Antenna

I remember when my brother bought his first Personal Computer, I was about five or six. I grew up with this tool that changed over time; the PC became a laptop and then a smartphone. Nowadays we live in the age of VR and AI. All these things were brought to us so we could communicate with one another, live unreal experiences, get closer with each other and amass/compile a personal and collective memory. These objects gained an full-blown presence, like an omnipresent and omniscient spirit that accompany our lives and examines our choices. These technologies are active absolutely everywhere: in our homes our pockets, and the invisible wave they produce entirely occupy our environnement.

My generation and the next ones have become the community that forms this « grand unity », we are somehow this omniscient spirit, this moving and connected collectivity, we know everything about everybody and we can get informed on all things at all times.
The danger of this over-technophilia is to give these technologies a positon of quasi-religion. And this is exactly what we’ve done. Antennas have become totems of their adoration. We adulate theme to a point where we are ready to modify our bodies to keep up with their fast evolution.

With a very free relation to photography, I explore how we interact with these technologies and I see how they contribute in shaping our lives. We use these technologies everyday and we can’t put a face on this hazy and transparent « being ». Do these things really exist ? Do they have their own physical reality, ... digital, ... is it all a dream ?

My photographies question the materiality of these objects, but also their representation in our environnement which creates a magical universe where situations out of this world are happening, but everything we see seams somehow familiar.

This project was exhibited for the first time as a Solo Exhibition at Standard/Deluxe in Lausanne, Switzerland in April 2019, then at f’ar in Lausanne in July 2019 as a groupe show, and at Balkkon in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in November 2019 again as a Solo Show. In 2020 it received the FOCALE Prize 2020 from the City of Nyon, Switzerland ( The Swiss Prize for Documentary Photography ) and was presented as a Solo Exhibition at Focale Gallery for that occasion. In 2021 it was part of a groupe exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts of Le Locle - MBAL, at a show entitled “Le Temps des Artistes”.

You can purchase the book for 40CHF/43€ + shipping, send an email to maciej.w.czepiel@gmail.com for more details. You can also collect the book in Neuchâtel, Biel, Romont, Bern, Yverdon-les-Bains, Lausanne, Sion and Sierre.