Hydrababy I  

INSTALLATION & PERFORMANCE
2023 Kunsthaus Baselland

Material: tomato vines, porcelain, aluminum cast from Apple MacBooks (2010–2018), glass and films from Apple MacBook screens, COVID test buffer solution, elastic cord, polystyrene mirror, drawings engraved in plexiglass, metal, polyurethane, threaded rods, steel

© Susi Hinz. Photo: Conrad Bosshard

Hydrababy I unfolds as a reproductive system that engages with the hydra polyp’s continuous processes of transformation. Specific materials and culturally coded objects are employed whose identities are not preserved but produced through transformation, exchange, and reconfiguration. Apple MacBooks were dismantled and their aluminium melted down into new fragments; tomato vines were dipped in porcelain; plexiglass was engraved and heat-formed. The corporeality of the resulting hybrid sculptures emerges directly from these processes of fabrication: through physical intervention, direct contact with material, and the tangible resistance exerted by matter on the artist’s body. The process itself thus becomes the structural core of the installation.