SUPERCARGO - PETER MOOSGAARD

A cargo cult is a practice amongst indigenous populations that consists in imitating western culture and technology with the hope of arriving at the same effects. Since 2013, Supercargo has been the means by which Peter Moosgaard has collected ritual appropriations and subversive imitations of technology and products of mass consumption.

In a society that is submerged by the artefacts that result from constant technological innovation, the rituals and mimicry at work in Supercargo establish the comforting technological object as the ultimate symbol, a symbol of power, class and lifestyle. For the followers of a cargo cult, this symbolic power and the desire to possess that it gives rise to, transcends the simple act of consumption by means of various ritual practices of simulation, caricature, imitation, plagiarism and substitution. These practices propose an exotic and distorted mirror image of the cults at work in western society.

This cross-disciplinary collection of images immerses us in an eventual dystopia, a post-apocalyptic era after technological hyperconsumption had led to disaster, a period in which the devices themselves have become relics.

Peter Moosgaard studies of Philosophy and Linguistics, later Visual Media at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Graduated in Digital Arts (MA) in 2012, he is co-Founder of TRAUMAWIEN publishing in 2010. Member of activist group WochenKlausur since 2007, he works as an artist, journalist, janitor and teacher. His work has been exhibited Istanbul, Stockholm, Athens, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Munich, Brussels and Basel. He is currently PhD Candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on global, postdigital strategies.

http://traumawien.at/people/peter-moosgaard/