ESCHATON FULFILLMENT CENTER
Graphics and conceptual development for an absurdist art installation. I was commissioned and invited to collaborate by programmer and artist Igor Bobeldijk.
In the early stages of ideation, we've decided that we will focus on three central concepts: [1] late stage capitalism, [2] algorithm and automation as a religious ritual, and [3] human and machine folly. The name is a play on Amazon, Enron, the apocalypse and political utopianism. We wanted to portray what a package shipping center might look like in the moment of messianic rapture, or perhaps after the planet's sixth mass extinction. Would the process of automated labor continue? To borrow a well-known remark from Fredric Jameson/Slavoj Žižek/Mark Fisher: it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.
The installation centered around cardboard packages moving autonomously (as if by their own volition) and procedurally generating vaguely poetic thoughts. The event took place in a temporary art space constructed out of shipping containers. A couple of screens functioned as artificial windows, slowly shifting their hues between a sunny sky and the blue screen of death.