Marcello Mercado

  • Marcello Mercado, Historia del Arte Argentino, 22 pages, Artist´s book, 2012

    Marcello Mercado

    Historia del Arte Argentino

    Artist´s book, 22 pages

    2012

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, FHLR, 42 pages, artist´s book, 2010

    Marcello Mercado, FHLR, 42 pages, artist´s book, 2010

     

    Marcello Mercado

    FHLR

    42 pages, artist´s book

    2010

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    This experimental artist’s book (2010) operates at the intersection of software failure, visual noise and procedural abstraction. Rather than treating glitch as an aesthetic effect, the work approaches error as a structural condition: a state in which digital systems expose their internal logic, limits and residual behaviors.

    The images gathered in the book originate from disrupted interfaces, corrupted files and unstable rendering processes. These visual fields are not illustrations of malfunction, but material records of computational stress. Interfaces collapse into grids, fragments repeat obsessively, and legibility dissolves into dense strata of code, pixels and temporal residue. The screen ceases to function as a window and becomes a surface of inscription.

    Positioned within Marcello Mercado’s broader practice—spanning drawing, performance, bio-art and algorithmic systems—this book anticipates his sustained engagement with translation, decomposition and archival instability. As in his later works, systems are not used to produce clarity or control, but to generate friction, delay and semantic drift.

    Seen from a contemporary curatorial perspective, the book belongs to an early generation of soft-art practices that understood digital media not as a neutral tool, but as a material ecology prone to entropy. The work resists narrative closure and technological optimism, proposing instead a poetics of breakdown in which software reveals itself as fragile, contingent and historically situated.

    Here, error is not a deviation to be corrected, but a productive state—one that exposes the invisible infrastructures shaping perception, memory and visual culture in the early twenty-first century.

  • Marcello Mercado, die Reise mit der Beagle (The journey with the Beagle), Artist´s Book,2010

    Marcello Mercado, die Reise mit der Beagle (The journey with the Beagle), Artist´s Book,2010

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    die Reise mit der Beagle (The journey with the Beagle)

    watercolor on paper

    Artist´s Book, 24 pages

    2010

     

    The Journey with the Beagle (2010) Conceived as a unique artist’s book composed of watercolor drawings on paper, the work does not illustrate a narrative journey but registers a process of observation, translation, and drift. The reference to Darwin’s Beagle functions less as a historical citation than as a methodological cue: movement without destination, attention without hierarchy, drawing as a form of slow recording.

    In contrast to Mercado’s contemporaneous engagements with digital corruption, glitch processes, and algorithmic inscription, The Journey with the Beagle turns deliberately toward a fragile, manual register. The watercolor marks appear provisional, porous, and unstable—closer to notations or residues than to images seeking completion. Each page operates as a temporal unit, tracing micro-variations rather than progression, accumulation rather than development.

    The book can be read as an early articulation of Mercado’s sustained interest in translation across systems: from observation to mark, from experience to archive, from movement to inscription. Here, the archive is not technological but bodily; not computational but gestural. The absence of text reinforces this position, allowing the drawings to function as silent recordings of time, perception, and hesitation.

    As a unikat artist’s book, The Journey with the Beagle foregrounds the book not as a container of content but as a spatial and temporal device. Turning pages becomes an act of navigation, echoing Mercado’s later projects where images, data, and materials are continuously displaced, transformed, and re-encoded. Seen retrospectively, the work anticipates the artist’s ongoing inquiry into the instability of images and the conditions under which meaning emerges—not through representation, but through process.

     

  • Marcello Mercado, Doppelt (Double), Photography, 30 pages, 2013

    Marcello Mercado, Doppelt (Double), Photography, 30 pages, 2013

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Doppelt (Double)

    Photography, 30 pages

    2013

     

     

    Doppelt (Double)

    In Doppelt (Double), Marcello Mercado approaches photography as a site of duplication, interference, and temporal instability. The book unfolds as a sustained inquiry into the image not as a fixed capture, but as a layered event—produced through the collision of analogue exposure and computational disturbance.

    The project operates through two intertwined procedures. On one side, long exposures executed with bulb techniques reactivate an early photographic regime in which light is accumulated rather than seized. Time, here, is not frozen but stretched, folded, and sedimented. On the other, these exposures are subjected to algorithmic manipulation through softart and glitch processes, introducing discontinuities, ruptures, and synthetic noise that destabilize the image’s coherence.

    Rather than opposing analogue and digital logics, Doppelt insists on their mutual contamination. The photographic surface becomes a zone where pre-digital optical memory and post-digital error coexist, producing images that oscillate between trace and disruption, persistence and failure. The “double” invoked by the title is not a mirror or repetition, but a structural condition: the image exists simultaneously as exposure and as system, as material inscription and as corrupted data.

    Within Mercado’s broader practice—marked by transductions, deletions, invented languages, and algorithmic rewriting—Doppelt occupies a pivotal position. It extends his investigation into translation across media, where meaning is neither preserved nor lost, but continuously displaced. Photography is treated less as representation than as an operational field, a technical body subjected to time, light, and code.

    The book format reinforces this logic. Sequential, fragmented, and resistant to linear reading, Doppelt functions as an archive of instabilities rather than a narrative object. It proposes photography as an unstable technology of memory—one that records not the world, but the conditions of its own production and erosion.

  • Confinment, Artist´s book, 82 pages, 2020

    Confinment, Artist´s book, 82 pages, 2020

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Confinment

    Artist´s book, 82 pages

    2020

     

    Confinement

    Produced during the global lockdown of 2020, Confinement forms part of Marcello Mercado’s long-term investigation into the image as an operational system—where perception, technology, and lived experience intersect. Rather than documenting an exceptional moment, the book registers a condition: the reconfiguration of domestic space under prolonged isolation.

    The photographs, captured with night-vision devices, depict ordinary interiors and objects—chairs, curtains, televisions, food, the silent presence of animals—rendered unfamiliar through a technology historically associated with surveillance and control. This choice displaces the domestic from the realm of intimacy toward that of exposure, transforming private space into a monitored environment and the everyday into a field of latent tension.

    Throughout Mercado’s practice, the image functions less as representation than as a recording apparatus shaped by technical mediation. In Confinement, night vision does not illuminate; it abstracts. It produces a perceptual distance that mirrors the psychological dislocation of isolation, where time dilates and the boundary between interior and exterior collapses. The book thus operates as both a personal archive and a diagram of collective experience.

    Confinement extends Mercado’s ongoing engagement with archival systems, surveillance technologies, and the fragility of bodily presence under conditions of constraint. The work resists narrative closure, offering instead a sequence of visual residues—images that neither explain nor dramatize, but persist as evidence of a suspended state.

    In this sense, the book does not document confinement as an event, but as a structural condition: a spatial, temporal, and perceptual enclosure in which visibility itself becomes unstable.

  • Marcello Mercado, ){aa.event.remove10Jul 16, Photo Book, 32 pages, 2002

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    ){aa.event.remove10Jul 16

    Photo Book, 32 pages

    2002

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, White, conceptual artist book, 125 pages, 2013

    Marcello Mercado, White, conceptual artist book, 125 pages, 2013

     

     

    Marcello Mercado
    White
    conceptual artist book, 125 pages
    2013

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, Filmography, 2025

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Filmography

     

     

    The Hypergaussian Wars

    73m 03″, color, sound, 2K, 2025, Argentine – Germany

     

    Läuft bei dir (Things are going great for you)

    7m 20″, color, silent, 2K, 2025, Germany

     

    Burning Garden
    7m 43″, colour, stereo, HD, 2024, Argentina

     

    Listening the chromosome 17

    21m 02″, colour, stereo, HD, 2023, Argentina

     

    Testflüge . Test flights

    10m 04″, colour, silent, HD, 2023, Germany

     

    To whom does the time belong?

    1h 03m, stereo, black/white, 2020, Germany

     

    Curves, compost, forecasts and enclosure

    10min 51″, stereo, colour, 2020, Argentina

     

    Procesar Destruir Representar Archivar

    5m, silent, 2020, Argentina

     

    Bestiary for the minds of the 21st Century: Genomic Opera

    16:9 2016 colour 2-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    Das Kapital Teil 1– Capital Part 1, version 2015

    15 ́ 58” colour/ b/w 2015 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    vibrational notations Generator
    09 ́ color PAL stereo 2015
    4-channel video installation, silent, 9 ́ loop

     

    Sketches of matrixes with several functions

    03 ́ 50“ color PAL silent 2015
    4-channel video installation

     

    Van Gogh Variations (Variationen Van Gogh)
    16:9 colour 2014 7-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    Wie die Leoparden, Leoparden fingen (How leopards caught leopards)

    20 ́41″ colour 16:9 2014 single-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    Spätherbst (Late fall)
    09 ́35″ color/b/w 4:3 2014 single-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    Meta Documentary
    03 ́19″ color/b/w 4:3 2014 single-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    Sommer (Summer)
    16 ́28″ color/b/w 4:3 2014 single-channel video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    ABANDON(ware) Capital excess routine

    11 ́44″ color 16:9 2013 videoinstallation, stereo, Germany

     

    Tonspur – Bildspur (Sound trace -Image trace)
    08 ́ 12″ color 16:9 2013 video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    GLITCHES_DIARIES of PURE DESKTOP
    15 ́ colour 1999-2012 video installation, stereo, Germany

     

    AKKORD
    27 ́ 42″ color 4:3 2012 performance, stereo, Germany

     

    Paisajes con vacas
    07 ́52″ colour 2012 video installation, stereo, Germany – Argentina

     

    Historia del arte argentino
    01 ́07″ B/W 2012 video installation, silent, Argentina

     

    SUMMA – Notations
    04 ́ 12″ B/W stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    DELETE
    10 ́ 06″ color 2012 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Live streamings from Dolmens
    05 ́ 11″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, Danmark

     

    transferring, storing, sharing, and hybriding: Text_version

    05 ́ 31″ B/W 2011 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    New Automata
    17 ́ 34″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, 16:9 Germany 2011

     

    Ooops! Enter text.
    05 ́ 52″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, 16:9 Germany

     

    Discourse on the trade of the winds
    12 ́ 39″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, Germany- South Africa- Danmark

     

    Variations of the complementary game for up to four automaton states

    45 ́ 11″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, 16:9 Germany

     

    Hasse diagram for a propositional calculus for three automatons

    25 ́ 02″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, 16:9 Germany

     

    The Universes
    1h. 02″ color 2011 stereo, PAL, 16:9 Germany

     

    transfering, storing, sharing and hybriding: The perfect humus

    9 ́ 27″ color 2010 stereo, PAL, Germany-Danmark

     

    The Capital Part1
    60 ́ color/ b/w 2009 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Electroluminiscent – The Luminiscent Animation
<Thorax-Abdomen-Cantatrix>

    10 ́ 57″ color 2009 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Bioluminiscent – The Luminiscent Animation
<Thorax-Abdomen-Cantatrix>

    10 ́ 57″ color 2009 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    electroFLD_GLITCH
0
    5 ́01″ color 2009 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Azimuth77
    21 ́26″ color 2006-2009 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Captured Sequences
    24 ́31″ b/w 2008 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Primordial Capital: Stone-artefacts
    18 ́ color 1999-2008 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Wir alle vermissen die D-Mark oder 
Clara Schumann’s DNA Konzert

    7 ́35″ color 2008 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    CROSSFADE
    13 ́ 31″ color 2008 video installation, stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Supermassive

    4 ́ 48” color 2008 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Making consistent volatile ideas…(Backstage)

    1 ́ 13″ color 2008 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Fassbinder – Vostell – DNA expedition

    25 ́ 36“ color PAL stereo 2008 2-channel video installation

     

    Making consistent volatile ideas by broadcasting bio-information
through plants,

    DNA, worms and Radio Frecquencies
    34 ́color 2007 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Ur-Suppe. Primordial soup
    7 ́57″ color 2007 stereo, PAL, Germany-South Africa

     

    Ur-Jäger. Primordial Hunters
    12 ́07″ color 2007 stereo, PAL, Germany-South Africa

     

    The hybridization of real and virtual war

    38 ́ b/w 2007 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Series of periodical bilinear Surfaces
    6 ́ 31″ color 2006 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The on-coming water
    24 ́ color 2006 stereo, PAL, Danmark

     

    Materialien/Energie
    20 ́ color 2006 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    FFFF FFFS FFSS SSSS, The Pluripotent and the Eleven hESC lines

    86 ́color 2006 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Mac-Acupunture
    5 ́ 04″ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The hebbian Theory
    8 ́ 06″ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Brazil- Germany

     

    The Chemical and Physical Perception, 
in the Eye of the cat in the moment of the cut
    12 ́ 58“ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Biorealismus
    19 ́15“ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Biography
    3 ́ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Selbsporträt
    7 ́ 17” color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

 Self-portrait as a spider
    3 ́ 19” color 2005 stereo, PAL, Danmark

     

    The ability to backup
    3 ́ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Denmark

     

    Untertitel mit Landschaft
    25 ́color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany- Danmark

     

    Apparatus for Regulating the Watch
    30 ́ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany (2-channels-Installation)

     

    Regulating the Watch
    30 ́ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Weitere Multiplikationen

    21 ́35“ color 2005 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Hydantoin-derivative-Ich muß…

    4 ́color 2004 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    250MB
    28 ́color 2004 mono-stereo, PAL, Danmark

     

    Index_Generator
    24 ́ color 2004 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Das Kapital.07
    17 ́color 2003 stereo, PAL, Germany – France – USA – Argentina

     

    Politik
    4 ́color 2001 stereo, PAL, Brasil

     

    Tote Hunde bissen nicht (Dead dogs don ́t bite)

    15 ́ 43″ color 2000 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The Hierophant Part I The updates and the subscribers
    06 ́ color 2000 stereo, PAL, Germany (updates 2011 and 2012)

     

    38% und Simulationen
    10 ́ color 2000 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The Capital v.01 and v.02
    17 ́ 37″ color 1999-2000 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The Capital v.03 and v.04
    13 ́ color 2000-2001 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The Capital: Slow, unstable…
    13 ́ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Wie ich die fetale landschaft manipuliert habe

    5 ́ 55“ color 1999 – 2000 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Die Energie der Bakterien
    19 ́ 51“color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Das Kapital: Fall Dateien gelöscht
    9 ́ 48“ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Re-routing biopockets
    20 ́ 41“ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    Die Konstruktion genetischer Cromosomenkarten

    59 ́ 48“ color 1999 PAL, stereo, Germany

     

    Politik (1)
    11 ́ 23″ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The coefficient of fiction Part .01
    5 ́16″ B/W 1994 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    Richter Variationen
    8 ́ 37″ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    A Vanishing Quantity in the mathematical sin

    12 ́ color 1999 stereo, PAL, Germany

     

    The End of the XY Society
    11 ́ color 1998 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    The Warm Place
    38 ́ color 1998 stereo, PAL, Argentina

     

    The Edge of Rain
    42 ́color 1995 stereo, PAL, Argentina

     

    Remains of my Mother
    15 ́ color 1995 stereo, PAL, Argentina

     

    The Silence
    15 ́47“ color 1995 mute PAL Argentina

     

    Discussing with you some very important 
scientific newspaper of the day

    1 ́36“ color 1994 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    Emptiness
    14 ́ color 1994 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    The coefficient of fiction Part .01
    14 ́ B/W 1994 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    The Torment Zone
    9 ́color 1992 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    Clouds
    8 ́color b/w 1992 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

    Reset all Settigs
    49 ́42″ color 1990 mono, PAL, Argentina

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, Portfolio, Biography, 2025

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Born in Argentine in 1963. German citizen. He studied at the Academy of Media Arts Köln, Germany and at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. He lives and works in Argentina and in Germany.

    Marcello Mercado is a contemporary artist associated with Post Internet art- Process Art – Virtual Art – A.I. -Paintings – Drawings – Artist’s books – BioArt – New Media Art – Sound Art and Time Based Media

     

    His artwork is research as practice. He explores the relationship between technology, biology and art, with special interest in the interaction between digital, virtual and organic materials. Mercado ́s artistic perspective uses unlike technologies like Data gathering with drones, topological-mappings, satellites; DNA extractions; Code language; 3D printing and Music notations written by robots.

     

    His artistic inquiries are deeply influenced by biological theories, mathematical principles, and cutting-edge technologies. He creates a nuanced dialogue between these elements, constructing a landscape where artificial intelligence, generative processes, and organic unpredictability coexist. His works are not simply digital artifacts but rather living systems that evolve and respond to their environment. Mercado’s commitment to experimentation makes his art a continuous exploration of the shifting boundaries between the virtual and the physical, the synthetic and the organic.
    Through his pioneering practice, Mercado has redefined the possibilities of digital media and contemporary artistic discourse. His engagement with computational aesthetics, glitch strategies, and interactive experiences reflects a world increasingly governed by algorithmic processes and data saturation. His ability to translate complex theoretical frameworks into immersive artistic experiences has made him a reference point in the evolving field of digital and media art. As technology continues to redefine human perception and interaction, Mercado’s work remains at the forefront of critical artistic inquiry, pushing the limits of what is possible in the fusion of art, science, and digital culture.

     

     

    Fellowships:
    1996 at The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and The Lampadia Foundation;

    1999 at The Academy of Media Arts Köln. Germany;
    1993 at Fundación Antorchas. Buenos Aires Argentina and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation.
    2014 Grant from the Digital Synesthesia Group, Department of Digital Art, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
    2013 Grant for Media Art from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ- Haus for Media Art
    2012 Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica in Interactive Art;
    2009 His work “Das Kapital” was selected in the exhibition “40 Years Videoart Germany” by Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Technologie. Karlsruhe. Germany;
 2005 Nominated at The 50 Best, International\Media\Art\Award 2004, by Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Technologie, ZKM
    2001 La Biennale di Venezia, Special Projects: Bunker Poético, curated by
    Marco Rotelli;
    Premio Konex, Buenos Aires, Argentina
    2000 Post-Production Residence in Centre International du Creation Vidéo Pierre Schaeffer Montbéliard Belfort France;
    Wie mann sieht…Museum Ludwig, Cologne; curated by Siegfried Zielinski and Jürgen Klauke
    The First Prize Videobrasil;
    1999 Grand Prix de La Création Vidéo. Vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand. France;
 Wand5 – Stuttgart: Nominierungen Best Netart, 1999
    1999-2001 Fellow at The Academy of Media Arts Köln. Germany;
    1998 and 2001 The First Prize Videobrasil;
    1997 Achievement Award. Melbourne International Film & Video Festival, Australia;

    He participated in the Goethe Institutes Global Bodies, Global teleconference, 
Opening of Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany 1996 Fellow at The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and The Lampadia Foundation;

    1995 Main Prize 22nd EKOTOPFILM’95. Bratislava. Slovak Republic;
    Nominated for the best video of the year, Internationaler Videokunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie 
ZKM, SWF, ORF, Karlsruhe, Germany
    1994 The Main Prize Videofest Berlin

    Grand Prix de Toutes Categories. 4a Mondial de la Video. Bruxelles, Belgium
 1993 Grant at Fundación Antorchas and The Rockefeller Foundation and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

    Mercado has participated in several art exhibitions, including Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien; Museum Museum Ludwig, Cologne; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, Madrid; Kunsthaus Dresden; 51st Venice Biennale; MAMBA, Buenos Aires; 11th Biennale de l ́Image en Mouvement, Ginebra; The Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Berkeley Art Museum; II Biennial of Mercosul; Itaú Cultural, São Paulo; New York Video Festival.Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, etc

     

     

    Exhibitions:

    2025  Thinking AI, Bernet – Bertram Galerie, Berlin

    2022 Lo próximo y lo extraño – The next and the strange
    curated by Celeste Massin, Solo Show
    MUBA – Museo de Bellas Artes René Brusau, Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina

    REVIRAVOLTA
    Curated by Solange Farkas, Group Show, Galeria Homero Massena, ES, Brasil

    2021 Marcello Mercado: Sense and Sensitivity I Galerie Bernet Bertram, Berlin, Germany

    Confinamentos
    Curated by Videobrasil, On-line /Group Show

    2020/2021 Beethoven bewegt/ Beethoven moves,
    curated by Andreas Kugler, Jasper Sharp, Stefan Weppelmann and Andreas Zimmermann
    Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Austria

    2018 Join the Dots/Unire le distanze,
    curated by Nicolas Vamvouklis, Luca Beatrice, Luciano Benetton, Salone degli Incanti, ex Pescheria Centrale, Trieste, Italy

    2017 Potential Spaces. Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HfG). Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM). Karlsruhe. Germany Bepi Crespan Presents, CiTR FM 101.9 Radio Vancouver, Vancouver

    2016 In Medias Res, Bernet – Bertram Galerie, Berlin
    Digital Synesthesia, Angewandte Innovation Lab (AIL) 
The University of Applied Arts Vienna 
Vienna, Austria
    Digital Synesthesia, ISEA, Hong Kong
    Bodenlos / Groundless, Vilém Flusser und die Künste, SESC Sao Paulo DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prag

    2015 Bodenlos / Groundless, Vilém Flusser und die Künste, ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie; Akademie der Künste, Berlin
    European Media Art Festival, EMAF, Osnabrück, Germany
    Imago Mundi. Luciano Benetton Collection, M
 appa dell’arte nuova,
 Fondazione Giorgio Cini,
Venice, Italy

    XWRA Video and Media Festival 2015, 
XWRA, Artland, 
Greece Bienal Internacional de Performance BP.15, Buenos Aires, Argentina roBOt Festival, Bologna, Italia

    2014 BIO·FICTION Science Art Film Festival, Museum of Natural History, Vienna Grant from the Digital Synesthesia Group, Department of Digital Art, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
    Poéticas de Archivo, Historias del video arte argentino, MACBA, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires
    Kunstfrühling 2014, Bremen
    Bepi Crespan Presents, CiTR FM 101.9 Radio Vancouver, Vancouver

    2013 Grant for Media Art from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ- Haus for Media Art, Oldenburg, Germany

    2012 Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica in Interactive Art, Linz, Austria

    2009 His work “Das Kapital” was selected in the exhibition “40 Years Videoart Germany” by Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Technologie. Karlsruhe, Germany, curated by Christopher Blase and Peter Weibel
    Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany;

    Kunsthaus Dresden Städtische Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, Dresden, Germany;
    Lennox Contemporary Gallery, Toronto, Canada

    2007 El lienzo es la pantalla. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, curated by Berta Sichel

    2006 Georges Abstraction. Centre Pompidou. Paris. France, curated by Bureau des Videos

    2005 Biennial of Moving Images (BIM), Genéve, Switzerland
    2004 New York Video Festival. Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, USA 2003 Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan curated by Andreas Walther 2002 Radiotopia, OE1 Kunstradio, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria

    2001 La Biennale di Venezia, Special Projects: Bunker Poético, curated by Marco Rotelli

    Post-Production Residence in Centre International du Creation Vidéo Pierre Schaeffer Montbéliard Belfort France;
    Wie mann sieht…Museum Ludwig, Cologne; curated by Siegfried Zielinski and Jürgen Klauke

    The First Prize Videobrasil; GND_Earth Gallery, Berlin, Germany

    2000 Tent Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
    Chicago Filmmakers, Chicago, USA
    Biennial Interferences, Centre de Video Creation Pierre Schaeffer, France Art Biennial Buenos Aires Argentina, Argentina

    1999 Grand Prix de La Création Vidéo. Vidéoformes, Clermont-Ferrand. France;

    1999-2001 Fellow at The Academy of Media Arts Köln. Germany;

    1998 and 2001 The First Prize Videobrasil;

    1997 Achievement Award. Melbourne International Film & Video Festival, Australial;

    1996 Fellow at The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and The Lampadia Foundation;

    1995 Main Prize 22nd EKOTOPFILM’95. Bratislava. Slovak Republic; Leeds International Film Festival, UK

    1994 The Main Prize Videofest Berlin
    Grand Prix de Toutes Categories. 4a Mondial de la Video. Bruxelles, Belgium

    1993 Grant at Fundación Antorchas and The Rockefeller Foundation and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,

     

     

     

  • Listening the chromosome 17, 1-channel Video Installation, 2023

    Listening the chromosome 17, 1-channel Video Installation, 2023

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Listening to Chromosome 17

    21´02″, colour, stereo, HD

    Single-channel video installation with immersive sound

    2023

     

    In Listening to Chromosome 17, Marcello Mercado explores the changing landscape of self-portraiture in the context of contemporary technologies. Over the course of three months, the artist conducted sound sessions in which fragments of his own chromosome 17 were translated by artificial intelligence into synthetic audio. At the same time, he used a series of mobile 3D scanning applications to scan his own head, producing fragmented, glitchy, and often inaccurate models.

     

    These visual inconsistencies, combined with AI-generated imagery, culminate in a composite portrait that resists coherence. The resulting installation unfolds as an unstable dialogue between organic material and artificial interpretation – between the body and its machine-read counterpart.

     

    Mercado’s work draws on the principles of bioart and performative installation, using his own genetic data as both subject and medium. The project addresses issues of identity, perception, and the performativity of technological systems, examining how algorithmic processes attempt – and ultimately fail – to stabilize or fully capture the human.

     

    Rather than celebrating the precision of these technologies, the work foregrounds their flaws, highlighting the fractures in our digital doubles. Listening to Chromosome 17 is less a self–portrait than an evolving index of attempts: generative, broken, approximate. In this speculative interface between genome and image, sound and data, Mercado stages a meditation on disappearance, duplication, and the uneasy proximity of flesh and code.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado, Self-portrait 01, 3D scanner, 2023

     

    Marcello Mercado, Self-portrait 02, 3D scanner, 2023

     

    Marcello Mercado, Self-portrait 03, 3D scanner, 2023

     

    Marcello Mercado, Self-portrait 04, 3D scanner, 2023

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, Testflüge / Test flights, 1-channel video installation, 2023

    Marcello Mercado, Testflüge / Test flights, 1-channel video installation, 2023

     

     

     

    Marcello Mercado

    Testflüge – Test flights

    1-channel video installation

    10m 04″, colour, silent,
    2023

     

     

     

    Vimeo Pass: deutschland

     

     

     

     

    The interacting subroutines
    Adding elements to the Scene
    The moving target
    Extinction
    [data mining] program
    Why does this method fail with nonsense factors?
    Dead Files
    Denied File
    1 – To conserve valuable energy
    2 – Behavioral
    3 – A virtual particle
    4 – Access Restricted
    Start a new topic
    I start to divide myself in an uncontrolled way.

     

    Marcello Mercado

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Marcello Mercado, Wem gehört die Zeit? (To whom does the time belong?), 1-channel videoinstallation

    Marcello Mercado, Wem gehört die Zeit? (To whom does the time belong?), 1-channel videoinstallation

     

    Marcello Mercado, Wem gehört die Zeit? (To whom does the time belong?)

    1-channel videoinstallation

    63minutes, 
 black/white

    2020

     

     

    The installation explores the time that the same medium consumes.
The inaudible soundtrack is made up of frequencies that stimulate photosynthesis.

     

    The conceptof the videoinstallation is based on the text of Siegfried Zielinski written in Variations on Media Thinking, 2019: «The decisive question posed by those who, after the First World War, laid claim to be fighting for a better life for the many, was “to whom does the world belong?” Bertolt Brecht had asked the same question in the second half of his title for the film Kuhle Wampe (1932), framed as an urgent question mark regarding territorial ownership (in the broadest sense: of factories, land, resources, machines, etc.). At the present time and for the decades to come, however, it appears to me that the decisive question is “to whom does the time belong?”

     

    Die Installation untersucht die Zeit, die dasselbe Medium benötigt.
Der unhörbare Soundtrack besteht aus Frequenzen, die die Photosynthese stimulieren.