She is particularly interested in the concept of techno-solutionism within the context of utopia. The subject of border politics and security is in her works intertwined with fast-expanding surveillance both online and in the physical realm. Using Google as the anti-hero information giant, Kametani has looked at the geopolitical obliteration of seas and oceans on Google Earth, or the information harvesting in the case of Google Street View.
The sea stayed calm for 180 miles
installation, ‘real -time’ stream from Google Earth, bench, sound, dimensions variable with installation, 2017
The installation shows footage from Google Earth’s ‘realtime’ stream of the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Lampedusa. Despite the apparent ‘authenticity’ of the program to represent the Earth, Google withdraws all information pertaining to seas around the world and instead inserts an animation in its place simulating slowly moving waves across the water. The bench positioned in the middle of the installation and intended for the audience to sit on is made of wood of the migrant boats that crossed this part of the sea. Installed together in one space, the elements demonstrate two contrasting versions of the sea and question the hierarchies of digital and physical experience while confronting the correlation between spectatorship and participation. By transforming the sea into a serene image, Google does not only aestheticize it, but it in fact depoliticizes it. The Mediterranean Sea here is just a water mass, not an area with national jurisdiction, and in fact the European border.
The sea stayed calm for 180 miles
installation view, Triennale of Photography Hamburg, 2018
The sea stayed calm for 180 miles
installation view, Sluice, London, 2018
The End in Three Parts
2 channel video, sound, 8:10 min, 2021
Music: Jonatán Pastirčák
The first in a trilogy of works imagining possible future trajectories, Part One details an unlikely refuge from omnipresent surveillance in the form of an island that has so far existed only in digital space as a virtual garbage dump for corrupted data. Null Island, as this place is called due to its geographical coordinates 0,0, becomes the embodiment of the possibility of a better, freer, and fairer world. Oscillating between utopia and dystopia, Part One narrates the story of a grassroots religious resistance navigating the world of few remaining liberties.
The End in Three Parts
installation view from All In. At Least a Possibility…, Kunsthalle Bratislava, 2021
Her current research centers on algorithms and artificial intelligence, and the belief structures they underpin specifically within the framework of conspiracy theories and prepping culture. Her recent works explore the concept of Null Island, a point in the Atlantic Ocean with geographic coordinates 0,0 that despite its lack of a physical form is home to an abundance of data due to errors and glitches in geographic information systems. An intersection of themes related to privacy and digital surveillance, boundaries of fiction and reality, as well as issues of cartography and the demarcation of borders to Kametani Null Island, might just hold the promise of a unique surveillance-resisting utopia.
Walls 2.0
experience enabled by multiplayer AR app, 2019
Walls 2.0: Augmenting border reality is an experience enabled by a multiplayer AR app that explores the notion of borders, separation, and the freedom of movement. Designed to be experienced in groups, participants use a new augmented reality app that creates a temporary virtual wall between them, simulating the separation in real life. In the era of growing desire to build more and more walls around nationstates in order to secure the borders, the experience enables those who may never come in contact with these structures to come face to face with them and experience them in the most artificial and absurd way possible.
Walls 2.0, project launch, Elephant West, London, 2019
Walls 2.0, project launch, Elephant West, London, 2019
Walls 2.0, project launch, Elephant West, London, 2019
Walls 2.0, app detail, 2019
Total Security Life installation, dimensions variable with installation, 2018
Total Security Life is a fictitious company specializing in security solutions presented in the form of a trade fair booth. The company’s ethos is enunciated in a short promotional video depicting a utopian world behind a tall wall. Rationalizing the need for safety and security, it presetns its services claiming to help the potential clients achieve just that. Using the rhetoric and strategies of stoking fear and preying on people’s anxieties the company ultimately offers a Faustian-like deal: safety, but through surveillance and isolation.
Total Security Life, installation view, Summer Show, Florence Trust, London, 2018
Total Security Life, installation view, Summer Show, Florence Trust, London, 2018
