Wi-Fire

It draws you in. It glows in the dark. It’s never enough. Attention entropy stunts curiosity. Instinct is economized. The ouroboros chokes the phoenix’s flaming neck. The world won’t end in fire. It’ll sinter. The raw is cooked and the free are hooked. Another log and one more swipe, before the cold creeps in. A screen, black like burnt wood, reflects our ancestors’ visions — their hopes of cosmic belonging.

Wi-Fire is an installation made of routers and screens arranged in a way that resembles a bonfire. The screens are flickering with videos of flames that have been compressed to the point where they are hardly recognizable: purple-pink digital shadows of flames. They are the result of having been uploaded to various social media platforms—which each have their own compression algorithms—over and over. The original crackling sound has turned into a dull reverberation that resonates with the intense hum of ca. 200 servers. The servers are collectively sending out their Wi-Fi signals and can be found in nearby phones. They have been named after power words identified by marketing experts. Wi-Fire asks what we are actually looking at when we are connecting on social media, and what that situation is made of. It explores what happens when our physical bodies are removed from social interaction on social media via the trope of the bonfire—a site that can physically gather groups of people and plays an important role in our origin stories of culture and society. Just like the human bodies that have been removed in many of our current social interactions, the original content is disfigured in the accompanying uploading and sharing processes. Staring into the Wi-fire might draw our attention to how, like moths, we are drawn to buzz words that sell us a sense of security, exclusivity, or urgency. Moths’ movements are oriented towards the moon, and even when they keep bumping against a light bulb, they cannot help themselves but to repeat flying towards it. We will look into the Wi-Fire until our faces burn, as our gaze is guided by the attention economy and the primal need for connectedness.

Rune Bering holds an MA from The Royal Danish Academy (2013). His practice ranges from sculpture and installations to time-based media and prints. He explores and expresses topics with overlaps of nature, digital capitalism and human behaviour, which he tries to unearth and to stage how their underlying systems perform and interconnect. Berings work has been exhibited widely in Denmark and internationally, for example at Den frie Udstillingsbygning, Ringsted Galleriet, Koenigzwei, inter.pblc, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Charlottenborg Kunsthal and OK Corral.

Wi-Fire | Rune Bering

October 25 - December 6, 2024

&gate

Amager Landevej 233

Tårnby 2770

Denmark

Text: Natalie Koerner

Installation views: Brian Kure

Videos: Rune Bering