Installation
commissioned by Pax Art Awards 2020
for the exhibition "Swiss Media Art - Pax Art Awards", 2021, at HEK House of Electronic Arts), Basel (ch)
54 tuber objects 25cm x 10cm (h/diam) on socle, painted papier-mâché, and plastering
low-voltage electric cabling, transformer and LED light
The installation Power Grid, a part of the Wolfskind Project, shows alternative possibilities for power supply in the rainforest, albeit in a parodistic way. Instead of the usual diesel generators, electricity is generated here from the root tubers of an endemic nightshade plant (solanum quasifabium L.) The tubers are interconnected with cables to form a grid and rubbed with a paste of crushed isopods, salt and urine to power up electrical devices. The Flow, a tribe of 1960s counterculturists in the Putumayo area, used such contraptions to generate electricity for their AI computers.