Tom Dulou

France, 1999

junkmoth.net

Thesis: Reproductive Systems of Toxic Knowledge

An endless artist statement is delivered in the voices of a group of anonymous protagonists and appears projected toward ribbed binds. This group, propelled by an insectoid logic, becomes a fraction of a swarm. Artist statements certainly have an aspect an obligatory cliché, a form which cools down in a sequence of seemingly complex claims. At the same time this appropriated and modified text, behaves as an organism, which shapes and reshapes itself into an ever-elusive meaning, flirting with readability, and denying it. The group with their faces covered by a reflective glass shield, a gigantic mono-sunglass, resemble, a collective of future operators-artists, who pose questions about art communicating urgencies through the strange opacity of an art code. They blur critique of normative structures with mimicry of other life forms, and become insectoid creatures endlessly, mindlessly, generating and performing text, just like a generative AI. Displacing the form of statement and using it as a material, they buzz and swarm, creating another life – a text-becoming-a-life-form.

Alena Alexandrova, June 2023