FIELD NOTES FROM ARCHIPELAGO

Overview
In the second part of the artistic contribution of the artistic research project Oceanic Horror or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism - taking up the central space of the exhibition by the same name at Kunsthall 3,14 - we leave Island and find ourselves instead in the company of the trading firm Archipelago. In the two-channel video work ‘Archipelago (No one is an island)’ that makes up the centre piece in the multi channel installation at Kunsthall 3,14 we are being splashed, from the self-contained trading pools of early high frequency trading, out into the unfathomable oceanic network of fluid relations and associations that constitutes finance trading in the age of Web 2.0. We descend into the oceanic and submerged interior of an opaque financial structure. A competitive world of accumulative desires, self-optimisation and self-sacrifice unfolds between the inhabitants of this dark structure. In a speculative manner we encounter the human resources of the high frequency trading firm Archipelago, (a descendant of the Island venture) meandering about mechanically and disengaged, power napping, exercising and networking, always one devise removed from their physical surroundings, always strangely isolated in a vacuum of complete interconnectedness.

A spoken meditation fills the space, leading the visitors of Kunsthall 3,14, and its fictive patrons up on screen, out of the bland architecture of a 4-star conference hotel; out into a dream voyage breaking with time and space:
We are at a Bull and Bear Fight in Monterey in 1853. The pitting of these two hefty creatures in the arena will later become an analogy for the market; the bear is what makes the market fall, suffocating under its heavy paw; the bull, on the other hand, lifts the market with the virile thrust of its horns.
We are on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 as the stock market crashes, turning the trading pit into a violent frenzy.
We stroll through the corporate township of Cathedral Town: a planned community in Ontario Canada, formed around the newly built Church of Transfiguration; a colossal church that to the new city dweller’s big disappointment never opened to congregation. The town now stretches around the church, strangely soulless, its pivotal point of community eerily vacant. The church, that also featured in John Carpenter’s 1994 horror film ‘In the Mouth of Madness’, now towers above the town, its steeple always visible above the roofs.
We find ourselves in an airport terminal, resting in a sleep pod, our body hardwired into a responsive exoskeletal webbing allowing us to work unrestrained. The body of the cognitive worker merges with the digital, not only enhancing exterior support structure but artificially assisting the nervous system and cognitive functions, making even the few moments of rest, productive and profitable. A whole new cost-effective dimension to the office power-nap.
Finally, beyond time, we dive into the internet cables’ darting landscape of extreme velocity and oceanic quantum mechanics.
Outside the meditations, that stream through the AirPods of ambitious young stockbrokers, all motion spirals towards a sacrificial ritual. A sacrifice to the gods of prosperity perhaps. Perhaps just a regulated version of the classic banker suicide.

The exhibition 'Oceanic Horror or How to Survive the Night in the Haunted Mansion of Absolute Capitalism', comprises all artistic works from this research process, including  the works already installed at the midways exhibition 'Cable ITCH (I don’t wanna work at Island no more)', previously exhibited in the staircase of Kunsthall 3,14. Due to complications related to the possibility of showing these works in Copenhagen parallel to the show in Kunsthall 3,14 - as two connected yet self-contained exhibitions - the choice was made to include all the works in the final exhibition at Kunsthall 3,14. Now these works form ‘screen islands’ surrounding the main narrative revolving around the trading firm Archipelago. The criss-crossing narratives from the birthing place of high frequency trading and the implementation of computer terminals and servers into the stock market, now serves as a backdrop for, or a prologue to, the narrative of the central video work ‘Archipelago (No one is an island)’. As a whole the entire installation takes the shape of an archipelago of ‘screen islands’, all serving pieces of a complex interconnected topology.

‘Archipelago (No one is an island)’ was for various logistic reasons developed late in this research project, not allowing for the same kind of in-depth reflection work to take place in the field notes from this production, than in the former around the ‘Cable ITCH (I don’t wanna work at Island no more)’. But many of the considerations in the ‘Field Notes from Island’ also relates directly to the process leading up to this final film production and should be read in relation to this as well.

Inside the final two channel video installation, a spoken text is quite dominant. This voice serves as an integrated part of the narrative, but also as a form of incorporation of research material. In a poetic and drifting mode, the voice relays many of the considerations around Oceanic Horror into the fictional space of the video installation. The reflections are thus far more integrated into the artistic contribution. Through this, the intention is to make for a different form of communication of the research undertaken; a fluid and more atmospheric form of reflection, accommodating a more intuitive, involving and emotional sharing, with the viewer, of knowledge and non-knowledge. The text that forms these voice overs refer to themselves as ’tapes’. In the script work for these I have personally referred to them as meditations. ‘Field Notes from Archipelago’, take the form of a few meditations on these meditations; sometimes just including the voice over script for a closer read, presented as written research; sometimes adding further reflections from a meandering in connected topologies and atmospheric attunements related to the research, the artistic process and the artistic work.

‘Field Notes from Archipelago’ sets off with a short description of the firm Archipelago and its relation to the trading firm Island, as well as the future of online trading. From this positioning of Archipelago in the history of modern finance, I swiftly divert my attention from the archival recounting of events to the fully speculative and transrealist kicking of the can down the narrative road.

In these notes I also touch upon the genre of Mumblegore and how this can relate to the experience of existing in the atmospheres accumulating within Absolute Capitalism.

I discuss the concept of haptic viewing and ‘temps morte’ or ‘dead time’ in cinema, not only in relation to how it can offer a countering of our tempor(e)ality, but also to the differences in approach from cinema to the video installation when working with temporality and ‘dead time’.

I describe the term ‘Rebootism’, that I have developed as a way of thinking about the hauntological qualities of our tempor(e)ality.

I use some time to think about the sleep pod as a prosthesis to ensure the maximum exploitation of the workers time.

I dig up some examples of the adolescent bro-culture of the trading pit hand signals.

I reflect upon the applied special effects of the gore rig and how it relates to the head/body split of the cognitive worker, but also to the abject notion of the messiness of the truly random.

Finally I think about the function of the subtle background scare in the horror movie and how this may relate to the background processes that run behind everything we engage in or encounter in the torrential work flow atmosphere of tempor(e)ality.

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