airport security X-ray devices.

Finally, TSA Communication (2008) is a project that alters the airport security experience, inviting the government to learn more about passengers than just the contents of their carry-on bags. Messages are cut into thin 13” x 10” sheets of stainless steel designed to comfortably fit inside airline carry-on baggage. During the X-ray screening process, the technology normally designed to view the contents of a traveler’s baggage is transformed into a communication tool for displaying messages aimed at airport security. The content of the plates varies from flight to flight, but includes “NOTHING TO SEE HERE”, an image of the American flag and the TSA’s (Transportation Security Agency’s) mission statement as listed on its website, “I AM THE FRONTLINE OF DEFENSE, DRAWING ON MY IMAGINATION TO CREATIVELY PROTECT AMERICA FROM HARM”, and “MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS”.


— Regine Debatty for Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art