sTörungen

Metka Golec 1972 _ born in Maribor, Slovenia 1991-1995 _ studies of architecture on Technical University Graz(6.semesters) 1996-1997 _ School for art photography Friedl Kubelka Wienna 1998 _ studies of painting on Academy for fine arts Wienna 2003 _ diploma on Academy for fine arts Wienna Horvat Miha 1976 _ born in Maribor, Slovenia 1995-2001 _ studies of anthropology on Faculty of arts Ljubljana 1999-2001 _ studies of film directing on Academy for film Ljubljana 2001_ diplom on Faculty of arts Ljubljana 2000-2001 _ studies of film on University of art and design Helsinki 2001 _ studies of new media on University for applied arts Wienna 2002 _ studies of painting on Academy for fine arts Wienna The world of digital technologies, of electronic sounds and images, seems to be the natural surrounding for son:DA. In their work, though, they are not fascinated with the endless possibilities of new technologies. rather, they are critical and ironical towards such fascinations. The constant multiplication of new technologies and their effects turns into noise, just as the actual physical space gets crowded with electric wires, cables, and piles of hardware that used to be brand new, cutting edge technologie. The works of son:DA are often deliberately simple and restrained, sometimes using very basic technical possibilities that stress an "underground" feeling. (Igor Zabel for "Aperto Slovenia" _ Flash art magazine / january-february 2004) Artistic duo son:DA’s narrative or portraying, seducingly aesthetic computer mouse drawings talk about the coldness and the estrangement within the globally connected world. The process of using a computer mouse as an interface is a meticulous creative act, that refers to the history of adapting new media in a kind of transition phase from traditional to media art, and creates a parody to the digitally created shiny and perfect imagery. son:DA also works and experiments in the field of audio-visual performance, site-specific installation and sound. The information society, communicating on the level of a collective wireless imagination that once used to be a utopian dream, has since a long time known and experienced the ambivalence that the seeming autonomy of mobility within the cyber space is bringing. “Take for example the idea of a mobile work office, you have all this autonomy because you are moving around with your personal computer, you set your own hours, you have your mobile phone. You’re beating the system, but actually this is the system now,” says Claire Pentecost when referring to the new working modality, brought by the wireless networks and general freedom of mobility in the evolved part of the world. Either representing wired or wireless iconography, son:DA play with the notion of the necessity of being connected to the immaterial, but yet so tangible system all the time. Portraying cables or incorporating them as the “leit motif” in their drawings and in installation work actually reveals the rather truth of the contemporary society new icon, the connective element of the access, that empowers the First and parts of the Third World from the disconnected and unprivileged areas on the Earth map. Rendering these scenes of the weird, but yet very familiar world, drawn with uneven computer mouse lines, son:DA makes the viewers experience the estrangement of their own everyday environment and of the society, driven by capital embedded in technology and progress. (Natasa Petresin / 2004) son:DA fetishized peripheral ordinarily subjects of technological age, such as socket, plugs, cell phones, cables. son:DA creates icons, drawn with computer mouse, that in opposite with paradoxial ilusionismus of Rene Magritt speaks: »This is socket!« Exactly this, which hid for armoire, will now as picture be installed on wall before armchair and admired minimalized aesthetics and functionality perfection of technical building. Without them – the sockets, there is no communication in this alias with this world. On the other hand, it is building in image-story that is showing conditions of residence. Fetish forms are the essence of suspension in metaphorical scenography: people wrapped in cables and hanged on cables with plugs alia exuperien cabled person, that carries red flower instead of life one is turning his own planet in space, for force of circumstances in engaged postindustrial environment, full with wires, that came from everywhere and they are waking up paranoia. And what are drawings doing together with a space and sound installatons? Effect of disturbances, of noises. That's why the image of socket is perfect. In spite of still life atmosphere there is neverending anticipation of connection. We hear electric noise. (Aleksandra Kostic / 2004) Over the years Metka Golec and Miha Horvat created their own artistic language centered around the signal-to-noise ratio and the illusion of connectivity through modern day technology. Their installations, which they combine with graphical interventions, consist of broken wires, incompatible plugs and sockets, wrongly connected cables and stripped hardware. The line between parody and reality of today’s networks has never been as thin. (Peter Tomaz Dobrila / 2005) son:DA provides the collective at the PC with ideas of rationalisation; everyone is sitting on the toilet like the guests at the erstwhile dinner party in Luis Bunuel´s "Le Fantome de la Liberte"(1974); then, one by one, they occupy the toilet in order to eat. (Harald Szeemann for "Blut und Honig" _ Sammlung Essl / Vienna / 2003) The artistic tandem son:DA combines audio-visual experimenting and the study of sound, space, moving images and still pictures. In their work, the artists focus on different techniques and media, they work with different materials and use different methods – from digital to analogue processes. So, these computer images are created in the Photoshop software, where each line is made by hand using the mouse as the interface. The drawings depict detached, impersonal high-tech environments where they themselves belong, just like the artists themselves belong to the same paradigm of information technologies. Due to the plastic material serving as the surface onto which these images are plotted, they can be used as some sort of contemporary tablecloths, rugs, or simply paintings. The impreciseness of the perspective is masked, or perhaps even emphasized either by the surface-like two-dimensional net of cables, or by an almost ornamental pattern of repetitive machines. In the image showing the rear side of computers, the innards of machines, and the connections between them, we do not see a face in either the machine or the human being. But this is not to be mistaken with bashful concealment – for the second image shows us the users of this computer hardware as literal de-personified machines, sitting naked in the middle of an intimate internet experience, or simply immersed in their own consumerist pragmatism. This seemingly naïve visualisation with the trembling line and the choice of dull pastel colours is a clear and precise criticism not only of the rapid rise of consumerism but also of the consequential understanding of work as a market commodity. Obsessively drawn networks of people, machines, cables and (in)compatible adapters present, at once, both the image of detached communication and the utopia of community. General criticism of evolutionistic myths of technologic development in the context of a small and young country which has affirmed its visual identity through the advertising campaign for mobile telephony, or the metaphor of disconnecting from the old stationary/static network as a pre-condition for new, wireless global interaction, provides additional identifying weight to the works of the tandem son:DA. (Igor Spanjol for "Blut und Honig" _ Sammlung Essl / Vienna / 2003) Themes of the drawing made by a computer mouse are fetishized detalies of modren interior, such as sockects, distributors, cables, plug-ins, mobile phone chargers... These are installed on the walls in the exhibition and public spaces in almost sacral manner, although satirical connotations to technological world are obvious. More monumental formats include genre images of the 17th century Holland interiors (common people in common environments), but they are transferd into future. Allusions are made to paranoid visions of the captured urban person, who is connected with cabels to a tarumatic social enviroments of survival. (Kibela.Kibla for "multimedia mxhibiton" _ cafe Moscow / Berlin / 2004)