Rafael Lozano-Hemmer “Recorders”

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
“Recorders”
Manchester Art Gallery
25.01.2011

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is 44 years old, Mexican born artist who lives and creates his artwork in Canada.
Lozano in his exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery tries to put attention on important issue of technology in our live. He, also, tries to ask some questions: how technology influences on people? How does it change our surrounding and us itself?
The whole exhibition and its individual parts seem to be planned and arranged deliberately. They form a logical sequence which harmonize with space and lead a viewer through a play to a very significant final end.
The author’s intention was to make us (throughout voice, image and pulse recording) observers to communicate and associate with technology which in some moments starts to be prolongation of our biological attributes. It is worth mentioning, as an example, the installations made of few hundred bulbs hanged down from a whole sealing. The bulbs flash with the rhythm of pulse of people who previously visited the exhibition. Apart from visual effects there is some irresistible impression of being connected with the installation, being an essential “working” part which brings a sense to it.
There is no doubt that in the first room viewer interacts with the installations based on biometric technologies. It shows a clear analogy to places where those techniques are used to control and monitor people’s traffic, access to institutions and services in real world. In the next sections spectator by using senses of touch, sight and hearing becomes integral part of the performance. But the most symbolic and significant is the last display which brings final conclusion to the whole. While walking into the last room observer is recorded and displayed in a large scale on the wall, in the next few steps he becomes a shadow with a number above. The shadow appears here as a symbol of human devoid of personality and voice, who exists only as a number, a segregated numeric function in the system.