The Flood
Installation
Three channel video, pigment prints, objects 2018 - 2019
The Flood is based on the footage shot in various cryptocurrency “mines” in Estonia. Virtual currency - i.e. Bitcoin - offers an attempt to withdraw from existing financial system, its idea about money as an agreement and the objective to release its production from the central bank’s control.
Every attractive idea is inevitably accompanied by the risk that new centers or „bubbles“ will arise. For now the ideal of decentralized monetary system has turned into speculative activity largely influenced by big financial institutions.
Some options of cost-effectiveness are still open and even in Estonia there are several different types of mines, some of which are located in the territories of power stations. It is a calculation made because a vast demand of energy needed to mine virtual currencies.
The work is an installation - a combination of three videos, objects and digital prints. Each part of the work provides a different insight - interviews with “cryptominers”; a continuous shot from one of the biggest crypto mines, located in former women prison; a video combining footage from Estonian oil shale mines with 3D animations.
