Performative Kinetics

Alenka Trebušak in conversation with Meta Grgurevič

AT: Although you have a postgraduate degree in painting, your practice combines knowledge of mechanics and electrical engineering with contemporary art. You have been creating kinetic objects that move or create the illusion of movement for ten years. How did it all start?

MG: As a child, I remember stealing tools from my father and taking apart household appliances. I wondered where the rubbish goes when you vacuum it up, or where the announcers are hiding in the radio. I imagined that there was a magical world inside the appliances, so I secretly dismantled them and examined their insides. That means that, yes, there has always been an interest in the workings of mechanisms. When I was going to secondary school, my father jokingly suggested that I should go to a school for mechanics – because I enjoyed it. My main concern was that being a mechanic was still a predominantly male job at that time, while something more sophisticated would have been more suitable for me, so I decided to go into industrial design. 

AT: Despite not having trained as a mechanic, you work in a field that is largely male-dominated and you also work with craftsmen from different disciplines. How do they view your projects: from a purely technical-mechanical point of view, or are they also interested in their context within art?

MG: In the beginning, in some of the specialised technical shops, which are mainly frequented by men, I was regarded as if I were an alien. Sometimes, at least at first, I was ignored when it was my turn. So I quickly realised that I had to change my approach and prepare better. I started to enter such shops with a cut-off greeting, leaning on the counter in a “manly” way, and asking what I was looking for with more confidence and expert terminology.

Today, I don’t bother with that anymore and most of them already know me. Experience has taught me that there is no problem a woman cannot solve on her own; it’s just that the way we resolve it can sometimes be a little different. But it is also in the interest of my co-workers on the project that we successfully overcome the obstacles and get to the result. And yes, many of them started following contemporary art because of our shared experiences.

AT: Besides mechanics, you also occasionally introduce motifs and elements from the animal and plant worlds into your pieces, for example, the flying model Letatlin (2012 – 2019), Energy Thieves (2019) and Escapement_Experiment No. 3 (2013 – 2019). 

MG: Most often I find inspiration in the natural sciences – after all, mechanics is one of them. I’m interested in physics, and since I’m not that good at theory, I study physical effects by experimenting in my studio. I make prototypes, draw, and read books on physical phenomena such as time, space, and our perception of both. Nature, animals, and humans are inevitably part of this field, so I often study how we function and how we react in relation to one another. To put it very simply, our interdependence and functioning is akin to a mechanism in a machine. All the elements must be in perfect harmony for the machine to be able to perform its function. In this sense, each of us has a role to play and, inevitably, a responsibility towards the environment and others.

AT: The spirit of inquiry in the natural sciences has therefore always been with you, and in the exhibition Scraping for Gold, you are also directing it towards an exploration of the elementariness of materials. Why did you choose gold as a starting point?

MG: As a sculptress, I work a lot with materials, especially metals. Not only are they a major building block in mechanical engineering but also, more importantly, they each have their own specific characteristics that make them both useful and extremely attractive. When I work with them they get a shiny patina, which they lose over time: they either rust or darken. With gold, the opposite is true. Being indestructible, it has a special status among metals and has a strong symbolic value. It was the latter that made me reflect on the comparison between the symbolic value of an artwork and its actual value, which is determined based on the materials used, time, effort, etc., and gold. Gold is difficult to extract, so it has an intrinsic value as well as a symbolic value, and this fact was an excellent starting point for my project. As gold will soon run out in its natural form, I also wondered what quality it has when it comes out of the recycling process. While not all materials can be recycled to purity, for instance paper, metals can be recycled to 99% purity. 

AT: For us, recycling mostly comes down to sorting waste into the right containers. Has your understanding of the process changed fundamentally by being involved in the process itself?

MG: In this project, I realised that recycling is an extremely demanding process, which involves a lot of labour, obviously at a cost. At the same time, it requires a certain technological knowledge of how to properly dismantle an object, what materials it contains, where, how, and if at all, they can be reused. Recycling also requires energy, chemicals, water, etc., so the process needs to be well conceived and planned to be sustainable and, above all, financially viable. 

AT: What is your opinion on the level of sustainability in the industrial production of objects?

MG: I think we are still a long way from things and materials actually circulating and having a positive impact on the environment. When I went for an interview at the Jožef Stefan Institute, the head of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Asst. Prof. Gašper Tavčar, PhD, pointed out that for larger industries, the concept of recycling is primarily a question of profitability. For larger industries, the main principle is to optimise the process to the point where the investment in recycling is recouped and production is still profitable. My understanding, however, is a bit more utopian. It seems to me that in science and art, time passes in a completely different way because, in the field of research and creation, it is never completely clear where problems or new discoveries lie. That is why it is difficult to optimise such a process in advance to the point where profits can be predicted. The same is true for the recycling process because we are still learning and exploring, which is not very attractive to large-scale industries. This is how I presented the project to Asst. Prof. Tavčar. We both agreed that this project would not make anyone rich. In this case, the investment was primarily in expertise and experience.

AT: How come you decided to build your own mine out of outdated and discarded mobile phones?

MG: Gold had little use in the past, except as a means of payment, because it was too scarce and, therefore, too expensive. It is only in modern times that gold started to be used in electronics because of its high conductivity and indestructibility. As a result, mobile phones, among other devices, contain it. Gold is applied in micron-thin layers to specific contacts in circuits. I decided that my gold mine would be mobile phones because there are a lot of them in circulation, as almost everyone has one at home. I would say that they are more than our identity card; we have a special relationship with them and many of us can no longer imagine life without our mobile phones. The personal data stored in every mobile phone is now worth more than just gold, which is why some people who gave me their mobile phones asked me, with some concern, if I was also collecting personal data. When I told them that the circuits would go into acid and that all I was interested in was the gold, they were naturally relieved.

AT: What challenges did you face in collecting and dismantling them? 

MG: At first, I set out to collect a thousand of them and get 40 grams of gold, but the more I thought about the possibility of dismantling and chemically processing them, the more I realised that the number was too high for the time I had at my disposal. The benchmarks had to be lowered. The ideal number was two hundred mobile phones, as Asst. Prof. Tavčar pointed out that the most difficult part of the process would be the dismantling. Mobile phones, basically, are not meant to be taken apart. Certain models have non-standard screws, some elements are even glued together and need to be forcefully dismantled. All the gold-plated circuit components had to be heat-treated to separate them from each other. The process was tedious and I needed extra workers. I have always wanted to involve as many different collaborators as possible, especially the younger generation, who would also tackle the “banal” pragmatic problems in the course of the project. I, therefore, invited students who work at Cukrarna as exhibition information assistants and who have little experience in this kind of work to take part. Thus, the project involved not only experts but also lay people. After all, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into exactly and I admit that my hands suffered a few cuts at the beginning.

AT: How did the chemical procedure work and what chemicals did you have to use to obtain a small grain of gold? Did your hunt for gold, like we read about in books and see in films, turn out to be an adventure?

MG: Chemistry is a completely unfamiliar field to me, so I was positively excited to be able to observe such a procedure live. I initially imagined the laboratory at the Institute as a white sterile room. But when I walked in, it looked more in the style of a futuristic film, like Brazil or Twelve Monkeys. It had huge machinery for separating different materials and everything was covered in red sludge. Red sludge is a waste material from major industries that is analysed in the laboratory. They then decide which substances make sense to recycle and which are toxic, based on their analysis of the data. Peter Frkal, a chemist at the Jožef Stefan Institute, started by weighing the circuits from the two hundred phones – three kilogrammes in total. He immersed them in eight litres of sulphuric acid to dissolve all the plastic. The sheer amount of material and labour that went into it was overwhelming for all present. Of course, the eight litres of sulphuric acid had to be poured out and rinsed with water, and the quantity of water alone needed for this stage of the process was enormous. This made me realise that water, in addition to being the basic source of life, is also a key element in every chemical process. The first difficulty he encountered was how to decant the eight litre container of acid without losing the smallest parts of the circuits that contained the gold and, of course, without contaminating the working environment with acid. Once he had managed to do that, he immersed the whole thing in nitric (V) acid to dissolve all the unwanted metals, including copper, nickel, and other metals present. This was when toxic nitrous gases started to build up, so he worked in a controlled environment: a fume cupboard that filters all the resulting gases and returns the clean remains into the air. At this stage small particles of gold were already emerging, and he put all his efforts into intercepting and catching them in a special sieve during the straining and panning process. 

AT: During our conversations in the run-up to the exhibition, you mentioned that this process could be described as modern alchemy. How did you feel when you first saw the gold particles floating in the liquid?

MG: Funnily enough, even though I had told myself that I was interested in the process and not so much in the result, at that moment I was seized by a strange restlessness mixed with the fear that we would lose the gold in the panning. It occurred to me that this is probably the same feeling that seizes every gold prospector, the so-called gold rush. 

AT: But the whole process was not yet complete, was it?

MG: No, the chemist then put the circuits in cyanide, and an interesting debate developed around the dark history of its use: about how a single inhalation causes painful and instant death, about the faint smell of almonds wafting from the victim, and so on. Again, a strict protocol for handling and flushing with water had to be followed. At the very end, though, like genuine gold prospectors, we had a plot twist comparable to the adventures in gold-hunting stories. When we got a grain of pure gold from three kilogrammes of circuit boards, we accidentally lost it twice because of its small size. When Peter was cleaning up the precipitate the first time, he accidentally dropped the grain on the floor, which was full of metal shavings. He found it only after examining each of them with extreme patience, on his knees, with tweezers in his hands. On another occasion, the grain inadvertently ended up falling down the drain when cleaning up the laboratory. Peter took a pair of pliers and dismantled the drainpipes, hoping that the weight would keep it at the bottom of the siphon. We were lucky again because we actually found it there.

AT: Have you determined the purity of the gold you have extracted? 

MG: It is supposed to be 99% pure gold. When we put the circuits in the nitric (V) acid, we got rid of all the unwanted metals. Had we not done that, the gold would not be pure: some impurities would remain, mainly copper. That is how the gold is applied to the contacts: first they are copper plated and then the circuits are gold plated.

AT: You mentioned the surprising disparity between the amount of material collected, the number of participants, the labour involved and the final result. 

MG: Often, only the final result is presented to the viewer. In general, we know very little about how either an artwork or an everyday object is made. For that very reason I enjoy being involved in the process, even if it is not my area of expertise. Sometimes I find the path to the result even more exciting than the outcome itself – an adventure. When I decided to tell the story of gold extraction in the project, I was struck by the fact that it takes more than a tonne of ore to mine a few grams of gold. I found the discrepancy unimaginable yet metaphorically comparable to my way of working.

AT: In fact, these differences are not only reflected in the circuits on display, at different stages of processing, and in the audio work on the chemical procedure but also in the object, which resembles a rodent training wheel but is made to be driven by a human and in this way actuates the hand that writes out the word “work” in pencil.

MG: I found the Human Hamster Wheel idea interesting, especially given the fact that it is driven by information assistants. In galleries, I often have the feeling that information assistants are merely a passive presence in the exhibition space, although they are an indispensable part of the exhibition. I wanted them to be an active element within the kinetic sculpture. In a way, I placed the information assistant in the role of a worker, perhaps even a slave to the artwork. When the information assistant is propelling the wheel, it is not clear if they are dictating the work or if the hand is dictating to the information assistant by writing out the word “work”. They are propelling a wheel that has no concrete goal. In a way, it is a first-person confession of what I am experiencing today: that we are aimlessly running around in a frenzy, all too seldom asking ourselves what we really need and what we are striving for. I see the work as a parody and, like any other parody, it reflects a harsh truth. I like to tinker with the dark side that comes from somewhere behind, and the positive outcome that an artwork can offer to the viewer. The film Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin, with him standing behind a conveyor belt, is one such example. He is also in a dead-end situation, but his presence, his performance, and the whole set design in the film give some positive hope, even though what he is trying to do is not positive.

Another aspect of this work, or of my work in general, is that I am often faced with technical challenges when making kinetic sculptures that require concrete and logical solutions. At that moment, the fact that the mechanism has to function in the name of art, which is not functional in itself, becomes rather absurd. That is why, in my practice, I have to find a balance between function, which is thoughtful and logical, and form and content, which have nothing to do with actual usability and can therefore be completely abstract. At first glance, logical and rational thinking seems to offer the right solution but people often react to their environment according to their emotions and, in this respect, the world does not follow logic but intuition. Art can combine both aspects, which is why it has immense power of suggestion.

AT: In addition to its suggestive and processual character, your creative practice is also strongly marked by performativity. 

MG: I also consider kinetic sculptures as a performative element in space. I am interested in performance from the point of view of movement; how the body is positioned in space and time, and, above all, what movement in the form of gesture communicates to the viewer. In the project Scraping for Gold, the performance is not executed by a skilled artist but is based on the idea that it can be performed by anybody. 

AT: Is that why you introduced tokens? 

MG: Yes, they trigger the information assistant’s wheel and hand, but, at the same time, I also activate the viewer to react and ask themselves whether they have to somehow compensate for the “service” provided in the exhibition space. The visitor pays for the token with virtual money. The starting point is to consider the value of the work: the work as an artwork and the labour in itself, meaning the physical labour that created the project. That is why I thought it would be appropriate to include a remuneration component, and the viewer can decide what the value of the work is. I open up an interesting issue here, namely, is the viewer paying the person who is propelling the wheel, or are they paying for the artwork? Do they pay for the content or for the hand that writes? Perhaps they are paying for the typewriter that is punching the keys ... Paying with virtual money seemed a nice metaphor for what an individual values. Some people appreciate the physical labour involved, others appreciate the opportunity to experience and see something at an exhibition. 

AT: The typewriter is also the only element that has not been built completely from scratch, although it had to be upgraded and adapted for the current installation. 

MG: The typewriter is a work in progress since 2015. Its origins date back to the days when we made our own electromagnets at home, which were extremely heavy and oversized, so the typewriter was limited to five keys only. Later, together with the constructor France Petač, we came up with the idea of making a cylinder for each key separately and ambitiously set out to do so. He drew the plan for the cylinders, and I used the plan to build more than 35 cylinders, with all the pistons, caps, and screws. 

AT: How does it function? 

MG: The typewriter works by each cylinder actuating a key, with the cylinder being activated by an air compressor, which is not visible in the exhibition space, and the command being given by an electronic circuit. To put it quite simply: the electronic circuitry is the brain, and everything else is the skeleton that drives the typewriter.

AT: Why does your typewriter print out numbers as words and subtracts from a million grams to one gram? 

MG: In this work, I wanted to show what it means to have a tonne of ore on one side and a few grams of gold, in the ore, on the other. I decided that the machine would count from a million grams down to a single gram. However, as I was turning the idea over in my head, I realised that I would never be able to count to the end because the proportion is so large and would take a lot of paper and time. Furthermore, every now and then, the machine makes a mistake, due to the very nature of mechanics. Likewise, if something gets jammed or the tape runs out, it has to be physically reset, which causes the machine to go back to the beginning and start counting again. Its counting embodies the frustration I experience in every work process before I reach a meaningful result. Nothing is exactly as I imagine. In between, the laws of physics come in and mess with my brain because the forces really work differently than I imagine, because the materials are not there, because some things cannot be manufactured, because there are not enough resources and you have to make adjustments, and so on. This constant going back, repeating, and exploring the medium is a very significant path to success. With certain mechanisms, I have to dismantle them up to twenty times a day, look at what’s not working, detect the fault, change the function, and reassemble. It is similar to a Swiss watch – it is supposedly dismantled hundreds of times before the mechanism really works as it should. Mechanics requires precision to get a fully functional mechanism. 

AT: Does the design of kinetic sculptures always start on paper, with plans, drawings, and sketches?

MG: It varies a lot, sometimes I get an idea and research it on the internet. I check what already exists and what people think about it. I often look to physicists, who post their lectures on YouTube, for inspiration. That way, I get a sense of what can actually be done. Then, yes, there is usually a sketch of what the object should look like, followed by detailed planning. At the beginning, when I was not exactly familiar with the meaning of technical drawing, France joked that my sketches and drawings were not real technical drawings and that he cannot use such drawings in the workshop. It takes a lot of time and energy to draw up plans and work out the execution. It took me a few years to come to terms with the fact that good planning is simply a matter of making the effort because it is much easier to do the work afterwards.