Artists Statement

ISEA2019 Residency Programme. With the Asian Culture Institute and as ACT Showcase – ISEA2019 X Creators in Lab.

Data leaks… The undead data haunts us and our need to forget. Servers are wiped, books burned, stories re-told. Time and politics are effectively effaced through systematic re-writing of history. The site of execution is politicised. Between grammatisation in corporate servers, systematic surveillance and data persistence, the archive fever is growing strong. The materiality of data traps us by eluding us. We forget that erasure is an important part of archiving. Memory is a dynamic process of constant execution and erasure, happening in transmission. Goodnight Sweetheart is a gesture to the site of execution. Through the visceral procedure of data embalming, the ‘undead media’ is symbolically exorcised by its mummification. In light of the prospering business in the field of digital undertakers in Korea, reflecting a growing concern with the “right to be forgotten”, this project addresses the politics of erasure through a series of ‘digital data funerals’.

• FRAUD is Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo, (Canada/Spain). FRAUD is a métis duo of artist-researchers that develop art-led enquiries which explore forms of necropolitics that are embedded in the entanglement of ecology and technical objects, and erasure as a disruptive technology in knowledge production. Audrey leads the Digital Arts Computing BSc and is a lecturer in Critical Studies in the Art Department at Goldsmiths. FRAUD has presented work internationally.