Artist Talk: Suzon Fuks – e-Galaxy
Wednesday, November 12th, 6–8 pm
Moderated by Zoe Gudović
Artists Suzon Fuks and Zoe Gudović first met through The Magdalena Project, where they collaborated on the Online Magdalena Festival — a platform dedicated to feminist performance and creative exchange. Their conversation will also touch upon this connection and the spirit of collaboration it inspired.
Suzon Fuks will introduce her work ‘e-Galaxy’ made with and about electronic waste. It counterpoints our ‘throwaway’ culture by drawing attention to beauty in the everyday, the mundane and the discarded. It raises awareness about recycling, sustainability and some of the human and environmental costs involved in making electronic devices.
With the domestic consumption speed increasing, ‘e-Galaxy’ connects users with the matter of manufacture. It explores the archaeology of technology from accumulated years of inventions while highlighting how the minerals in these machines have taken millions of years to form and yet an instant to mine. 3 in 10 people globally do NOT have electricity, many of them work in those mines.
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Suzon Fuks is a multidisciplinary ‘artivist’ whose award-winning work investigates the impact of technology on humanity and environment, water, the status of women, and people seeking asylum.
Since early 2000, Suzon has created performances on the Internet, becoming internationally recognized as a pioneer in this field. She was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship (2009-2012) and Copeland Fellowship at the Five Colleges, Massachusetts, which enabled her to conceive and undertake Waterwheel, a collaborative art-science online venue about Water.
Since 2019, Suzon has been developing a body of work that uses locally sourced electronic waste. This includes: creating artist books relating her experience of the passage from analogue to digital technology; designing wearables that repurpose electronic parts; performing and activating installations, at human and miniature scale, and which are used in videos.