EMAP Resident 2023: Dasha Ilina
New resident artists at IMPAKT announced
This year we are welcoming artist Dasha Ilina as the 2023 EMAP Resident artists at IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture]. The European Media Art Platform (EMAP) is a partnership of 15 European media art organisations, supported by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Since 2018, EMAP has been supporting artists in the production of new work. During her 2-months residency, Ilina will work on ADVICE WELL TAKEN: Folk tales of digital salvation, a publication and a video to document ‘folk knowledge’ regarding the complex and opaque functionality of modern technologies with which we are surrounded – including data, privacy and how to fix our devices.
IMPAKT selected Dasha Ilina as her project proposal echoes the institution’s concern with our rights as digital citizens and the abuse of our data by big tech companies. The formats Dasha Ilina chooses to address these issues as well as the central focus of her work, and her approach to involve digital citizens personally in her project, greatly relate to IMPAKT’s perspective on the crucial connection between art and societal issues.
Drawing on online communities including forums, blogs, youtube videos and entries on advice and help sites such as WikiHow or Quora, Ilina intends to create an ethnography, documenting the folk strategies around the uses of technology, with a specific focus on saving damaged or dying devices, and the sharing of mythologies to explain the obfuscated workings of algorithms used in social media applications. Through the employment of low tech and DIY approaches, Ilina’s work highlights the nebulous relationship between our desire to incorporate modern technologies into our daily lives and proposed social imperatives for care of oneself and others. The aim of this project is to engage the public to facilitate a space for the development of critical thought regarding our modern day relationships, privacy in the digital age, and the reflexive contemporary desire to turn to technology for answers.
ADVICE WELL TAKEN: Folk tales of digital salvation will take the shape of a book as well as a video piece. The publication aims to document socially adapted ‘strategies’ — ways individuals ‘protect themselves’ from algorithms, as well as protect their devices from whatever disasters may occur to them or ultimately how to repair a broken device. The video will document the interviews performed while gathering information for the publication itself, and contain found footage from the internet — where most of ‘techlore’ is shared.
About EMAP
The European Media Art Platform (EMAP), co-funded by Creative Europe since 2018, is a consortium of 15 leading European media art organisations specialised in Digital and Media Art, Bio Art and Robotic Art. Through an open call, EMAP members offer practitioners two-month residencies to support emerging media artists in the production of new work. Previous EMAP artists at IMPAKT are: Anna Ridler (2018), Joana Moll (2019), Clusterduck (2020), Liliana Zeic (2021) and artist duo Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner (2022). https://emare.eu/
Images from: https://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Wet-Cell-Phone and https://www.wikihow.com/Repair-an-iPhone-from-Water-Damage
