The Golden USB (2014)
The Golden USB
Solo exhibition
VOX - Centre de l'image contemporaine
In partnership with La Biennale de Montréal BNLMTL 2014 - L’avenir (looking forward)
Montreal, Canada
September 11 - November 8, 2014
The Golden USB is an installation by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens that gives form to the idea of an interstellar trade capsule. Housed in a gold USB flash memory device, the capsule is intended for travel aboard a probe headed towards the stars beyond our solar system. Following in the footsteps of the Pioneer Plaque (1972-1973) and The Golden Record (1977), which introduced human civilization to extraterrestrials, The Golden USB (2014) is an invitation to make contact and begin a trade relationship.
The work revolves around the Trade Catalogue of Everything, a digital file listing everything and anything-land, water, air, plants, animals, fragments of nature, but also the products of human culture, industry, invention and know-how-that may be of interest to alien life. Through a proliferation of spoken words, filmed performances and actual specimens, the contents of the catalogue are revealed in the exhibition space, transforming the items presented into “samples,” that is to say, objects of appropriation and speculation.
By raising timely questions regarding the limits of commodification, including the ownership of the Earth and of the life forms that inhabit it, The Golden USB considers the prospect of interstellar trade as the logical extension into the future of the economic paradigm of a planet without boundaries or borders, in other words, of global capitalism.
Work presented: The Golden USB. This iteration of the work was produced by La Biennale de Montréal for BNLMTL 2014.
The artists would like to thank Michael Belmore, Nicole Giard, Jesse Gray, Rodrigo Martí, Bronwen Moen, and Kevin Rodgers for their participation.
