Broken Screens

Series: Broken displays as intaglio prints become a symbol of transience in a digital society.

series

BROKEN SCREENS

THE BEAUTY OF FRAGILITY

In this series, the approach of ‘Broken Windows’ is being transferred to digital devices. A broken screen becomes the allegory, or the crunch point, of our networked society. It reveals both our dependence on smartphones as well as the fragility of these devices. Likewise, a certain visual beauty lies in the individual nature of the broken screen.

Using an intaglio press, the screen is being printed in the most direct manner possible. The result is a collection of individual portraits of tragic human-technology relationships and – in a figurative sense – contemporary vanitas images for our digital world.

Process

Quotes

“Perhaps more subtle than the activist messages of other hi-jackers of private ad space in public space, these images of brokenness are meant to draw our attention to the fragility of our devices as well as our tenuous connection to the ephemeral information we so greedily consume from them daily.”

Jaime Rojo & Steven P. Harrington, authors and curators, Brooklyn Street Art (BSA), 2019

“Our small ‘window into the digital world,’ the smartphone, is imaged to create a series of works that Various & Gould have been engaged in since 2018. Taking the focus away from the flawless finish of smartphones, these works use intaglio printing to showcase destroyed displays, creating a formal aesthetic which stands in stark contrast to the state of dysfunction.”

Luis Müller Philipp-Sohn, quote from the book Various & Gould: Permanently Improvised, 2019

Links

Broken Screens on Brooklyn Street Art (BSA)

Broken Screens on Urban Shit