MeM

Jan Rohlf

[A meme is a pattern of information that contains the laws governing its own spread: a complex of ideas that multiplies through the data network like an e-virus the moment it is decoded.]

‘High-tech goods are too delicate for this world’; they are at risk in the human world of dampness, dirt and roughness. They only leave ultra-sterile, dry electronic laboratories within casings made of the highest-quality materials, which shield their delicate inner workings.
The complex relationship between wetware/biomass and electronic technology exists solely within protective casings — allegorical surfaces upon which the subtle economy of decryption, participation and desire unfolds. To the extent that electronic devices and the fluidity of user interfaces in the media have become the de facto standard of modern life, the materials and design of these devices have long since taken on a fetishistic character. Much like pornography, the technological unit binds the user to itself, forcing them to remain on the outside while perceiving the electronic processes within as untouchable and indecipherable — as an existential mystery of an alien form of existence.

With the installation MeM, Jan Rohlf continues his experimental arrangements, situated between affirmation and analysis, which explore the inevitable and compelling mystery of modern everyday technology and its cultural interpretation in the worlds of commodities and work. In Rohlf’s hybrid constellations, an invisible web of mutual entanglement emerges between the classical bipolarity of the organic and the technical. On its horizon stands the erotically menacing figure of the cyborg: the irrevocable fusion of human and technology; thought and bit.

‘M’ – in the gallery’s first room – consists of a stainless-steel frame approximately 1 metre high on polyamide castors, with a glass display case protecting a small array of lights from the damp breath of viewers. The lights protrude from a greenish-shimmering silicone base like stalks of wheat and reveal a tangled network of wires beneath the display case. A display shows the temperature, pressure and humidity of the hermetically sealed ‘biotechnological’ sphere. Digital prints hang in the second room. These are drawings in which icons of high-tech products and genderless schematics of their users appear as functional units of the modern working world characterised by tender mutual care.