Adaptation Cloud | Youth Cloud

ADAPTATION CLOUD, video, 5:16 Minutes, 2017

YOUTH CLOUD, video, 2:38 minutes, 2017

When talking about a cloud, people under a certain age most likely will think of data storage rather than just a cloud in the sky. This paradox might serve as a subliminal basis for Mit Borrás’ work, which focuses on mankind’s vision and desire for progress and its projection onto products, yield in consequence to it, in juxtaposition to human’s natural evolvement and environment. The interdisciplinary artist studies and questions the omnipresence of objects and products, as they incarnate an ambivalent relation between nature’s progressive efficiency and its appropriation by technology. His work examines the relationship between lifestyle products and their purpose of accelerating cerebral evolution, enhancing performance on the one hand, but offer diversion and the prospect escape of the dismal reality of nature’s inescapable decomposition on the other hand.

Products are not only physical extensions of human forward-thinking visions, they are also paradigmatically influencing our perception of what we think the future will look like. In sync witch human activities, products serve as symptomatic prototypes of our aspiration for progress and also symbolize an ever-evolving perpetuum mobile on a meta level.

Borrás’ video works Adaptation Cloud and Youth Cloud involve a similar notion of questioning the culture of human desires in regards to its physical and psychological constitution.  The undead looking protagonists of the videos appear in a monochromatic, seemingly Pantone inspired ultra violet filter, contrasting each others appearance and associated qualities. Youth Cloud is informing the viewer about the advantages of a health device and promoting its rejuvenating properties. Adaptation Cloud is about functions and benefits of ergonometric design and concepts. The paradox of advertising these products and their potential effects through undead appearing protagonists as spokespersons is obvious.

The living death, as one of pop culture’s favorite phenomenons and its soulless, incessant wandering in search for fresh intake, can effortlessly be compared to today’s society and its craving for new media, new technologies, new everything. The protagonist’s morphed faces contrast their otherwise sleek appearance just as much as the colorful setting. Their monologues are performed in automated, monotone speech with an artificial voice, letting the characters seem like generated products themselves.

Products both inspire and determine modern society’s urge for progress and an increasing consumption of goods that influence our natural environment just as much as they create a world of their own. Humankind in its search to find ways to command and conquer the future seems to be oblivious to the fact that it might not longer fit a prothesis but the prothesis has become it. Mit Borrás distinct visualizations subtly reflect this ambiguity in an elegant and tempting way.

The video Adaptation Cloud will be part of an upcoming group exhibition about the relation between the body and the dichotomy of nature and technology, curated by Gabriela Maciel. The exhibition will run from May 25th to June 15th, 2018 at LACS – a new space for contemporary art and innovation in Lisbon, Portugal and will include works by Mit Borrás, Joshua Evans, Ivan Divanto, Paulo Arraiano, Jacek Dorodszenko, Eva Dorodszenko, Diogo Evangelista and Gioia Di Girolamo.