Dani Ploeger | The Stuff of Machines

About

For the past three years, Dani Ploeger has exposed his body to the stuff of techno consumer culture, ranging from brand-new objects of desire in British and American shopping malls, to the debris of discarded electronic devices on dumps and recycling sites in Nigeria and Hong Kong. The Stuff of Machines brings together recent performance, installation and interactive work that explores and subverts the expectations and dreams surrounding everyday technologies, through an engagement with their materialness in connection to bodies: Parts of an old television were installed in the artist's abdomen, tablet computers wrapped in sheet metal are left to charge forever, a petrol generator powered a computer inside a transparent box with the artist inside, and a magnified infected wound documents electronic waste recycling labour on a Nigerian dump site. Meanwhile, visitors are invited to lick an iPad to indulge in their own techno consumer fetishism.

About the Artist:
Dani Ploeger's work involves consumer technologies and readily available medical devices, and explores themes around the technologized body, ecology, sexuality and vanity. His performances and installations have been shown at festivals, galleries and museums, including transmediale (Berlin), WRO Media Art Biennale (Wroclaw), DEFIBRILLATOR Gallery (Chicago), and the V&A Museum. He has never won a prize. Dani is also a senior lecturer at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where he leads the Performance Arts course. www.daniploeger.org / www.e-waste-performance.net

Watermans directions:
You can reach Watermans with the District Line to Gunnersbury station (direction Richmond), then take bus 267 or 236 outside the station, which takes you to Watermans.

For further information, please contact Irini Papadimitriou, Head of New Media Arts Development a irini@watermans.org.uk or see www.watermans.org.uk