{"id":45365,"date":"2017-02-01T15:14:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T14:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=45365"},"modified":"2017-02-01T15:14:18","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T14:14:18","slug":"christopher-meerdo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/christopher-meerdo\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Meerdo Takes on Digital Information and Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been conditioned to think of the witness as a human gazer, someone who engages with the scene by seeing with wide-open eyes. Though more and more we\u2019ve seen this notion of a human sentient gazer, turning and agency has now given over to technological devices and backlog actions. Christopher Meerdo, a Chicago-based artist, is particularly interested in these technological devices that code human reality, standing judgment in violence. Such devices are the newly mandated police body cameras. As Kittler noted, digital devices based upon data streams level out technical materiality, flattening the event to a mere pixel frame.
\nThinking along these same lines, Meerdo wonders: does a data stream, a container of a moment of reality, have a thought, a feeling, or an emotional boundary, something Roland Barthes<\/a> once called a punctum? Or are data streams mere mechanical devices, part of a military industrial complex? How can we break these details apart?<\/p>\n

\"Meerdo\" “Brute Force,” 2014 by Christopher Meerdo<\/p>\n

Media And Catastrophe<\/h2>\n

Interested in hacking algorithms and using data mapping to intercept these streams, Meerdo has built a practice showing the visual artifacts of his interventions throughout the years. In his work Brute-force<\/em> (2014), Meerdo hacked images sent on snapchat and displayed them in a type of post-internet bricolage. One particular image features a police officer taking a selfie in a mirror, caught within a type of doubly narcissistic gaze of looking at his own power. In his hands, he holds a smart phone, and it seems this communication device is a direct extension of his armor. This particular work received some backlash after the Museum of Photography in Chicago, who were interested in acquiring it for their collection, changed their decision after their legal team vetoed the acquisition for fear of being sued.<\/p>\n

A counter-part to this work, which is unsettling in its brute clarity, is \u201cUntitled (Redactions)\u201d, which splices together found clips of paparazzi, police, and security. The work shows the violence of a protest or media event, with strobes firing from cameras. Different clips have been selected and repeat ad infinitum, <\/em>reminding us of the catastrophic nature of information on the television. On the nature of information and data, media scholar Mary Ann Doane explains that there is always an<\/a> \u201censlavement to the instant and hence forgetability\u201d to what gets recorded<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking specifically about the television and its documentation of catastrophe, she explains that the media itself has properties of catastrophe, as violence is replayed, rewinded, and exchanged through fiber optics. \u201cUntitled (Redactions)\u201d asks these questions on what information is being presented and digested in media, which represent political unrest, and to what moment in time a media stream attests to.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Meerdo\" “Metadata,” Christopher Meerdo.<\/p>\n

Active Denial System<\/h2>\n

\u201cActive Denial System,\u201d now being exhibited at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburg, is Meerdo\u2019s tour de force. He takes all of these questions further, specifically asking if data and information contain a remainder of violence. Instead of using anonymous data streaming vaguely referencing police, he has used leaked police chase bodycameras. Created in the year 2016, Meerdo\u2019s work directly addresses movements such as #blacklivesmatter, #ferguson, #treyvonmartin and #michaelbrown.
\nSince 2016 was also the year that body cameras became mandated for police, the videos captured by these devices frequent leaks and channels, downloadable on the web. In Meerdo\u2019s words, he is particularly interested in the movement; the \u201cchase\u201d between the officer and the potential arrestee or victim. Using a process called photogrammetry that extracts data and spatial points from images, he was able to zone in on the space between the police officer and the victim, turning it into a sculptural form.
\nRadiating translucent colors, the sculptures that are the positives of space made from downloadable digital events \u2014 the material transformation from pixel information and frames into the sculptural form \u2014 denote movement and time. Accompanying these forms is a video containing abstract CGI renderings and a poem Meerdo wrote about the lineage of organized police forces in the United States to slave catchers, suggesting that there is an embedded psychological impulse in areas towards racial violence.
\n <\/p>\n

\"Meerdo\" “HD Protech Cite M1G2,” 2016 by Christopher Meerdo<\/p>\n

Active Gazers And Inert Sitters<\/h2>\n

Overall streams of data occupy the gravitas and space of a human gazer, the witness. These archives of violence, now all the more incumbent, and appearing in twitter feeds and leaks, reveal something other than lived experience and actually reify connections to the war machine. As spectators on the web, we are transfixed by images of violence, though as Susan Sontag warned us a decade ago in On the Suffering of Others;<\/em> as spectators of violence, we are both active gazers and inert sitters.
\nAs gazers of Meerdo\u2019s work, which builds upon this captured and leaked material through hackers and modeling, we are made more aware of our status in this webbed like spectacle, reminding us that the reality of the capturing device is just as structurally and materially violent as the moment it portrays.
\n 
\n“Active Denial System” is at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburg, until 28 May 2017<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Meerdo’s work sees how the media information makes us complicit in police violence<\/p>","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":45372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[4734,7698,7699,7700,7701,7702,7703,7704,1416,5192,4053],"class_list":["post-45365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-4734","tag-active-denial-system","tag-brutality","tag-christopher-meerdo","tag-gazer","tag-matress-factory","tag-pittsburg","tag-police","tag-sculpture","tag-united-states","tag-violence"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nChristopher Meerdo Takes on Digital Information and Violence<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Artist Christopher Meerdo's work sees how the nature of media information makes us, the viewer, complicit in acts of police violence\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/christopher-meerdo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christopher Meerdo Takes on Digital Information and Violence\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Artist Christopher Meerdo's work sees how the nature of media information makes us, the viewer, complicit in acts of police violence\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/christopher-meerdo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-02-01T14:14:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Vanessa Gravenor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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