Marcello Mercado

  • The Voices, Notations, 2021

    The Voices, Notations, 2021

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The Voices (2021) can be read as a notation without a prior score. It is not the inscription of an existing sound but rather an attempt to capture the emergence of a voice before language takes hold. The still-visible staff lines no longer organize pitch or duration. They remain as historical infrastructure, disciplinary residue upon which the work rehearses another economy of listening. While Western musical notation has sought to fix, order, and stabilize the voice for centuries, Mercado introduces a deviant, proliferating, and unstable form of writing.

    The work belongs to a lineage that extends from the experimental notations of the early twentieth century—from Kandinsky to Cornelius Cardew and from Cathy Berberian to John Cage—to contemporary practices that understand the score as an expanded field, a space in which images, bodies, memories, and sounds are not confined to separate domains. Yet The Voices does not produce a score to be performed. Rather, it works upon the ruin of the score. The staff appears as an exhausted device incapable of containing what emerges across it: stains, traces, chromatic whirlwinds, erasures, and gestures recalling automatic writing, seismic recording, neural cartography, and drawing.

    In this fragment, red and black masses erupt across the surface as if a voice had violently traversed it, leaving traces of its passage behind. Rather than representing a voice, the work inscribes the conditions of its possibility: breathing, interruption, stammering, echo, and interference. Graphite marks, colored lines, and zones of friction create a space where different time periods coexist: the instantaneousness of the gesture, the repetitive drawing of certain signs, and the gradual accumulation of layers. The piece seems to ask what happens when memory attempts to write itself and fails, when a voice persists without ever fully materializing.

    In this sense, The Voices belongs to a broader history of notational practices that have, since the second half of the twentieth century, abandoned the idea of transparency between sign and sound. Opposing the modern logic of the score as precise instruction, Mercado proposes an opaque notation traversed by affect, corporeality, and the spectral. The voice no longer appears as an individual emission but as an unstable archive of resonances: accumulated voices, inherited voices, and lost voices.

    The work activates not only an imaginary listening but also a reflection on systems that have historically sought to domesticate experience. The repeated staff functions as a grid of control, and the gestures that invade it introduce deviation, excess, and noise. It is in this tension between structure and overflow that The Voices finds its power. The work transforms notation into a battleground where the desire to order the world is perpetually challenged by that which cannot be reduced to any form of writing.

     

     

    (Deutsch)

    „The Voices“ (2021) lässt sich als eine Notation ohne vorausgehende Partitur lesen: nicht als Einschreibung eines bereits existierenden Klangs, sondern als Versuch, das Entstehen einer Stimme festzuhalten, bevor sie Sprache annimmt. Die noch sichtbaren Notensysteme organisieren weder Tonhöhe noch Dauer, sondern bleiben als historische Infrastruktur bestehen – als disziplinärer Rest –, auf dem die Arbeit eine andere Ökonomie des Hörens erprobt. Während die westliche Musiknotation über Jahrhunderte hinweg versuchte, die Stimme zu fixieren, zu ordnen und zu stabilisieren, führt Mercado eine abweichende, proliferierende und instabile Schrift ein.

    Die Arbeit steht in einer Genealogie, die von den experimentellen Notationen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts – von Kandinsky bis Cornelius Cardew, von Cathy Berberian bis John Cage – bis zu zeitgenössischen Praktiken reicht, die die Partitur als erweitertes Feld begreifen: als Raum, in dem Bild, Körper, Erinnerung und Klang nicht länger getrennten Bereichen angehören. Doch „The Voices” erzeugt keine Partitur, die ausgeführt werden soll. Vielmehr arbeitet die Serie an der Ruine der Partitur. Das Notensystem erscheint als erschöpftes Dispositiv, das nicht mehr in der Lage ist, das zu erfassen, was sich darüber entfaltet. Flecken, Spuren, chromatische Wirbel, Auslöschungen und Gesten, die zugleich an automatisches Schreiben, seismographische Aufzeichnung, neuronale Kartografie und Zeichnung erinnern.

    In diesem Fragment brechen die roten und schwarzen Massen über die Oberfläche herein, als hätte eine Stimme den Bildträger gewaltsam durchquert und nur Spuren ihres Durchgangs hinterlassen. Die Arbeit versucht nicht, eine Stimme darzustellen, sondern die Bedingungen ihrer Möglichkeit einzuschreiben. Atmung, Unterbrechung, Stottern, Echo, Interferenz. Graphitspuren, farbige Linien und Zonen der Reibung erzeugen ein Feld, in dem mehrere Zeitlichkeiten nebeneinander bestehen: die Unmittelbarkeit der Geste, die obsessive Wiederholung bestimmter Zeichen und die langsame Sedimentation übereinanderliegender Schichten. Die Arbeit scheint die Frage zu stellen, was geschieht, wenn Erinnerung versucht, sich selbst zu schreiben und daran scheitert, wenn eine Stimme insistiert, ohne sich jemals vollständig zu konstituieren.

    In diesem Sinne gehört „The Voices” zu einer umfassenderen Geschichte von Notationspraktiken, die seit der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts die Vorstellung einer Transparenz zwischen Zeichen und Klang aufgegeben haben. Anstelle der modernen Logik der Partitur als präzise Anweisung schlägt Mercado eine opake Notation vor, die von Affekt, Körperlichkeit und dem Gespenstischen durchzogen ist. Die Stimme erscheint nicht länger als individuelle Äußerung, sondern als instabiles Archiv von Resonanzen: angesammelte Stimmen, überlieferte Stimmen, verlorene Stimmen.

    In der Arbeit wird nicht nur ein imaginäres Hören aktiviert, sondern auch eine Reflexion über jene Systeme angestoßen, die historisch versucht haben, Erfahrung zu domestizieren. Das wiederholte Notensystem fungiert dabei als Raster der Kontrolle, während die Gesten, die es durchbrechen, Abweichung, Exzess und Rauschen einführen. In dieser Spannung zwischen Struktur und Überfluss liegt die Kraft von „The Voices”: Die Arbeit verwandelt die Notation in ein Konfliktfeld, in dem der Wunsch, die Welt zu ordnen, fortwährend auf das trifft, was sich jeder Form von Schrift entzieht.

     

     

    (Spanish)

    The Voices (2021) puede leerse como una notación sin partitura previa: no es la inscripción de un sonido existente, sino el intento de registrar la aparición de una voz antes de que adquiera lenguaje. Las líneas del pentagrama, todavía visibles, ya no organizan alturas ni duraciones; permanecen como una infraestructura histórica, un resto disciplinario sobre el que la obra ensaya otra economía de la escucha. Allí donde la notación musical occidental aspiró durante siglos a fijar, ordenar y estabilizar la voz, Mercado introduce una escritura desviada, proliferante e inestable.

    La obra se sitúa en una genealogía que va desde las notaciones experimentales de principios del siglo XX —desde Kandinsky hasta Cornelius Cardew, desde Cathy Berberian hasta John Cage— hasta las prácticas contemporáneas que entienden la partitura como un campo expandido: un espacio en el que la imagen, el cuerpo, la memoria y el sonido dejan de pertenecer a dominios separados. Sin embargo, The Voices no produce una partitura para ser ejecutada. Más bien, trabaja sobre la ruina de la partitura. El pentagrama aparece como un dispositivo agotado, incapaz de contener lo que emerge sobre él: manchas, trazos, remolinos cromáticos, borraduras y gestos que recuerdan simultáneamente a la escritura automática, al registro sísmico, a la cartografía neuronal y al dibujo.

    En este fragmento, las manchas rojas y negras irrumpen en la superficie como si una voz la hubiera atravesado violentamente, dejando apenas restos de su paso. No se trata de representar una voz, sino de inscribir sus condiciones de posibilidad: respiración, interrupción, balbuceo, eco e interferencia. Los trazos de grafito, las líneas de color y las zonas de fricción construyen un campo en el que coexisten múltiples temporalidades: la instantaneidad del gesto, la repetición obsesiva de ciertos signos y la lenta sedimentación de capas superpuestas. La obra parece preguntar qué sucede cuando la memoria intenta escribirse y fracasa, cuando una voz insiste sin llegar nunca a constituirse plenamente.

    En este sentido, The Voices pertenece a la historia más amplia de las prácticas de notación que, desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX, abandonaron la idea de la transparencia entre el signo y el sonido. Frente a la lógica moderna de la partitura como instrucción precisa, Mercado propone una notación opaca atravesada por lo afectivo, lo corporal y lo espectral. La voz ya no aparece como emisión individual, sino como un archivo inestable de resonancias: voces acumuladas, voces heredadas, voces perdidas.

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, EX – AI, Fashion Men- Prompt, AI-Book, 2023 Version 1

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    EX – AI  – Fashion Men- Prompt

    AI-Book

    Version 1

    2023

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, The green that surrounds you, AI-Book, 2023

     

    Marcello Mercado

    The green that surrounds you

    AI-Book

    2023

     

    263 ways of looking at Metahumans

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • 37,2 KB / 23,5 MB

    37,2 KB / 23,5 MB

     

     

     

    The installation begins with a common form of warning found in many Argentine cities: when there is a pothole, a trench, or a destroyed section of street that blocks access or puts cars at risk, the municipality places dry branches inside tires painted white and yellow. It is a provisional and recognizable solution intended to indicate that something has broken down.

    Marcello Mercado transfers this logic into the gallery space, but shifts it from the physical territory to the territory of image and information. Here there is no longer a pothole in the street. What has disappeared is the image itself. The two white surfaces on the wall do not contain the digital weight of any particular photograph, document, or representation. They only display two quantities: “37.2 KB” and “23.5 MB.” These figures function as remains and material indicators of something that was there, or might have been there. Digital weight has taken the place of the image.

    The installation does not represent a loss; it turns it into matter. The viewer does not contemplate a missing photograph, but rather the physical conditions of its absence. Instead of an archive, what remains is the digital volume of a file; instead of memory, what remains is its measurement. The work follows a central line in Mercado’s practice: to think of culture not as an infinite accumulation of images, but as a system subject to erosion, compression, transfer, disappearance, and residue.

    In The Theory of Cultural Compression and Operational Matter, Mercado argues that the archive ceases to be a repository of memory and becomes an operative, vulnerable, and physically exposed material. In this installation, that operation reaches its most extreme form: the image is no longer there, but its weight persists.

    The dry plant supported by tires functions as a warning sculpture. It does not refer to nature or landscape. The installation as a whole functions as a scene after the event: it does not show destruction, but its material consequences. As in many of Mercado’s works — from Open Genome Actions to his recent investigations into the translation from body to system — what matters is not the original event, but the process by which that event is transformed into residue, code, matter, or data.

    This precarious form of warning refers to the contemporary erosion of systems of memory, representation, and experience. The work suggests that we live surrounded by images that no longer exist, archives that survive only as quantifiable data, and technological systems capable of preserving the weight of things while losing their content.

    The work operates through minimal signs, poor materials, and vernacular procedures. It is as if the space had become occupied by the physical remains of a system that still preserves data, but can no longer sustain what that data once represented.

    (Deutsch)

    37,2 KB / 23,5 MB

    Die Installation geht von einer in vielen argentinischen Städten verbreiteten Form der Markierung aus: Wenn es ein Schlagloch, einen Graben oder einen zerstörten Straßenabschnitt gibt, der die Durchfahrt verhindert oder Autos gefährdet, stellt die Stadtverwaltung trockene Äste in weiß und gelb gestrichene Reifen. Es handelt sich um eine provisorische und leicht erkennbare Lösung, die darauf hinweist, dass etwas beschädigt wurde.

    Marcello Mercado überträgt diese Logik in den Galerieraum, verschiebt sie jedoch vom physischen Territorium in das Territorium des Bildes und der Information. Hier gibt es kein Schlagloch mehr auf der Straße. Verschwunden ist das Bild selbst. Die beiden weißen Flächen an der Wand enthalten nicht das digitale Gewicht irgendeiner bestimmten Fotografie, eines Dokuments oder einer Darstellung. Sie zeigen lediglich zwei Werte: „37,2 KB“ und „23,5 MB“. Diese Zahlen fungieren als Reste und materielle Indikatoren von etwas, das einmal vorhanden war oder vorhanden gewesen sein könnte. Das digitale Gewicht hat den Platz des Bildes eingenommen.

    Die Installation stellt keinen Verlust dar, sondern verwandelt ihn in Materie. Der Betrachter sieht keine fehlende Fotografie, sondern die physischen Bedingungen ihrer Abwesenheit. Anstelle eines Archivs bleibt das digitale Volumen einer Datei; anstelle von Erinnerung bleibt ihr Maß. Die Arbeit folgt einer zentralen Linie in Mercados Praxis: Kultur nicht als unendliche Ansammlung von Bildern zu begreifen, sondern als ein System, das Verschleiß, Kompression, Übertragung, Verschwinden und Rückständen unterliegt.

    In The Theory of Cultural Compression und Operational Matter beschreibt Mercado, wie das Archiv aufhört, ein Speicher der Erinnerung zu sein, und zu einer operativen, verletzlichen und physisch exponierten Materie wird. In dieser Installation erreicht diese Operation ihre extremste Form: Das Bild ist nicht mehr da, aber sein Gewicht bleibt bestehen.

    Die trockene Pflanze, die von Reifen getragen wird, funktioniert als Warnskulptur. Sie verweist weder auf Natur noch auf Landschaft. Die gesamte Installation funktioniert wie eine Szene nach dem Ereignis: Sie zeigt nicht die Zerstörung, sondern ihre materiellen Folgen. Wie in vielen Arbeiten Mercados — von Open Genome Actions bis zu seinen jüngsten Untersuchungen über die Übersetzung vom Körper zum System — ist nicht das ursprüngliche Ereignis entscheidend, sondern der Prozess, durch den dieses Ereignis in Rückstand, Code, Materie oder Daten verwandelt wird.

    Diese prekäre Form der Markierung verweist auf die gegenwärtige Erosion von Systemen der Erinnerung, der Repräsentation und der Erfahrung. Die Arbeit legt nahe, dass wir von Bildern umgeben sind, die nicht mehr existieren, von Archiven, die nur noch als quantifizierbare Daten weiterleben, und von technologischen Systemen, die das Gewicht der Dinge bewahren können, während sie deren Inhalt verlieren.

    Die Arbeit operiert mit minimalen Zeichen, armen Materialien und vernakulären Verfahren. Es ist, als wäre der Raum von den physischen Resten eines Systems besetzt, das zwar noch Daten bewahrt, aber nicht mehr tragen kann, was diese Daten einst repräsentierten.

     

    (Spanish)

    37,2 KB / 23,5 MB

    La instalación parte de una forma de señalización habitual en muchas ciudades argentinas: cuando hay un bache, una zanja o un tramo de calle destruido que impide el paso o pone en riesgo a los coches, la municipalidad coloca ramas secas dentro de neumáticos pintados de blanco y amarillo. Se trata de una solución provisional y reconocible destinada a advertir de que algo se ha roto.

    Marcello Mercado traslada esa lógica al espacio de la galería, pero la desplaza desde el territorio físico hacia el territorio de la imagen y de la información. Aquí ya no hay un bache en la calle. Lo que ha desaparecido es la propia imagen. Las dos superficies blancas sobre la pared no contienen el peso digital de ninguna fotografía, documento o representación en particular. Solo muestran dos cantidades: «37,2 KB» y «23,5 MB». Esas cifras funcionan como restos e indicadores materiales de algo que estuvo o podría haber estado allí. El peso digital ha ocupado el lugar de la imagen.

    La instalación no representa una pérdida, sino que la convierte en materia. El visitante no contempla una fotografía que no está, sino las condiciones físicas de su ausencia. En lugar de archivo queda el volumen digital de un archivo; en lugar de memoria, queda su medida. La obra sigue una línea central en la práctica de Mercado: pensar la cultura no como una acumulación infinita de imágenes, sino como un sistema sometido a desgaste, compresión, transferencia, desaparición y residuo.

    En The Theory of Cultural Compression y Operational Matter, Mercado plantea que el archivo deja de ser un depósito de memoria para convertirse en una materia operativa, vulnerable y físicamente expuesta. En esta instalación, esta operación alcanza su forma más extrema: la imagen ya no está, pero persiste su peso.

    La planta seca sostenida por neumáticos funciona como una escultura de advertencia. No hace referencia a la naturaleza ni al paisaje. La instalación entera funciona como una escena posterior al suceso: no muestra la destrucción, sino sus consecuencias materiales. Como en muchas de las obras de Mercado —desde Open Genome Actions hasta sus investigaciones recientes sobre la traducción del cuerpo al sistema—, lo central no es el hecho original, sino el proceso mediante el cual ese hecho se transforma en residuo, código, materia o dato.

    Esta precaria forma de señalización se refiere a la erosión contemporánea de los sistemas de memoria, representación y experiencia. La obra sugiere que vivimos rodeados de imágenes que ya no existen, archivos que sobreviven únicamente como datos cuantificables y sistemas tecnológicos capaces de conservar el peso de las cosas mientras pierden su contenido.

    La obra trabaja con signos mínimos, materiales pobres y procedimientos vernáculos. Es como si el espacio hubiera quedado ocupado por los restos físicos de un sistema que todavía conserva datos, pero ya no puede sostener aquello que esos datos representaban.

     

     

     

     

  • Matter, Memory, Construction

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado is an Argentine artist based in Germany whose work moves between collage, sculpture, installation, and digital media. Since the early 1990s, he has worked with organic and discarded materials—especially palm bark, fibers, and residues collected in the Gran Chaco region of northern Argentina.

    Chaco refers to this territory: a vast subtropical region extending across northern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. It is marked by intense ecological transformation, extractive economies, deforestation, and the persistence of vernacular forms of building. For Mercado, Chaco is not only a place, but also a material archive: a landscape where memory, erosion, labor, and construction are inseparable. The materials used in these works were collected over many years in the Gran Chaco and preserved as a long-term archive of forms, textures, and construction.

    Early Work: Palm Bark, 1990–1995

    Marcello Mercado, untitled, palma collage and oil on canvas, 1995

    Image digitally reconstructed from archival documentation. The original work was stolen in the late 1990s.

     

    The works gathered here do not present architecture as form, but rather as a condition of matter. Since the early 1990s, Marcello Mercado has worked with palm bark, fibers, residues, and fragile structures. He does not treat these materials as representations of nature, but rather as carriers of memory, labor, weather, and time.

    Even his early collages made with palm bark contained an architectural impulse: layering, support, tension, and enclosure. They were not images of buildings but rather constructions made from what remains after use, erosion, and extraction. Their structure emerged from fragments.

    His recent works return to those same materials and gestures, now closer to the vocabulary of architecture: shelter, platform, threshold, and ruin. A sheet of palm bark becomes a roof. Fibers become joints, supports, or scaffolding. The object resembles a model, yet it never fully becomes a building. It remains suspended between landscape and structure, memory and projection.

    These works do not envision architecture as permanence, monuments, or control. Instead, they ask how a structure begins when its origin is precarious, how a place can be built from instability, and how matter itself can remember.

    Sitting between bark and model, object and ruin, these works propose an alternative architecture made of sediment, erosion, fragility, and time.

     

    Chaco: Fragments and Structures, 2021–2025

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    Marcello Mercado, The next and the stranger, object, 2021

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Chaco I: Palm Structure, collage 2022

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Chaco II: Fragment, collage 2021

    Marcello Mercado, Chaco VI: Shelter, sculpture 2021

     

    Toward an Architecture of Memory

    Marcello Mercado, Chaco VIII: Fossil, glass and metal sculpture 2025

     

    Marcello Mercado, Layered Terrain, tire rubber, rust, and collage, 2024

    Marcello Mercado, 37,2 KB / 23,5 MB, installation, 2026

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Selección de obra

     

     

    PINTURAS:

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, técnica mixta sobre tela, 320 x 210cm, 2022

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, técnica mixta sobre tela, 320 x 210cm, 2005

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, óleo sobre tela, 60 x 80cm, 2016

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Cabeza_01, óleo sobre tela, 30 x 40cm, 2025

     

     

    DIBUJOS:

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 29,7 x 21cm, 2014

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz, acrílico y tinta sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2016

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2015

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2013

     

    INSTALACIONES 

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, El próximo y el extraño, object, 2021

     

    Marcello Mercado, Fuego, esculturas de vidrio y metal, 2025

    Marcello Mercado, 37,2 KB / 23,5 MB, instalación, 2026

     

    CV

     

     

    Marcello Mercado (Chaco, 1963) es un artista argentino–alemán cuya obra abarca dibujo, pintura, performance, bioarte e instalación. A lo largo de más de tres décadas, ha desarrollado una investigación sobre el cuerpo, el archivo y la pérdida de forma trabajando entre Argentina y Alemania.

    Sus dibujos y pinturas recientes se centran en la progresiva desaparición del retrato. Más que representar rostros, sus obras registran su inestabilidad: figuras que emergen, se erosionan y se disuelven hasta quedar reducidas a huellas, restos o presencias parciales. Esta línea de trabajo continúa una investigación iniciada en la década de los noventa sobre la fragilidad de la figura, la memoria corporal y los procesos de borramiento.

    Su trabajo se ha exhibido en instituciones como el ZKM de Karlsruhe, el Museo Ludwig de Colonia, el Museo Reina Sofía, la Kunsthaus de Dresde, el Videobrasil y la Bienal de Venecia. En la actualidad, está trabajando en una serie de dibujos, pinturas y objetos de vidrio fundido en los que la figura humana aparece como una forma en proceso de desaparición.

     

    CV Marcello Mercado  (pdf)

     

     

     

     

     

  • Dibujos, pinturas y objetos 2026

     

     

    DIBUJOS:

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2014

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz, acrílico y tinta sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2015

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2025

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, lápiz sobre papel, 59,4 x 42cm, 2013

    PINTURAS:

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Sin título, óleo sobre tela, 30 x 40cm c/u, 2025

    Marcello Mercado, Cabeza_01, óleo sobre tela, 30 x 40cm, 2025

    Marcello Mercado, Cabeza_01, óleo sobre tela, 30 x 40cm, 2025

     

     

     

    INSTALACIONES 

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, El próximo y el extraño, object, 2021

     

    Marcello Mercado, Fuego, esculturas de vidrio y metal, 2025

     

    CV

     

     

    Marcello Mercado (Chaco, 1963) es un artista argentino–alemán cuya obra abarca dibujo, pintura, performance, bioarte e instalación. A lo largo de más de tres décadas, ha desarrollado una investigación sobre el cuerpo, el archivo y la pérdida de forma trabajando entre Argentina y Alemania.

    Sus dibujos y pinturas recientes se centran en la progresiva desaparición del retrato. Más que representar rostros, sus obras registran su inestabilidad: figuras que emergen, se erosionan y se disuelven hasta quedar reducidas a huellas, restos o presencias parciales. Esta línea de trabajo continúa una investigación iniciada en la década de los noventa sobre la fragilidad de la figura, la memoria corporal y los procesos de borramiento.

    Su trabajo se ha exhibido en instituciones como el ZKM de Karlsruhe, el Museo Ludwig de Colonia, el Museo Reina Sofía, la Kunsthaus de Dresde, el Videobrasil y la Bienal de Venecia. En la actualidad, está trabajando en una serie de dibujos, pinturas y objetos de vidrio fundido en los que la figura humana aparece como una forma en proceso de desaparición.

     

     

     

  • Das Kapital / Napster Search, 1999

    Das Kapital / Napster Search, 1999

    Marcello Mercado

    Das Kapital / Napster / September 1999


    This is one of the few surviving screenshots from a search for «Kapital« on Napster. The work no longer exists. Nor does the network that produced it.

     

    In September 1999, as part of my Das Kapital project, I searched for «Kapital» on Napster. The action was minimal: a search. The result was the work itself.

    Instead of returning Das Kapital, Napster produced a list of MP3 files with partial titles, typos, song titles, fragments, and unrelated associations: «Kapital of House,» «Kapital Sessions,» «Kapital Vino Su Mine,» and «Kapital.mp3.» Marx reappeared, transformed into digital noise and file-sharing culture.

    The work consisted of observing how the network reorganized the word «Kapital,» not downloading the files. Political economy became metadata. Theory became a search result. The peer-to-peer network produced its own unconscious interpretation of Marx’s work.

    Today, the work survives only as this screenshot. With Napster gone, the image has become an archaeological document of the early Internet, capturing a moment when file sharing, misunderstanding, circulation, and memory converged in a single search window.

     

    In 2026, I repeated the same search.

    The word «Kapital« was entered into contemporary systems that now return interpretations, rankings, and commercial categories rather than files.

    ChatGPT did not produce a search result. Instead, it attempted to identify the correct version of Das Kapital among the many projects, books, and works already associated with my archive. The platform transformed the word into a personalized memory system. «Kapital« no longer referred to an unknown object circulating through the network but to an already classified, individualized archive.

    Gemini returned Karl Marx. It stabilized the term immediately through institutional language, educational structure, and conceptual hierarchy. «Kapital» became a canonical text, reduced to «core concepts» and summarized through the logic of explanation.

    Claude did not answer. The system was occupied with another task, leaving the word waiting inside an interface about compound interest. «Kapital« appeared as an interruption, inserted into a platform already structured around finance, productivity, and calculation.

    YouTube transformed the word into a recommendation and a spectacle. The first results were not Marx, but rather music, guaracha, Latin American finance, bank advertisements, and political montages. «Kapital« survived as entertainment, algorithmically reordered according to visibility, clicks, and monetization.

    Spotify returned playlists, DJs, profiles, and tracks. The word no longer designated a theory or a book. Instead, it functioned as a musical label, a searchable brand, and a sequence of sonic commodities.

    In 1999, Napster fragmented the word into unstable and absurd file names:

    kapital of house
    Kapital Sessions
    kapital vino su mine
    Kapital.mp3

    The disorder remained visible. The network exposed its own errors, misunderstandings, and accidental associations.

    By 2026, the errors were no longer visible. Platforms now classify, personalize, and predict. The instability has not disappeared; it has merely been hidden behind smooth interfaces and controlled results.

    Napster was not a better internet. But its failures were visible.

    Contemporary platforms conceal them.

    The 1999 screenshot survives as the remains of a disappeared protocol.

    2026 searches reveal the systems that replaced it.:

    Spotify search: The concept survived only as a musical label.

    youtube search: The term was reorganized as spectacle and advertising.

    Claude AI search: The search remained unanswered.

     

    Gemini AI search: The word was stabilized into a canonical summary.

    ChatGPT search: The platform returned my own archive.

  • What Color Is an Insult?

    What Color Is an Insult?

     

     

    Marcello Mercado & Tilman Peschel, 2014

    Performance

     

     

    In 2014, Marcello Mercado and Tilman Peschel carried out an action: Pronouncing two insults in German —asshole and bastard— in front of a system that translates voice into color. A microphone connected to a signal-processing module generated chromatic bands projected into space, making the voice visible.

    The work foregrounds the transducer as the operative core of contemporary media practice: the transformation of one form of energy into another. The work is organized as a circuit —input, conversion, output— in which the device ceases to be a tool and becomes a structure.

     

    Im Jahr 2014 führten Marcello Mercado und Tilman Peschel eine Aktion durch: Sie sprachen zwei Beleidigungen auf Deutsch —Arschloch und Mistkerl— vor einem System aus, das Stimme in Farbe übersetzt. Ein Mikrofon, verbunden mit einem Signalverarbeitungsmodul, erzeugte chromatische Bänder, die in den Raum projiziert wurden und die Stimme sichtbar machten.

    Die Arbeit stellt den Transduktor als operativen Kern der zeitgenössischen Medienpraxis heraus: die Transformation einer Energieform in eine andere. Die Arbeit ist als Schaltkreis organisiert —Eingang, Konversion, Ausgang— in dem das Gerät aufhört, ein Werkzeug zu sein, und zur Struktur wird.

     

     

    En 2014, Marcello Mercado y Tilman Peschel realizaron una acción: Pronunciar dos insultos en alemán —Boludo e hijo de puta frente a un sistema que traduce la voz en color. Un micrófono conectado a un módulo de procesamiento de señal generaba bandas cromáticas proyectadas en el espacio, haciendo visible la voz.

    La obra pone en juego el transductor como núcleo operativo de la práctica medial contemporánea: la transformación de una forma de energía en otra. El trabajo se organiza como circuito —entrada, conversión, salida— donde el dispositivo deja de ser herramienta para convertirse en estructura.

  • Del cuerpo al sistema: investigaciones recientes

     

     

     

    Mi trabajo ha evolucionado desde investigaciones tempranas sobre el cuerpo y la violencia institucional hacia un campo expandido donde la imagen es tratada como un sistema inestable.

    En los últimos años, desarrollo proyectos que articulan archivo, procesos algorítmicos, escaneo tridimensional y materia orgánica, explorando la transformación, la fragmentación y la pérdida de estabilidad de la imagen contemporánea.

    Esta selección organiza las principales líneas de investigación actuales.

    BLOQUE 1

    A. ARCHIVO / DAS KAPITAL

    Serie de proyectos que abordan el archivo como cuerpo y como sistema de acumulación, incorporando peso digital, latencia y procesos de transformación algorítmica.

    Ver proyecto completo → [+]

    BLOQUE 2

    B. CABEZA / CUERPO COMO ARCHIVO

    Investigación sobre la cabeza humana como forma de archivo, a través de escaneo 3D, inteligencia artificial y reconstrucciones digitales que desestabilizan la identidad y la representación.

    Ver proyecto completo → [+]

    BLOQUE 3

    C. DIBUJO (SISTEMAS DE LÍNEA)

    El dibujo funciona como un sistema abierto donde línea, interferencia y repetición configuran estructuras inestables, alejadas de toda función ilustrativa.

    Ver proyecto completo → [+]     [+]

    BLOQUE 4

    D. PINTURA (INESTABILIDAD MATERIAL)

    Pinturas que exploran la superficie como campo de acumulación, ruido y compresión, en tensión constante entre lo analógico y lo digital.

    Ver proyecto completo → [+]     [+]

    BLOQUE 5

    Obra temprana (1990s)

    Los trabajos iniciales se centraron en la representación del cuerpo y en contextos de violencia institucional, constituyendo una base conceptual que posteriormente se desplaza hacia problemáticas vinculadas al archivo, la materia biológica y los sistemas algorítmicos.

    Ver proyecto completo → [+]     [+]

  • Operational Matter

     

     

     

     

     

    Untitled (Red Sedimentation)
    mixed media on canvas
    2023

    These works operate through material behavior, where liquids sediment,

    surfaces erode, and pigments accumulate or dissolve.

    The image is not constructed; it emerges as the result of physical processes.

    Drawing functions as a structural system—an internal organization without

    representation.

    Acts of interruption impose limits, producing fractures within the visual field.

    Untitled (Evaporation Field)
    Acrylic and pigment on paper
    2013

    Untitled (Accumulated Matter)
    mixed media on canvas
    2014

    Untitled (Structural System)
    Graphite on paper
    2022

    Untitled (Interruption)
    Ink, acrylic and graphite on paper
    2016

  • OPEN GENOME ACTIONS

    OPEN GENOME ACTIONS

     

     

     

     

    Bio-Performances 2000–2012

    OPEN GENOME ACTIONS is a series of bio-performances in which fragments of the artist’s DNA are extracted, dispersed and transmitted across natural and technological environments.

     

    1. DNA for Free, 2014

    2. My DNA Belongs to Me, 2014

    3. DNA Under Weight, 2004

    4. Capital Circulation, 2000

    5. The Plastic Body, 2005

    6. Antibiotic Walk, 2010

    7. Aberdeen Angus DNA Rotation, 2005

    8. Biorealismus, 2005

    9. Das Kapital: Bell, Marx and the cycles of absorption, 2005

    10. Gödel Suite, 2009

    11. Genome Fragment in the White Hall, 2005

    12. DNA Fermentation, 2005 – 2006

    13. The Burial, 2001

    14. Gödel DNA, 2006

    15. Burning the Surgical Cloth, 2006

    16, Van Gogh Variations, 2014

    17. Malen mit DNA (Painting with DNA), 2016

    18. Transferring, Hybriding, Storing, sharing, 2014

    19. Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies, 2007 – 2008

    20. Live streamings from Dolmens, 2005

    21. Azimuth 77, 2006

    22. Curves, Compost, Forecasts and Closures, 2020

    Open Genome Actions is a cycle of bio-performances developed by Marcello Mercado between 2000 and 2012 that investigates the circulation of genetic information beyond the boundaries of the human body. Through a sequence of performative experiments involving DNA, microorganisms, organic matter, and synthetic materials, the works examine how biological information can be displaced, stored, hybridized, and released into technological and environmental systems.

    Rather than treating DNA as a purely biological structure, Mercado approaches genetic material as a form of information capable of migrating between different domains: the body, technological devices, ecological environments, and urban infrastructures. Within these actions the genome is no longer a stable biological archive but an unstable carrier of information subject to dispersion, contamination, and transformation.

    The performances frequently introduce biological traces—DNA, microbial cultures, organic decomposition, or biochemical substances—into artificial environments such as urban construction sites, mechanical traps, communication devices, or industrial materials. These gestures create temporary encounters between living systems and technological structures, revealing the fragile boundary that separates biological processes from engineered infrastructures.

    Across the series, the artist repeatedly stages situations in which biological information is transferred from one system to another: from body to soil, from organism to machine, from organic matter to ecological circulation. The result is not preservation but transformation. Genetic traces dissolve, mutate, or disperse into environments where their original form can no longer be recovered.

    Through these actions Open Genome Actions proposes a broader reflection on the status of biological information in contemporary technological culture. In a world increasingly structured by data storage and digital archives, Mercado’s performances return information to the unstable material processes of life itself—where memory is never fixed, but constantly rewritten by biological, ecological, and technological forces.

     

     

     

    Works in the Series

    1. DNA for Free, 2014

    2014
    Object / Performance / Bio-conceptual action

    A hand-painted cardboard sign offers the artist’s DNA as freely available material. The work reverses contemporary regimes of genetic ownership and intellectual property, presenting genetic identity as something that can circulate without restriction.

    The work DNA for Free was later included as a reference within the collaborative project Poema Colectivo (2014), coordinated by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Mercado participated as a contributing artist.

    2. My DNA Belongs to Me, 2014

    2014
    Object installation

    A variation of the previous work asserting biological autonomy. The piece confronts emerging debates about the ownership of genetic information and the commodification of biological identity.

    3. DNA Under Weight, 2004

    2004
    Installation

    A small sample of DNA is placed beneath an iron weight. The work translates genetic information into a simple physical condition: gravity and pressure.

     

    4. Capital Circulation, 2000

    Marcello Mercado
    Performance, Köln, 2000
    Photo documentation

    Capital Circulation is a performative action developed in the city of Cologne in which biological processes are used to reinterpret the circulation of political and economic ideas.

    For the work, Mercado printed Chapter 17 of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and fed the paper to earthworms. After the worms had digested the material, the artist extracted DNA from the organisms that had metabolized the printed text. The worms thus became biological intermediaries in a process where theoretical discourse was transformed into organic matter.

    Carrying the extracted DNA in small containers, Mercado walked through the streets and intersections of Cologne slowly dripping the liquid onto the asphalt. The action created a temporary molecular trail across the urban environment.

    In this gesture, the circulation of Marxist theory was translated into a different form of movement. Instead of spreading through books, institutions or political organizations, fragments of the text passed through digestion, microbial transformation and genetic material before being redistributed within the city.

    The performance proposes a material reinterpretation of intellectual circulation: ideas are no longer transmitted only through language or print, but through biological metabolism and physical dispersion in space. Digesting Capital transforms Marx’s critique of capital into a biological and performative process, where theory passes through soil organisms before re-entering the urban landscape as a molecular trace.

    GPS reconstruction of a walking performance
    MediaPark – Hansaring – St. Gereon
    Cologne, Germany
    2000

    5. The Plastic Body, 2005

    Performance and photographic sequence
    Denmark, 2005

    This performance consists of a simple but conceptually precise gesture: transmitting the chemical composition of a deflated plastic balloon to the balloon itself using a walkie-talkie radio.

    The action took place on a coastal area in Denmark. A discarded inflatable plastic object, partially deflated and washed ashore, was placed on the sand. Next to it the artist positioned a portable walkie-talkie radio device.

    Through the radio transmission Mercado repeatedly communicated the chemical composition of the object. The balloon, made of synthetic plastic materials, consists primarily of polymer chains derived from petroleum-based compounds. Its material structure includes carbon (C) and hydrogen (H) as the principal elements forming the hydrocarbon backbone of the plastic. Additional components commonly present in flexible plastic inflatables include chlorine (Cl) in the case of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), oxygen (O) in plasticizers and additives, as well as small quantities of nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and various stabilizing compounds containing calcium (Ca) or zinc (Zn).

    During the performance these elements were verbally transmitted through the radio device toward the plastic object itself.

    The gesture mirrors forms of informational transmission found in biological systems, where genetic information is encoded and communicated through sequences of chemical bases in DNA. In this case, however, the information concerns the molecular structure of a synthetic object—an artifact of industrial production and environmental contamination.

    The performance therefore stages a communication loop between a technological device and a non-living material body.

    The plastic object becomes both the receiver and the subject of the transmitted information.

    This work belongs to a series of performances in which Marcello Mercado investigates the circulation of information between biological systems, technological devices, and material environments.

    In this action the artist performs an unusual communicative gesture: he transmits the chemical composition of a plastic object to the object itself.

    At first glance the act appears absurd. A walkie-talkie radio is used to send information toward a deflated plastic balloon lying on a beach. The object cannot hear, decode, or interpret the transmission. Yet precisely in this impossibility lies the conceptual structure of the work.

    The transmitted message describes the molecular structure of the object itself: hydrocarbons composed primarily of carbon and hydrogen atoms, plasticizers containing oxygen and chlorine compounds, and stabilizing additives that enable the material to remain flexible and durable.

    These substances are not neutral.

    They are part of the chemical infrastructure of contemporary industrial production and also of global environmental contamination. Plastic objects are among the most persistent materials circulating through marine ecosystems.

    By verbally transmitting the chemical formula of the object to itself, Mercado stages a form of informational recursion.

    The plastic object becomes both the receiver and the subject of the message.

    This gesture echoes processes found in biological systems. In living organisms genetic information is transmitted through sequences of nucleotides that encode the chemical structure of life itself. DNA communicates instructions that describe and reproduce the organism that carries them.

    In Mercado’s performance a similar informational structure appears, but in an inverted form.

    Instead of genomic information, the message describes an artificial molecular structure produced by industrial chemistry. Instead of living cells receiving the signal, the recipient is a piece of plastic waste deposited in a natural environment.

    The work therefore exposes a disturbing parallel between biological information and industrial contamination.

    Just as DNA spreads through biological reproduction, synthetic polymers now circulate globally through oceans, soil, and atmospheric systems. Plastic objects have become long-lasting carriers of chemical information embedded within ecological environments.

    By addressing the plastic object with its own chemical description, Mercado transforms environmental pollution into a form of informational transmission.

    The beach becomes a site where communication between technological systems and synthetic matter unfolds.

    The performance ultimately proposes a dark inversion of biological communication: a world in which the informational structures once associated with life are increasingly replaced by the persistent molecular signatures of industrial materials.

    Plastic does not speak.

    But it remains.

    And through its chemical composition it silently records the material language of contemporary industrial civilization.

    6. Antibiotic Walk, 2010

    Performance and photographic documentation
    Cologne, Germany
    2010

    In Antibiotic Walk Marcello Mercado extends a series of performative experiments that investigate the circulation of biological agents within technological and urban systems.

    The performance takes place within the temporary wounds of the city: construction trenches, exposed pipes, and infrastructural cavities opened during street works. These spaces briefly reveal the normally hidden strata of the urban environment—soil layers, cables, pipes, and geological deposits that support the visible city above.

    Mercado enters this landscape carrying a liquid produced through the decomposition of citrus fruit.

    The substance contains naturally occurring molds that generate antimicrobial compounds. Historically, the discovery of antibiotics itself emerged from similar observations of fungal growth inhibiting bacterial colonies. In this work, however, the biological process is neither laboratory-controlled nor directed toward medical use.

    Instead, the antibiotic becomes a symbolic agent circulating through the urban environment.

    By pouring the liquid into construction cavities, Mercado stages a form of biological intervention within the infrastructural body of the city. The gesture appears modest, almost invisible. Yet it introduces microbial processes into spaces normally associated with engineering, sanitation, and controlled technological systems.

    The performance therefore creates a subtle encounter between two different models of knowledge.

    On one side lies the rationalized structure of modern urban infrastructure: planned, excavated, and regulated through engineering logic. On the other side lies the unpredictable domain of microbial life, where bacteria, fungi, and chemical compounds interact through ecological processes beyond human design.

    The antibiotic liquid functions as a mediator between these two domains.

    Unlike pharmaceutical antibiotics produced within industrial laboratories, this substance emerges from uncontrolled biological decay. Rotting citrus fruit becomes the origin of a microbial culture capable of altering bacterial environments.

    Within the context of Mercado’s broader artistic practice, this gesture resonates with recurring themes: the movement of biological information, the transformation of organic material, and the insertion of living processes into technological systems.

    The walk itself becomes an act of distribution.

    As the artist moves through the city, the substance is dispersed across multiple locations, turning the urban territory into a dispersed field of micro-interventions. Each poured drop enters a different underground cavity, where it disappears into soil, water, and infrastructural systems.

    The work therefore operates on a scale that is both microscopic and urban.

    At the microscopic level, microbial interactions unfold between fungi, bacteria, and organic compounds. At the urban scale, the performance traces a path through the city, mapping a network of hidden biological insertions.

    Through this quiet gesture Antibiotic Walk reimagines the city as a living system in which biological and technological processes continuously intersect.

     

     

    7. Aberdeen Angus DNA Rotation, 2005

    2005
    Video installation

    A drop of DNA extracted from Aberdeen Angus beef rotates on a motorized display platform normally used for watch vitrines. The work links agricultural production, biological identity and mechanical repetition.

     

    8. Biorealismus, 2005

    19’15» color video, stereo, PAL
    Germany / Denmark, 2005

    Biorealismus is a bio-performative project developed through a sequence of biological actions carried out over several months in

    Germany and Denmark.

    The work unfolds in three phases.

    In the first phase, ninety lots of Californian red worms (Eisenia fetida) were fed with printed, shredded, and liquefied pages of Kurt Gödel’s 1940 mathematical paper Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory. The worms were kept outdoors in plastic containers for six months in the Cologne and Brühl region.

    During this period the artist regularly inspected the worm lots and periodically read fragments from Karl Marx’s Das Kapital to them. Mathematical logic and political economy were thus introduced as parallel informational structures addressed to a biological system.

    In the second phase, DNA samples were extracted from the worms that had consumed the Gödel text. These samples functioned as biological traces of the interaction between theoretical knowledge and living organisms.

    The final phase took place on the Danish coast. Traveling aboard a Bavaria 270 Sport compact motor yacht, Mercado released the ninety worm lots into the sea in thirty-three separate dispersal actions performed at different intervals and speeds.

    The project was documented through video and photographic sequences that record both the laboratory-like procedures and the environmental dispersal of the organisms.

    Through this process Biorealismus investigates how abstract knowledge systems—mathematics and political economy—can be materially transformed through biological processes.

    FRAKTALE IV – tod

    Exhibition: 17 Sep – 22 Oct 2005

    Palast der Republik

    Schlossplatz
    10178 Berlin

     

     

    The final maritime dispersal of the worms connects Biorealismus with another performance from the same cycle, Das Kapital: Bell, Marx and the Cycles of Absorption (2005).

    In both works Mercado investigates processes of absorption, transformation, and circulation of information through material systems. Mathematical theory, political economy, and biological matter intersect within performative structures that expose how knowledge migrates between symbolic, organic, and environmental domains.

    The release of the worms into the sea marks the moment when the controlled experimental system dissolves into a larger ecological field. What began as a laboratory-like procedure—feeding theoretical texts to living organisms—ends as an open dispersal in which the traces of theory become part of an uncontrollable biological environment.

    Within Mercado’s broader practice this gesture signals a recurring operation: the translation of abstract systems of thought into physical processes where information is metabolized, decomposed, and redistributed through living matter.

    9. Das Kapital: Bell, Marx and the cycles of absorption, 2005

    Das Kapital: Bell, Marx and the cycles of absorption, 2005

    10. Gödel Suite, 2009

    Gödel Suite, 2009

     

    11. Genome Fragment in the White Hall, 2005

    2005
    Video / performance

    A fragment of the Aberdeen Angus genome is written on a chalkboard inside a replica of the White Hall of the Argentine presidential palace. The action introduces a friction between biological data, political architecture and symbolic authority.

    12. DNA Fermentation, 2005 – 2006

    Denmark
    2005–2006
    Performance

    The artist dilutes his DNA in water from an agricultural ditch and mixes it with hay inside rural Danish landscapes. Through aeration and bubbling the material enters natural fermentation processes.

    13. The Burial, 2001

     

    Performance and photographic sequence
    Cologne, Germany
    2001

    The Burial is a performative action in which a fragment of the artist’s own body becomes the central material of the work. After a surgical procedure in which his tonsils were removed, Marcello Mercado preserved the extracted organs in formaldehyde. Some time later, he transported them through the city of Cologne to a cemetery, where they were buried and marked with flowers.

    The action is structured through three simple gestures: preservation, transport, and burial. Together these gestures transform a medical residue into a performative object.

    Within the medical system, removed tissue is normally classified, analyzed, and eventually discarded. By preserving the tonsils, Mercado temporarily interrupts this process. The organs become a small biological archive—fragments of the body that once formed part of the immune system and that contain traces of the body’s interaction with the surrounding environment.

    The performance continues when the preserved organs are carried through the city. The photographic documentation shows the artist transporting the container in a wheelbarrow, accompanied by flowers. The gesture moves the specimen from a clinical context into a symbolic and ritual space.

    The final act is the burial.

    Rather than keeping the organs as preserved specimens, Mercado returns them to the soil. The tissue slowly decomposes and reintegrates into natural biological cycles.

    The Burial reflects on the body as a temporary archive. Biological material can be preserved for a time, but it cannot remain stable indefinitely. Sooner or later it returns to the processes of transformation and decay that govern all organic matter.

    Through a simple gesture, the work allows a fragment of the body to leave the medical archive and return to the earth.

     

    14. Gödel DNA, 2006

    Germany
    2006
    Performance / intervention

    After reading texts related to Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, the artist dilutes his DNA in distilled water and pours it into an urban excavation created for street construction. Logical systems, biological material and urban infrastructure intersect in the action.

    15. Burning the Surgical Cloth, 2006

    Denmark
    2006
    Performance

    A surgical cloth containing traces of the artist’s DNA is burned in an open field near the sea. The combustion transforms genetic material into elemental matter.

    16. Van Gogh Variations, 2014

    Video installation / experimental media work
    Variable dimensions

    Van Gogh Variations examines the transformation of artistic production through systems of repetition, variation and mechanical reproduction. The work takes as its point of departure the historical figure of Vincent van Gogh and the persistent circulation of his visual language within contemporary technological environments.

    Rather than revisiting Van Gogh’s paintings through imitation or quotation, the project investigates the operational logic underlying the production and transformation of images associated with his work. In this context, the name “Van Gogh” functions less as a reference to an individual author than as a cultural signal that has been repeatedly processed through systems of reproduction, translation and reinterpretation.

    The installation presents a sequence of visual variations generated through iterative transformations applied to a single pictorial reference. Each iteration alters the visual structure of the image while maintaining a recognizable relation to the initial configuration. The process produces a field of images that oscillate between persistence and deviation, demonstrating how an iconic artistic language can be subjected to systematic variation without losing its identity.

    Within this framework, the work does not attempt to reconstruct or reinterpret Van Gogh’s historical paintings. Instead, it focuses on the conditions that allow a visual system to survive across different technological regimes. The project examines how a pictorial vocabulary originally produced within the material conditions of late nineteenth-century painting continues to circulate through contemporary media environments.

    The variations produced in the installation reveal how images associated with Van Gogh have become part of a broader informational system. Brushwork, chromatic structures and compositional patterns are treated as transferable visual parameters that can be modified, recombined and redistributed through digital processes.

    By foregrounding repetition and transformation rather than authorship or expression, Van Gogh Variations situates the legacy of Van Gogh within a contemporary field where images operate as mutable structures rather than fixed artifacts. The work thus investigates the persistence of artistic forms as they move between historical painting, technological reproduction and algorithmic variation.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    17. Malen mit DNA (Painting with DNA), 2016

    Marcello Mercado
    Performance, 2016
    Museum Ludwig, Cologne

    Clandestine performance / biological intervention
    Variable duration

    Malen mit DNA (Painting with DNA) is a clandestine performance carried out by Marcello Mercado inside the Museum Ludwig in Cologne during a period in which parts of the museum were temporarily closed for repainting.

    The action consisted of introducing biological material from the artist’s own body into the freshly painted architectural surfaces of the museum. Using saliva as a carrier of genetic material, Mercado deposited traces of his DNA directly onto the walls of a gallery space.

    Through this gesture the museum wall—normally conceived as a neutral support for the display of artworks—was transformed into a surface of biological inscription. Rather than producing an image through conventional painting materials, the artist employed bodily matter itself as medium. The saliva containing DNA functioned as a minimal deposit of biological information within the institutional architecture of the museum.

    Simultaneously, the action involved the mental articulation of the ideas that structure Mercado’s artistic practice. Past paintings and drawings, as well as works not yet produced, were conceptually projected onto the walls as acts of anticipation and elimination. In this sense the intervention deposited not only biological material but also the conceptual residue of an artistic trajectory that extends across past and future works.

    The museum wall thus became a temporary interface where biological identity, artistic thought and institutional space intersected. Painting was displaced from pigment and gesture toward the deposition of genetic traces and conceptual propositions.

    The performance was interrupted by museum security personnel before the action could continue. This interruption forms part of the structure of the work, revealing the limits imposed by institutional authority over artistic actions within museum environments.

    Malen mit DNA (Painting with DNA) investigates the relationship between biological material, artistic production and museum architecture. By introducing DNA together with the conceptual framework of his artistic practice into the physical surface of the institution, Mercado transforms the wall into a site where biological information and artistic ideas are simultaneously inscribed.

    18. Transferring, Hybriding, Storing, sharing, 2014

    Performative Installation, 2014
    Activating the genetic memory of living organisms through sound as a strategy in response to extinction.

     

    Photographic documentation from the project
    Transferring – Storing – Hybriding
    Marcello Mercado
    Germany, c. 2012

    In this experiment drops of the artist’s extracted DNA were placed inside mechanical insect traps attached to a tree. The traps remained closed for approximately three hours, temporarily enclosing the biological material within devices normally designed to capture living organisms.

    The action forms part of the larger performative and video project Transferring – Storing – Hybriding (2012), which investigates the circulation, containment, and transformation of biological information.

    19. Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information through plants, DNA, worms and Radio Frequencies, 2007 – 2008

    Marcello Mercado, 2008
    Video installation, 2 screens
    DVD color stereo, 18’ loop × 2
    DNA, Do-Not-Disturb signs
    Variable dimensions
    Deutschland

    This video installation documents and extends a series of biological and informational operations conducted by Marcello Mercado in 2007–2008 that investigate DNA as a transmissible form of information moving between biological organisms, technological systems and acoustic media.

    The work originates from a double intervention carried out during the period of Documenta Kassel. In the first phase, the artist collected red poppies from the installation Poppy Field by Sanja Iveković and extracted DNA from the plant material. The genetic material was frozen and later dissolved in water containing living aquatic worms (Biomphalaria glabrata).

    The installation documents the subsequent process in which genomic sequences were transformed into audible information. Using Braille-reading software and text-to-speech conversion tools, fragments of nucleotide sequences were translated into synthetic vocal readings. The resulting sound stream consists of continuous recitations of genomic code, structured according to the four nucleotide bases:

    A — Adenine
    C — Cytosine
    T — Thymine
    G — Guanine

    The genomic fragments are presented not as biological data for scientific analysis but as linguistic structures that can be processed, transmitted and re-circulated through technical media.

    Within the installation, the sound of these genomic readings is broadcast through baby-monitor transmitters positioned near the containers where the worms live. The organisms are therefore exposed to acoustic transmissions derived from their own genomic sequences. The system creates a closed informational circuit in which genetic data extracted from living organisms are converted into sound and transmitted back to biological environments through radio frequencies.

    The video installation is presented on two synchronized screens. One channel documents the biological environment and the experimental setup, while the second focuses on the informational processes: the transformation of genomic text into sound, the broadcasting devices and the acoustic transmission of the genetic sequences.

    Two Do Not Disturb signs placed within the installation indicate the presence of an ongoing biological and informational process, framing the work as an active experimental environment rather than a purely representational video display.

    Synthetic Genomic Readings on Breathing Worms investigates the translation of biological code into technological media and the circulation of genetic information through multiple channels of transmission. The project treats DNA not only as biological material but also as a structured dataset capable of entering communication systems, acoustic environments and feedback loops involving living organisms.

    Through this operation, Mercado examines the possibility of broadcasting genomic information as a signal within ecological and technological systems, establishing a hybrid field in which biological life, data and radio transmission intersect.

     

    20. Live streamings from Dolmens, 2005

     

    Video / Net-based transmission project
    Variable duration
    2005

    Live Streamings from Dolmens investigates the relationship between ancient architectural structures, technological transmission systems and contemporary regimes of observation. The project establishes a real-time broadcasting system in which prehistoric megalithic sites—dolmens—become points of transmission within a digital communication network.

    Dolmens, among the earliest surviving human constructions, function historically as burial structures and territorial markers. Their massive stone assemblies represent a form of architectural permanence designed to endure across millennia. In Live Streamings from Dolmens, these prehistoric sites are reconfigured as nodes within contemporary media infrastructures. Cameras positioned in proximity to the dolmens transmit continuous video streams to remote viewers, transforming archaeological structures into active broadcasting stations.

    The project introduces a temporal collision between two radically different technological regimes. On one side stands the megalithic architecture of the Neolithic period, built through collective manual labor and oriented toward ritual and burial practices. On the other side are digital networks capable of instantaneous global transmission. By linking these two systems, the work exposes how contemporary technologies overlay themselves onto ancient spatial structures without dissolving their historical persistence.

    The live stream format plays a central role in the conceptual framework of the work. Unlike recorded video documentation, the continuous transmission produces a durational field in which time unfolds without narrative compression. The dolmen becomes both subject and infrastructural support for a flow of data that connects remote viewers to a site whose original function was oriented toward the dead and toward the long-term preservation of memory.

    Within this configuration the dolmen operates simultaneously as monument, archive and transmitter. The prehistoric structure is neither reconstructed nor interpreted; instead it becomes an interface through which contemporary communication systems interact with one of the earliest forms of human architecture.

    By transforming these ancient sites into streaming nodes, Mercado situates archaeological space within the logic of digital networks. The work examines how technologies of transmission intersect with structures built thousands of years before the emergence of electronic media, producing a hybrid field where deep historical time and real-time communication coexist.

    Live Streamings from Dolmens thus proposes a displacement in the role of media infrastructures: instead of constructing new technological monuments, the project reactivates prehistoric ones as platforms for contemporary transmission, allowing the temporal layers of human culture—ritual architecture, burial practices and networked communication—to occupy the same operational space.

    21. Azimuth 77, 2006

    Bio-Performance by Marcello Mercado and Sebastián Sánchez Zelada
    2006

    Video documentation: 21’26’’
    4:3, stereo, color

    Azimuth 77 is a bio-performative field experiment developed by Marcello Mercado and Sebastián Sánchez Zelada in which biological material, satellite infrastructures and terrestrial environments are temporarily articulated into a single operational system.

    The performance unfolds through a sequence of coordinated displacements across a muddy forest terrain where provisional routes are constructed using transparent tubes containing extracted plant DNA. These tubular structures function simultaneously as spatial markers, conduits and fragile infrastructures through which biological information circulates within the landscape.

    At specific points along these routes, plant material is collected, processed and reintroduced into the terrain. DNA extraction and transfer operations occur directly within the environment, transforming the site into an open-air laboratory where biological matter, water, soil and organic residues continuously interact.

    The spatial logic of the performance is not determined by the terrain alone. Instead, the actions are oriented through the real-time monitoring of Iridium satellite trajectories, whose orbital coordinates define the azimuths guiding each intervention. Satellite communication networks therefore become an invisible navigational layer structuring the movement of bodies and materials on the ground.

    Within this unstable terrain, multiple forms of life traverse the constructed routes. Slugs and other organisms move through the tubes, surfaces and mud surrounding the DNA structures, leaving traces that intersect with the artificial pathways built by the performers. These organisms introduce an additional biological agency into the system, complicating the distinction between designed infrastructure and ecological process.

    Telecommunication devices connected to the Iridium network generate an acoustic environment composed of satellite signals and mobile communication feedback. These signals function simultaneously as monitoring instruments, orientation systems and sound elements within the performative space.

    Through the interaction of DNA extraction, terrestrial displacement, satellite tracking and environmental organisms, Azimuth 77 produces a hybrid operational landscape where biological processes, technological infrastructures and ritualized gestures coexist. The work brings together bioart, satellite orientation, telecommunications sound and performative action, establishing a temporary system in which planetary orbital networks and microscopic biological information become part of the same spatial choreography.

    22. Curves, Compost, Forecasts and Closures, 2020

    Marcello Mercado
    Performance / Video documentation, 10’51’’
    Color, stereo, 2020

    Curves, Compost, Forecasts and Closures was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a moment when daily life became mediated almost entirely through unstable digital infrastructures and statistical representations of the crisis. In Argentina, internet connections frequently collapsed under the pressure of massive online activity, producing error messages and failed page loads that interrupted access to information.

    Mercado began collecting these digital failures by capturing screenshots of the error messages that prevented webpages from appearing. These images of interruption and technological breakdown were later printed together with a fragment of the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, bringing together two forms of information circulating during the pandemic: the biological code of the virus and the malfunctioning signals of the digital networks through which the crisis was being communicated.

    The printed material was then cut into fragments and transformed into paper pulp. This pulp was mixed with fertilized soil and placed in a pot where a lettuce plant was cultivated. Through this process the textual remains of digital errors and viral genomic data were composted into organic matter capable of sustaining new biological growth.

    When the lettuce reached maturity, Mercado harvested it and extracted its DNA. In parallel, he produced a series of wooden sculptural forms based on the statistical curves that structured public perception of the pandemic — the graphs of infection rates, projections and daily forecasts that dominated news and governmental communication.

    As a final gesture, the DNA extracted from the lettuce was slowly dripped onto these wooden structures.

    Through this sequence of actions, Curves, Compost, Forecasts and Closures transforms the informational landscape of the pandemic into a material cycle: digital errors become compost, compost sustains plant life, and plant DNA returns to mark the statistical forms through which the crisis was interpreted. The work proposes a circulation between biological, informational and material processes, where genomic data, digital breakdown and vegetal growth become part of the same ecological loop.

     

     

    In Open Genome Actions the genome is no longer confined to the body.
    It becomes an unstable archive circulating through soil, water, machines and ecosystems