Solo show “Hello, I am Louisa. I don’t know whether or not I am sculpture […]”

The Representative, whose body is based on that of the artist, becomes an interlocutor on questions of human subjectivity and the understanding of the body and of consciousness – her consciousness is the product of machine learning and artificial intelligence. What ideas are the basis for artificial copies that people make of themselves? And what relationship do people have with these copies?

Today, the development of such an artificial intelligence, the storing of digital photos, and almost every other area of our everyday lives are shaped by the binary code of 0 and 1, the language of computers and digital networks. Clement’s newest work, compression (2023), uses a new bio-cybernetic storage method: DNA data storage. Digital data can be translated from the binary code into DNA based on four amino acids. Clement uses this technology to translate her entire oeuvre up to now into a sequence of adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). The resulting double helix is preserved in a tiny stainless-steel casing. Thus, the body can become a carrier medium for an enormous amount of data. With this new work, Clement inscribes traces of her artistic production in her own body by having this double helix implanted in it. She incarnates her own work again. What does this technology mean for our corporeality and identity? The body becomes a potential archive, but at the same time, also a possible field for further bio-capitalistic exploitation.

text abstract by Leon Jankowiak