Congo Kodaks

Neil Hennessy

Artist Statement

Congo Kodaks illustrates new media art's reliance on the suffering of unnamed millions, by using images from the Congo conflict to put cell phone and desktop wallpapers on devices containing coltan possibly/probably obtained from the Congo. The magazine Wallpaper*, as the Bible of Western yuppie design with a healthy gadget obsession, provides the vehicle for the satire. The number and type of wallpaper images come from perverting their tagline:

"Wallpaper - Design Interiors Fashion Art Lifestyle"

becomes

"Congo Wallpaper - Death Refugees Famine War Rape".

The phrases and language in the text that accompanies the wallpapers, as well as the visual layout and design of the page, are stolen directly from technology product reviews found on the Wallpaper* website.

::: VIEW Congo Kodaks :::

Biography

Neil Hennessy is a dancer, painter, club kid, poet, illustrator, pataphysicist, dj, new media and video artist, videogame maker, and member of the cross-disciplinary artist collective Prize Budget for Boys (http://pbfb.ca/). Best known for their irreverent videogame/art mashups mixing modern artists with classic arcade games, their Pac-Mondrian arcade cabinets are housed in the permanent collections of the Museum of the Moving Image (New York) and Pallant House (UK). Their book The Spectacular Vernacular Revue was published in the Fall of 2004 by Roof Books (New York), based on a multi-media performance work that toured across Canada and the US from 2001-3. A selection of media that have featured the work of the PBFB includes The New York Times, Glamour, Newsweek, USA Today, Marie Claire, Playboy, ARTnews, MTV, and VH1.