Benjamin Gaulon: ReFunct Media

Some machines don’t die. They go feral.

Feral media is a term Benjamin Gaulon uses for technology that has escaped the function it was built for. Domestic devices are designed to obey: to play what you insert, display what you send, switch off when you say so. Opened up and rewired, they stop obeying. They produce sound nobody composed and images nobody recorded. They are released.

ReFunct Media is an ongoing series of installations built entirely from electronic waste. Devices that no longer function, or that no longer interest anyone, are opened, rewired and chained together so that a signal passes from one machine to the next. 

In Zagreb this installation was built collectively, and from material found here. The workshop opened on Sunday morning at Hrelić, the enormous flea market across the Sava where everything ends up eventually and where almost anything can still be found. 

The following three afternoons were spent in the workshop: opening devices, understanding their components, salvaging what still works, and connecting the parts into a single evolving system. 

The workshop asked a simple question with difficult answers. What is technology made of, where does it go when we discard it, and what else could it become? Between extractivism and regeneration, between the cyberpunk future we were promised and the solarpunk one we might still build, electronic waste is the material we already have.

Presentation of this workshop will be on Wednesday, September 23 at 7pm at Pogon Mislavova, Ulica kneza Mislava 18 (Basement). 

Benjamin Gaulon is an artist, researcher, educator and cultural producer based in Paris, working under the name Recyclism. His research addresses the limits and failures of information and communication technologies: planned obsolescence, consumerism and disposable society, ownership and privacy, explored through détournement, hacking and recycling. His projects take the form of installations, hardware, software, web based works and street interventions, open source where applicable. He has exhibited at ZKM Karlsruhe, the Taipei Biennial, the National Art Museum of China, Transmediale and Jeu de Paume. With Dasha Ilina he co-directs NØ School Nevers.