ULTIMATE SOLVERS

_Ultimate Solvers (2020)

Commissioned by Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HeK), as part of the Hek Net Works program.

COVID-19 crisis has exposed a massive social, ecological, political, and economic systemic failure. Even though the causes and consequences of this crisis are highly complex and profound, we’ve been repeatedly told that it can be solved with yet another app. This technical problem-solving approach is commonly known as techno-solutionism. Techno-solutionism tends to simplify and obfuscate the several realities that trigger the particular problems that it’s trying to fix; it simply doesn’t cope with problems. Even though it’s been demonstrated that techno-solutionism doesn’t work when it comes to fixing highly complex events, such as the current global pandemic, it is once again enthusiastically embraced as the only possible answer to a critical situation. But who is defining and implementing these technological fixes?

Ultimate solvers collect a series of slogans, brand identities, and supporting graphic materials used by the main corporations that prescribe technological fixes to announce their products. Interestingly, these companies tend to use quite a precise language to define what they actually do in a very unprecise way. Nevertheless, these corporations do understand, precisely, how to benefit from the realities that their technologies will create and extract from. One can’t help but wonder what will be the long term implications of solving highly complex systemic problems with reductionist techno-solutions. The future doesn’t look bright.

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Online Exhibition at Haus der Elektronischen Künste (HeK). 7th -31st of July 2020. Basel, Switzerland. Photo: courtesy of the artist.