DANI PLOEGER
The Artwork
Assault
2016
50 x 80 x 10 cm
Vidéo, tablette, munitions
Ed. de 3 + 1 EA
Courtesy de l’artiste
«On 26 February 2016, I fired an AK47 at an iPad.
A high frame-rate video and a sound recording were made of the bullet hitting the screen.
The installation consists of a functioning iPad, accompanied by a plastic bag with a bullet and an empty 7.62x39mm cartridge.
The device plays the video and sound of the destruction of the screen of the shot iPad.
Subsequently, the recordings are played backwards in slow-motion.
The sequence is repeated.
The iPad shows an endless process of its own destruction and regeneration.»
The artist
Dani Ploeger works with computer programming, electronics hacking, cultural theory and performance. His work investigates and subverts the spectacles of sex, violence and waste in techno-consumer culture. He has made a smartphone app that is available from an adult app store, undergone an operation in which electronic waste was installed in his abdomen by a body piercer, and shop-dropped an anonymous terror DVD in electronics stores, among others.
Dani is based in Vlissingen, a former stronghold of the Atlantikwall in the Dutch countryside, but travels around most of the time. In recent years, he has worked with traditional metal workers in the old city of Cairo to encase tablet computers in plate steel, attended firearms training in Poland to shoot an iPad with an AK47, and travelled to dump sites in Lagos, Nigeria, to collect electronic waste originating from Europe. Dani holds a PhD in media, performance and cultural studies from the University of Sussex and is a Research Fellow at The Royal Central School of Speech of Speech and Drama, University of London. He is also the Principal Investigator of the art-science research project Bodies of Planned Obsolescence: Digital performance and the global politics of electronic waste.