Matt Kenyon: Consumer Index at ZKM’s “GLOBALE: Infosphere”

Matt Kenyon​‘s work Consumer Index is featured in ZKM’s GLOBALE: Infosphere, open from Sept. 5., 2015 — Jan. 1, 2016 at ZKM, in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The »Infosphere« exhibition presents an overview of art in the era of the digital revolution and its social consequences. In addition, it provides insights into the new data world – whose existence has been finally brought home to the general public, through the NSA affair.

Matt Kenyon’s work Consumer Index is a performance that is both subversive and linguistic in nature. Kenyon reconfigures the Nielsen Homescan barcode scanner and fuses it with a micro-video camera. Implanting the camera inside of his mouth, he literally comes to embody the consumer profile represented by the data he collects. As he proceeds to scan every item within the local Superstore, the act of ingestion alters data broker’s conception of his consumer behavior even as his archetypal profile becomes less like his actual self.

GLOBALE: Infosphere
ZKM | Center for Art and Media
Lorenzstraße 19
76137 Karlsruhe
Germany