BURNINGCOLLECTION.TV

The artists have created a programme that selects in real time the five most-watched videos on a famous online content sharing platform. This selection is carried out according to a precise semantic field that the artists defined in advance. The programme then takes these five sources, modifies them using random filters and aggregates them into a single video, which in the process becomes more complex and harder to decipher. The sound from each video is not modified and the five accumulated soundtracks provide some clues about the original subjects of the source videos. The artists have deliberately kept their selection criteria secret and will only reveal them at the end of the project..

Screenshots of this ever-changing chimerical video are saved at regular intervals, thereby creating a collection of snapshots. You can consult these images and follow their progression by clicking on the « archive » tab. These complex images bear witness, in a deliberately undefinable manner, to the audiovisual content that is currently being watched around the world by thousands of eyes.

An estimated 600,000 hours of video are uploaded to this famous platform every hour, an activity that consumes an increasingly significant amount of so-called “grey energy”. Perhaps this mass of videos viewed on a large scale represents the confused traces of our collective psyche that is constantly being bombarded with conflicting information and burned or dazzled by the image and sound zeitgeist. Perhaps these images provide an implicit definition of the different media environments that immerse and define us. As a work of art, « burningcollection.tv » is apparently in contradiction with the crucial issues at stake and yet it evokes the complex processes that consume both our minds and the world’s energy resources.

Lauren Huret (born 1984, Paris, lives in Geneva, Switzerland) is an artist. Her research and visual work, mainly composed of videos, installations, performances and collages, aims to shed light on the belief systems to which our technical and media devices give rise.
Her work has been exhibited at the Kunsthaus Langenthal, the Hard Hat Gallery in Geneva, La Panacée in Montpellier, the Copenhagen Contemporary, the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève, the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, the Haus der Elektronischen Kunste in Basel and the Jeu de Paume in Paris.
Her performances have been presented as part of the Swiss Performance Prize at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, the Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, the Les Urbaines à l’Arsenic festival in Lausanne and for international organisation ICRC in Turkey and London.
She has published five books to date, including Artificial fear, Intelligence of Death (Link, co-published by Kunsthaus Langenthal, April 2016); L’âge des techniciens with Pacôme Thiellement (Clinamen, June 2017); and Praying for my haters (CCS Paris, February 2019).
She has just finished a solo exhibition at Roehrs & Boetsch in Zurich and is currently preparing for another one in October 2020 at Swissnex San Francisco.
www.laurenhuret.com

Fragmentin is an artist collective based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 2014 and composed by three ECAL (Lausanne University of Art and Design) alumni: Laura Perrenoud (*1991, Lausanne), David Colombini (*1989, Lausanne) and Marc Dubois (*1985, Basel).
At the crossroads of art and engineering, Fragmentin’s work questions the impact of the digital on everyday life by investigating these technologies disposition towards control and opacity.
Influenced by the likes of Alain Damasio, Eric Sadin and James Bridle, Fragmentin’s works are designed as spaces for discussion on crucial contemporary topics and issues.
Through installation, interaction and performance, the studio’s artworks demystify complex systems and reveal the tension between technology and climate change.
Fragmentin’s pieces have been exhibited internationally and have been acquired by collection of institutions such as HeK in Basel or the Art Foundation Pax.
Since 2017, they also have been nominated to several art prizes such as the Pax Art Award (2018), the Lumen Prize for art & technology (2018, 2019) and the « Prix du Rayonnement de la Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture » (2019).
www.fragment.in