Digital Earth Project: Interdisciplinary Artist Emo de Medeiros Partners with GMTaC Lab

Published on October 3rd, 2018

The GMTaC Lab has partnered with the Hivos Foundation to support the Digital Earth project, which grants fellowships to artists or designers based in Africa or Asia who are exploring issues of digital materiality. Lisa Parks will work as a research mentor to Emo de Medeiros, an interdisciplinary artist, whose work spans across video, sculpture, photography, textile, music and performance art. He lives and works in Cotonou, Benin and Paris. His practice is built around the concept of ‘contexture’ which is based on holistic interconnectivity, transculturalness, and creating interactive experiences through the fusing of a wide range of disciplines. He has taken part in a variety of international exhibitions, including the Palais de Tokyo, the 12th and 13th Biennale of Dakar, LagosPhoto Festival 2018, Videobrasil Contemporary Art Festival and “Accelerations” at the Centre Pompidou. 

Source
During the Digital Earth fellowship, Emo will work on his research project “The Android’s Passage,” which focuses on smartphones as the building blocks of the Digital Revolution that has spread across Africa. de Medeiros intends to create a video that follows the travels of a single smartphone, from its manufacturing by one human in Shenzhen, to its actual sale to another human in Lagos, Nigeria, in the famous Computer Village market. He  aims to explore the notion of the shrinking planet through increased cross-continental technological connectivity. In his research he will be investigating the link between people and technology through an examination of the materiality and humanity of the global and digital world.