Our former fellow Darsha Hewitt presents 100 Year Old Quicksilver Cloud as part of the month-long group exhibition The Eternal Network in the frame of the transmediale 2020 End to End. The transmediale takes place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

About twenty-five international art and research-based works address the persistence of networks, with a focus on their potentials and limits in response to current social and technological changes and the need for new forms of decentralization.

100 Year Old Quicksilver Cloud is the first work in High Fidelity Wasteland – a trilogy experimenting with decomposing sound reproduction technology. Wading into the toxic haze of early transmission infrastructure, this installation sonifies the decaying atmosphere inside a thyratron – a 100 year old vacuum tube radiating a cloud of blue ionized mercury. Vacuum tubes generated, amplified and controlled some of the earliest flows of electrons signalling the start of widespread communication networks – radio, tv, telephony, computing. Produced prior to practices of planned obsolescence and outliving industrial lifecycles of technology today, decommissioned liquified metals of the thyratron are a ruinous substrate of post industrial ecology.

100 Year Old Quicksilver Cloud is commissioned by Transmediale 2020. Audio produced in collaboration with AGF (aka Antye Greie-Ripatti). Further sponsorship provided by Weltfirma Martion – Audiosysteme.

When? Where?
28 January – 1 March 2020

Haus der Kulturen der Welt

John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10

10557 Berlin

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