off-line-on at Big Art Bijlmerbajes

“off-line-on” is a counter-reaction to telephone use in our current society. We hold our phone like a precious object. Less conversations or open friendly looks when we are on the road, just desperately staring at the phone looking for contact elsewhere. Where are we? Through telephone we are often in multiple worlds and realities at the same time, but are we still really HERE?

On this abstracted monumental map on the floor and wall are detailed colored pencil drawings of all the raw materials of our phone. There are 38 problematic raw materials in our phone that are associated with conflict, serious health problems, radioactive waste, water/soil pollution, use of toxic chemicals known to have significant impacts, significant biodiversity threats and relative high CO2 emissions. I drew all these raw materials on paper the size of my phone.

Antimony, Arsenic, Barium, Bauxite, Beryllium, Bismuth, Boron, Chromium, Dysprosium, Gallium, Gold, Indium, Iron, Cobalt, Copper, Lithium, Magnesium, Manganese, Mica, Molybdenum, Neodymium, Nickel, Noibium, Palladium, Platinum, Praseodymium, Rhenium, Rhodium, Ruthenium, Sillica, Strontium, Tantalum, Tin, Titanium, Tungsten, Yttrium, Silver and Zinc. These raw material drawings show an impressive collection of natural materials that are used to make a telephone. A misery hidden behind a beauty. Without moving ourselves, the telephone has already left a trail around the world.

With our telephone we create a bridge between distance, time and space; we can easily make the transition to another (virtual) reality, but at what cost? Natural resources from all over the world are brought together to ultimately distance us from that same nature – because staring at the telephone we are no longer aware of our surroundings.