Center of Doubt
Research / 1 to 9 screen video installation, 2012 - 2018
Center of Doubt was my longest research project so far, which aimed to explore the rise of platform capitalism and debunk the apparent immaterality of information technology. On the one hand, the research was concentrated on specific places that are necessary for the existence of the “ubiquitous” Internet. On the other hand, it was an attempt to offer an alternative visual approach to topics related to “personal technology”.
The work was completed at a time when there was a transition to centralized platforms that mediate access to information. This era is directly related to the cloud computing - all data and control over it is no longer in personal computers, but in the data centers, owned and operated by large corporations.
The main video work in the work cycle is Crystal Computing (Google Inc., St. Ghislain) - a video-based investigation about Google’s data center in St. Ghislain, Belgium. After being rejected to visit the data center officially, I made a secret research trip to Belgium. DIY surveillance material origins from the surroundings of a huge industrial complex collected during four days. It is Google´s biggest data center in Europe.
