Tots els canvis s’han desat (All Changes Saved)
Aram Bartholl, Clara Boj + Diego Díaz, Martin John Callanan, Olia Lialina, Kyle McDonald, Román Torre + Ángeles Angulo, Carlo Zanni
Curated by Pau Waelder
Casal Solleric, Palma (Spain)
September 21, 2018 – January 6, 2019
“The internet is, in its essence, a machine of surveillance. It divides the flow of data into small, traceable, and reversible operations, thus exposing every user to surveillance—real or potential. The internet creates a field of total visibility, accessibility, and transparency.”
Boris Groys
When writing a document using the text editor on Google Drive, every few seconds a discrete notification appears on the toolbar: “all changes saved in Drive”. The software confirms that the document contents have been automatically saved on one of Google’s servers. It is not necessary to save the document, the platform does it on its own. This automatic save function is a comfort, as it prevents us from losing data through computer failure or carelessness. However, it also reminds us that everything we do on the internet is stored automatically, whether we like it or not. As Boris Groys points out, the internet is a network where data packets circulate that are constantly tracked, labelled and stored. Everything we do when we use a digital device connected to the internet is registered and stored on a remote server. And increasingly we are using connected devices for many of our daily activities, from the moment we get up in the morning to when we go to bed at night and even whilst we are sleeping. The data that is automatically gathered by the devices that surround us is added to the information we voluntarily provide by publishing contents on social networks, writing lists of things to remember on digital notes, using password managers or deciding to wear an activity tracker.
All Changes Saved is a collective exhibition with the Google Drive notification as its title, alluding to the way in which our lives are affected by the automatic save function. We trust our data to large companies and we write our biography in real time, but we are unable to control these files or what others do with them. The artworks of various national and international artists pose questions as to the construction of our personal history through the data we share, the use made of that data and the strategies to recover some sort of intimacy.
Pau Waelder
Curator