[ISEA2015] Artist Statement: Jacek Smolicki — On-going project: on tactical archiving of one’s life via digital instruments

Artist Statement

In the times when every technological device can be potentially a tracking and recording instrument, whether we want it or not, we all turn into some sort of micro-archivists or data-collectors. Since 2008/2009 I have been committed to deliberately documenting various aspects of my life using affordable, recording technologies. The idea steering this life-long initiative is simply to regain the control over my personal data and voluntarily construct a trace reflecting my relationship to time and space I occupy. The project is an attempt to counter-act big data exhaust, surveillance and growing automation of recording practices.

Since 2009 I have been systematically developing and implementing a number of media-aided practices aiming to record and archive my presence in the context of public space. The project started as an attempt to craft individual methods for collecting and archiving different sensory impressions related to my being in a broader, social and environmental milieu. Ever since, I have been using affordable and portable devices such as audio recorders, GPS watches or pocket size video cameras to record sonic, visual and spatial data representing my presence in the public context. Progressively, I started introducing more discipline and consistency that led to a crystallization of twelve practices, each driven by its own constitution governing the way of interacting with and the frequency of using particular technology. For instance, one of these archiving practices aims at constructing an archive of soundscapes. Ever since July 2010 I have been audio recording at least one minute each time when sonic qualities of a public place I find myself in would attract my attention. In the times when proliferation of ever more automated life-logging gadgets or unified and standardized activities on social media platforms redefine what personal recording and archiving is, I propose to read the On-Going Project as a set of practices accentuating the positive value of subjectivity, discipline, effort and attention in constructing one’s own methodology of recording and archiving, and hence being in ever more media-saturated space and time. on-going.net

  • Jacek Smolicki, Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication, Sweden. Jacek Smolicki (born during martial law in Kraków, Poland) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, researcher, and soundwalker interested in techniques of attending to (as in paying attention) and recording (as in calling to mind and heart) human and other-than-human realms, events, and existences. Besides working with existing documents, archives and heritage, Smolicki develops alternative modes of sensing, recording, para-archiving, and mediating stories and signals from various sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, audio-visual installations, and diverse forms of writing. smolicki.com