Regulation
T293 is pleased to announce our fourth exhibition with Simon Denny, who’s first exhibition at the gallery was over 10 years ago in 2008. During this period Denny’s artistic projects have continued to unpack social and political issues related to the expansion of the internet – interpreting and reflecting the messaging and aesthetics of both, internet businesses and state actors as this core infrastructure has come to dominate global communication and influence politics and society.
Regulation brings together two groups of artworks made between 2017 and 2019; both sculptural responses to the European Union’s attempts at influencing governance and regulating data practices on the internet. The artist sees the EU’s attempts to push back on the power of major platforms like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple as unique – with no other meaningful attempt by foreign state entities. Both bodies of work perform poetic interventions into the EU parliament’s regulatory activity. The artworks utilize drawing, performance and print.
A series of felt tip drawings simultaneously documenting and critiquing debate sessions inside the European Parliament in June 2017 are displayed throughout the gallery on a series of tension-like railings. Produced inside the Parliament’s “Next Generation Internet Summit”, the works were collaboratively composed with NewModels.io co-founder Caroline Busta, datasociety.net researcher Matt Goerzen, artist Daniel Keller and illustrator and imagethink.net founder Nora Herting. They use a genre of live drawing common to session documentation at tech conferences, yet question the parliamentary talks presented rather than simply illustrating their key themes.
On the wall are three new paper reliefs produced using a now-outmoded 3D printing technology developed and used during the mid 2010s. The machines used to produce these artworks were designed to turn stacks of A4 paper into small 3D prints, by cutting, gluing and stacking sheets of paper in an automated process. The artworks are produced by feeding GDPR EU privacy regulation documents into these machines and “printing” 3d shapes based on the Parliament’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) symbol – a padlock with stars surrounding it. The artist then reworks these printed objects by hand. Part document, part collage, part wall relief, part 3d print, these works layer language of legal documents and data privacy on top of each other in bureaucratic stacks, forming a kind of 3d concrete poem of legalese and data.
Regulation brings together two groups of artworks made between 2017 and 2019; both sculptural responses to the European Union’s attempts at influencing governance and regulating data practices on the internet. The artist sees the EU’s attempts to push back on the power of major platforms like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple as unique – with no other meaningful attempt by foreign state entities. Both bodies of work perform poetic interventions into the EU parliament’s regulatory activity. The artworks utilize drawing, performance and print.
A series of felt tip drawings simultaneously documenting and critiquing debate sessions inside the European Parliament in June 2017 are displayed throughout the gallery on a series of tension-like railings. Produced inside the Parliament’s “Next Generation Internet Summit”, the works were collaboratively composed with NewModels.io co-founder Caroline Busta, datasociety.net researcher Matt Goerzen, artist Daniel Keller and illustrator and imagethink.net founder Nora Herting. They use a genre of live drawing common to session documentation at tech conferences, yet question the parliamentary talks presented rather than simply illustrating their key themes.
On the wall are three new paper reliefs produced using a now-outmoded 3D printing technology developed and used during the mid 2010s. The machines used to produce these artworks were designed to turn stacks of A4 paper into small 3D prints, by cutting, gluing and stacking sheets of paper in an automated process. The artworks are produced by feeding GDPR EU privacy regulation documents into these machines and “printing” 3d shapes based on the Parliament’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) symbol – a padlock with stars surrounding it. The artist then reworks these printed objects by hand. Part document, part collage, part wall relief, part 3d print, these works layer language of legal documents and data privacy on top of each other in bureaucratic stacks, forming a kind of 3d concrete poem of legalese and data.
Simon Denny – Regulation
Simon Denny
ink, jet print on archival paper, glue, Custom metal wall mount / inchiostro, stampa a getto su carta d'archivio, colla, placche metalliche a parete su misura
29.7 × 21 × 12 cm
This is a Document Relief, a sculpture made from layers of printed paper using a 3D printer. It’s made from the GDPR EU privacy regulation and it’s sculpted back with my hand. I remove sheets of paper to reveal the GDPR privacy logo of stars and a padlock from the EU Parliament
Document Relief 9 (GDPR Legislative acts)
2019ink, jet print on archival paper, glue, Custom metal wall mount / inchiostro, stampa a getto su carta d'archivio, colla, placche metalliche a parete su misura
29.7 × 21 × 12 cm
This is a Document Relief, a sculpture made from layers of printed paper using a 3D printer. It’s made from the GDPR EU privacy regulation and it’s sculpted back with my hand. I remove sheets of paper to reveal the GDPR privacy logo of stars and a padlock from the EU Parliament
Simon Denny
ink, jet print on archival paper, glue, Custom metal wall mount
29.7 × 21 × 12.5 cm
This is a Document Relief, a sculpture made from layers of printed paper using a 3D printer. It’s made from the GDPR EU privacy regulation and it’s sculpted back with my hand. I remove sheets of paper to reveal the GDPR privacy logo of stars and a padlock from the EU Parliament
Document Relief 12 (GDPR European Commission Fact Sheet)
2019ink, jet print on archival paper, glue, Custom metal wall mount
29.7 × 21 × 12.5 cm
This is a Document Relief, a sculpture made from layers of printed paper using a 3D printer. It’s made from the GDPR EU privacy regulation and it’s sculpted back with my hand. I remove sheets of paper to reveal the GDPR privacy logo of stars and a padlock from the EU Parliament
Simon Denny
marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm
REIsearch
2017marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm
Simon Denny
marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm
Welcome Address
2017marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm
Simon Denny
marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm (39 ⅜ × 55 ⅛ × ⅜ inches)
Working Group
2017marker on foam board, plexiglas, metal part
100 × 140 × 1 cm (39 ⅜ × 55 ⅛ × ⅜ inches)
A review by Philip Maughan
Simon Denny’s “Regulation” at T293 Gallery in Rome marries two reflections on the task facing heavy, old-world institutions as they grapple with rapidly evolving possibilities for Internet governance. In 2017, the artist and a team including New Models’ Carly Busta and Daniel Keller, data researcher Matt Goerzen and illustrator Nora Herting sat in on the European Parliament’s “Next Generation Internet Summit” where they produced a group chat-style feed and completed live drawings as each session unfolded. “A printed text is a proven media for disseminating knowledge but has many shortcomings,” reads the appendices to the summit’s official report. “Luckily,” it continues, sounding as uncertain as the legislators facing down the sovereignty of Google, Amazon and Facebook, “art has come to the rescue”. Printed with annotations and mounted in plexiglass on barrier-like bars, the plates form what Denny calls “a spatial restriction”, like a border crossing in the gallery or a series of gates, switches, protocols: a matrix through which people must move. 3D-printed reliefs constructed from the legislative stipulations of GDPR hang on the walls, sculpted to reveal both a poetic reformulation of the sort of legal text we click past every day and the logo selected by the EU to define it: a padlock surrounded by stars.
Ultimately, “Regulation” is a physical node: a space to experience the collision of data, law, bureaucracy and emotion, where humans and non-humans interface with new stacks that seem undaunted even by unions of nations.
Simon Denny’s “Regulation” at T293 Gallery in Rome marries two reflections on the task facing heavy, old-world institutions as they grapple with rapidly evolving possibilities for Internet governance. In 2017, the artist and a team including New Models’ Carly Busta and Daniel Keller, data researcher Matt Goerzen and illustrator Nora Herting sat in on the European Parliament’s “Next Generation Internet Summit” where they produced a group chat-style feed and completed live drawings as each session unfolded. “A printed text is a proven media for disseminating knowledge but has many shortcomings,” reads the appendices to the summit’s official report. “Luckily,” it continues, sounding as uncertain as the legislators facing down the sovereignty of Google, Amazon and Facebook, “art has come to the rescue”. Printed with annotations and mounted in plexiglass on barrier-like bars, the plates form what Denny calls “a spatial restriction”, like a border crossing in the gallery or a series of gates, switches, protocols: a matrix through which people must move. 3D-printed reliefs constructed from the legislative stipulations of GDPR hang on the walls, sculpted to reveal both a poetic reformulation of the sort of legal text we click past every day and the logo selected by the EU to define it: a padlock surrounded by stars.
Ultimately, “Regulation” is a physical node: a space to experience the collision of data, law, bureaucracy and emotion, where humans and non-humans interface with new stacks that seem undaunted even by unions of nations.
