Artist Statement

June 9 – August 21, Santa Mònica Art Centre. Public Event.

Keywords: Internetflags, onlife manifesto, digital hyperconnectivity, yiannis laouris, public art

Large-format flag installed in public space, showing Yiannis Laouris’s message: “Can the mind exist without a body?”, taken from the Onlife Manifesto, coordinated by Luciano Floridi, where they address the transformations of the digital hyperconnectivity era, such as the need to re-engineer the concepts of human and non-human life.

“Can the mind exist without a body?” is a large-format flag installed in public space. It shows a Yiannis Laouris’s question taken from a chapter of the Onlife Manifesto, coordinated by Luciano Floridi, where they address the transformations of the digital hyperconnectivity era, such as the need to re-engineer the concepts of human and non-human life.

This work is, at the same time contextualized in a larger public art project and PhD research called #internetflags, which explore several aspects of life in a hyper-connected and Internet-based society. We think that this project can as well be a response to the need for new location structures to show artistic proposals and to promote social interactions and critical thinking from the arts perspective.

The conceptual focus of #internetflags is based on three axes. The permanent existence of portable digital communication devices, close to the idea of prostheses in the context of a hyper-connected society, and how its effects are interpreted from contemporary art; the problems derived from the massive use of the Internet together with a lack of knowledge of its internal physical structure, as well as its political and environmental implications; and also the current pandemic context in which social relationships are virtualized, public space is blurred and physical contact is restricted.

• Irma Marco is an artist, researcher, and teacher. She holds a master’s degree in Fine Arts from the UPV (Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain), is currently pursuing her doctorate in Advanced Studies in Artistic Productions at the University of Barcelona, and is a resident at the Fàbrica de Creació Fabra i Coats. She is also a consulting lecturer at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and teaches at institutions such as MACBA and Escola Massana. Marco works from pre-existing elements (such as sounds, texts, or particular contexts), looking for new meanings within materials that already have a past. She is interested in the plurality with which events are narrated and recorded, and she relies on noise, appropriation, collaboration, and exchange as strategies to open up a space of possibility from which to create meaning. Her practice encompasses sound experimentation, installation, actions, and interventions in physical spaces as well as virtual environments and publications. More information: https://www.irmamarco.com/