A commentary on the ever-shrinking lifespan of consumer electronics, Benjamin Gaulon adds Internet Compression to his long-running series of tech artefacts entitled Tech Mining (2002–). The hand-sized brick, produced during France’s first lockdown, constitutes a beyond-repair wireless router the artist reverted into a state of “inert matter” through shredding. “The resource takes the front stage,” writes Gaulon on his website, “the design is abolished, the utility is gone, still, a plastic object is present in the form of ultimate waste.”
