A conversation with Marko Peljhan over its project Makrolab
Marko Peljhan started his private Infowar at the Documenta X. The Slovene lived forty days in his homemade laboratory Makrolab on Lutterberg in the nearby Kassel. From there he stopped in the phone calls, which ran over international telecommunications satellites during this period. The American Brain Springer, with which together he carried out the project, wrote later: "We took the sky about the Lutterberg as a lively booking… From the shelves we agree with pictures and data communications." The results of this stripes through the ather were documented on a website. Although Makrolab is not a network art in the narrower sense, because the Internet serves only to uniform the macrolab activities. But the project is a one in the long series of art -lerological works with satellites, which have been carried out in the last twenty years of artists and can be considered as a leader of network art.
Marko, you have worked as an artist a lot with radio and satellite instructions. How did you come to this?
Marko Peljhan: I am a radio fan since I was 11 years old. In Yugoslavia, there was a rough radio scene during socialism. When I was a teenager, we always went to the radio club and talked about short wave cycling with people around the world. If I think about it today, I believe that this was very important for me because it has been a very global experience. It sounds a bible like internet in front of the internet…
Marko Peljhan: Yes, but for me, this whole radio scene was normal, part of my seashore life, which I did not think further, but that made me completely self-reliable. To an important part of my artist work was that much later. These radio clubs have been greatly monitored in a certain MAB from the regime, but it was still very open and liberal. Everyone could become a member of taking a congress and joining. How has this developed to a work project?
Marko Peljhan: First of all. I started in 1989 to make performances. When I finished the theater and radio academy in 1992, I founded an organization with the name project ATOL. An atoll is an island that consists of a coral reef that has a certain shape with a center to which a ring lays. And it grows, it's alive. The name has to do with the utopian vision to go into isolation, to build his own island, break out of society. The Makrolab at Documenta 1997 was the first manifestation of this project. What you did with the Documenta with Makrolab, however, was actually nothing but satellite, or?
Marko Peljhan: So you could say it, but it's more behind it. The whole project is intended as a ten-year-old process. There are three topics with which the project is busy and all of the global discharge. One is telecommunications, the second is the weather and electromagnetic systems and the third is migration and navigation. The first part we made at the Documenta had to do with telecommunications and all the questions associated with it. These are very serious political and ethical topics. What exactly did you do in Kassel at the Documenta?
Marko Peljhan: We looked at what happens to the Inmarsat satellites, for example, who uses you for which purposes. This is a good instrument to understand global and political advances. The people who use these satellites are mostly in political or economic power positions. From Kassel we led to, for example, UN conference circuits, which have worked with the situation in Sierra Leone. Of this time, it was as good as nothing known in the West. It may have given a short message in the newspaper, but the satellites could be very explicit conversations. We were thereby to witness how politics is really made. With this method, Brian Springer — with which I worked with this project — has also its film "Spin" made, for which he intercepted the uncut TV material from a satellite to show how it takes on television behind the scenes. I think you want to blame how the technically works. Everyone can patch in such telephone language, which go over these satellites?
Marko Peljhan: The large part of international long-term lifelong language is over these satellites. Sometimes they are closed, now often digitized. With the right equipment you can determine the analog signals. However, you have to have a good reason because it is not a particularly pleasant activity. We have made it rather rough. We had neither the equipment nor people to listen to everything. We mobilize ourselves on intuition and leave for our gland. That's why it was so shot because we spent searching for the whole day. Is what you do is, legal?
Marko Peljhan: It's experimental. And it continues both science and technology as well as society. It is fully recommended to familiarize yourself with the legal situation because that is different in each country. In Germany, what we did is legally, but you can not pass on what you belonged to third parties. In Australia, it is similar, but in the US or in Austria the situation is very different. Although the rights of the individual are protected against others, but not in front of the state, which is the only one. But the distribution of politically relevant phone calls is not crucial? If you only depend on the phone calls from other people, that's little more than voyeurism. But if your material discovers that is important to you, you have to have been unavailable, or?
Marko Peljhan: Clearly. That's why we want to use this information in a social sense, because we only do that. Everyone can listen to the phone calls from others. It is not particularly difficult to penetrate into the privacy of others, but as I said, it is not particularly pleasant. We want to show how certain power structures — or a certain type of powerlessness — use the technology and what is hidden there. At the occurrences in Sierra Leone or in some of the arms handlers, whom we have become available, there are the things that really negotiate, and then there is the official press declaration. We are about to say, for example, the people of Greenpeace: "Hello, you actually work that everyone can hear your secret interviews?" Probably not know that every time you used the satellite phone on your boat, your opponents can use everything. Or you know it, but it does not matter. I find it very important to show that the privacy is not so shaped as most people probably accept. And how do you want to spread the information when it's illegal?
Marko Peljhan: We want to ground a company, because then we had the right to spread this information among all partners. You just had to buy a share from this company to buy everything we have collected about information and data. We are still looking for the right country to ground the company. That's a long process, but in the next few years it will happen. One must not forget that all states do the same as we. If the governments do it, why should not we do it?? Our privacy is injured uninterruptedly by intelligence services. Everyone spies behind everyone. So why should the burgers do not start spying the secret services afterwards? The Makrolab, in which you lived during the documenta for 40 days, was on a mountain outside of Kassel. Since I was not on the Lutterberg, Erlage please, what for a laboratory you had.
Marko Peljhan: The macrolab is set up so that you can survive up to 40 days in any area. It can stand very extreme temperatures and strong winds because we want to use it throughout the world. It has all the necessary survival facilities. There is a control panel with the technical equipment, sleeping sites, a shower, food, and it is also in terms of energy independently because we used solar energy. We invite guest scientists working on specific projects. It's like a scientific laboratory, but without the formalities in which you can realize extreme projects. Your laboratory was on a mountain that is quite far away from the exhibition itself. I believe that most of the Documenta did not perceive your activities at all…
Marko Peljhan: On the Lutterberg there was simply the best conditions for what we wanted to do. In addition, I represent the thesis that a small group of people can produce more code for social evolution than gross social movements. That is, so to speak, the counter model for the revolution of the masses. I believe that a small team can work much more efficiently with a very praceless destination. Other artists have worked with satellites, for example Ingo Gunther, Peter Fend, Van Gogh TV, Sherrie Rabinowitz, Kit Galloway and Willoughby Sharp. But for some reason, this has hardly been noted by the art history. It looks almost as if one was no longer considered as an artist of the art scene when working with satellites.
Marko Peljhan: Makrolab was on the documenta, so it is automatically part of the art history, or? (laughs) I believe that this has to do with the intellectual property of this work. When people imagine the universe, think of difficulties, on complexity and rough distances. But that's not like that, that's just a psychological barrier. Of course, a satellite is exposed to very extreme conditions, and one push into space into it, so it's so expensive. But actually it is blob a kind of antenna in space. In May I organized a teleconference with the room station to me. Everyone thought that the technically incredibly complex was, but that is in fact not at all. You only want to synchronize a few signals. People just do not know enough about these technologies. Mostly it is mystification, but if you really start working with it, it's a tool like any other too. When I started to work with satellites, I realized that this is all military technology. This is something that is very important about thinking: the military origin of almost everything we use. What are you used for equipment? Did you build it yourself or you can buy these things in every electrical company?
Marko Peljhan: Most equipment are normal. They may not exist in every shop, but if you are looking for, it's not hard to find them. And if you put it in the right way, it works. One would like to greatly be a bible creative… That sounds more about a hacker than an artist. How would you describe yourself? Are you an artist, a hacker, an amateur scientist?
Marko Peljhan: I am not particularly interested in such terms. But if I find myself with other people who are artists, I find that we do not have much together. That's why I call my work simply progressive, time-based activities. I am interested in defining a utopia and crossing limits. And that is the legitimacy that has an artist: the right to act somewhat irresponsible from time to time. The art groups from Slovenia, which know most people in the west, are Laibach and the new Slovenian art that has played with socialist and nationalist iconography. Your work will be published very internationally. She could actually come from everywhere.
Marko Peljhan: Yes, she is very internationally or global because of the topics, over which I work. But spiritually she is clear Eastern European — because of her utopian potential. If I speak with my colleagues from the West, who often wonder about this utopian aspect in my work… That you still believe in utopian ideas, although you grew up in real-existing socialism?
Marko Peljhan: Yes. Buckkinister Fuller said: "The world is today too dangerous for everything that is not utopian." That was in the 50s, but I still find it right.