Davide Balula

For his 5th solo exhibition at Galerie Frank Elbaz, Davide Balula hones in on human functions that relate to emotion, empathy and focus. He has created mechanisms which consume, redistribute or abstract body fluids and brain activity.

Saliva, tears, sweat and bile, all synthetically produced in a laboratory for the show, have never come in contact with the world of the body, the biome, a person’s unique set of bacteria, which incidentally, cause these secretions to release their distinctive body odor. The disposable fluids, which your body secretes and abandons, are circulated throughout the gallery via rudimentary machines which act as proxies for basic body functions. For instance, with Automated Tear Drop, synthetic tears stream down a chain into a kick bucket, effectively creating a crying machine so you don’t have to waste your own tears. The works in the exhibition which remotely cry, breathe, spit, etc. function as poetic simulacra to our current technological moment, where machines are increasingly part of our everyday lives, inseparable from how we think, communicate and feel. Emails and text messages have replaced phone calls, emoji have replaced words.

The inundation of information brought forth by technology has not only altered our affect, but has also resulted in a pandemic addiction to distraction. With Attention Span Color Meter, Balula uses a brain sensor to read the electromagnetic frequencies of the focused and unfocused brain. These frequencies are wired into the gallery lighting and produce a fluctuating hue, so one’s focus literally colors the walls and the works on view in the gallery. Far from reading someone’s thoughts or emotions, the data collected is basic human brain function, both highly specific yet somewhat arbitrary, in that whether the brain being monitored is from an individual who is educated or uneducated, privileged or oppressed, old or young; the results remain indistinguishable from one another. Balula’s interest in principles of subjectivity versus preconceived universality, or the dismantling of power structures from a biological standpoint has been partly influenced by different feminists thinkers with a particular take on science, like Isabelle Stengers or Catherine Malabou.

- Julia Trotta