Antoine Félix Bürcher, Ricardo Meli, I have 4% left but feel free to freestyle on this… at Nano Raum für Kunst, Zürich

“I have 4% left but feel free to freestyle on the chat and I come back when I have my charger by Antoine Félix Bürcher, Ricardo Meli, curated by Maria Bill, Antonia Hersche, Regula Weber, at Nano Raum für Kunst, Zürich, 04-19.04.2024.

The starting point and work material for their installation are two empty generic server racks. From afar they look like phone booths. Bought on an online Marketplace, the racks had to be collected somewhere in Zürich.

The two artists experienced a necessary and adventurous time moving these heavy and bulky human-size servers, crossing streets. «On the way, we saw all these blocky houses, it felt like we were moving one of those around…the server racks on the tram almost damaged the ceiling – the tram driver laughed a lot and took a selfie with us. On the street, we encountered visitors who looked up from their cell-phones at the lost monuments where data of their own could have transited through».

One must consider the notion of vacuum associated with these two objects: empty leftover shells, outside walls containing inside air or halos of electric pulses. These physical structures used to house fragile electronic devices. Core data was stored or hosted in them.

Memories and thoughts became signals, could travel from one point to another in a split second – like a sparkle. An immaterial link to and from human lives flowing through plastic and metal wires. But these skeletons full of ghosts are used once more to open a whole new range of possibilities and dimensions.

The past isn’t relevant anymore unless one points at it as an archaeologist would do, trying to uncover a lost reality. The artists play and juggle between deconstruction and reconstruction. Dismantled, the racks offer a range of new iconographic forms: tiny wall switches, aftershock architectural structures and lines, layered, overlapping surfaces – like paintings – are assembled and elegantly placed.

Thus, a sleek and fresh aesthetic shapes the room, inhabits the walls of nano. This installation touches us with new information, new interpretations.

Of course, in the end, it all will be digitally compressed and become new data, navigating through new channels to a new recipient.