Buycloud
www.buycloud.space
-When in the 15th century the Western ‘explorers’ went to what-we-now-call-America, they told the natives that they wanted to buy their land.
The natives were confused; Their land? To buy it?
Their vocabulary did not have a word or understanding for ownership over natural phenomena.-
Buycloud is a research on the transformation of “natural phenomena” to “exploitable resources”.
A process carrying a story that must be told in relation to the past (colonialism), the present (climate change, corporate landgrabbing), and the future (extraterrestrial occupation). As a research-methodology I copied the dominant Western processes, philosophies and theories on how ownership and exploitation are constructed, and I pasted them onto one of the last phenomena remaining outside of these systems; clouds. Something so fluid and beyond our monetised culture, that it questions the validity of existing capitalistic models themselves.
I am selling clouds.
The research is expressed in an interactive video installation with an attached virtual speculation-market in the form of a web-app and a website. Within the installation people lay down on a piece of grass while looking up at projected clouds with QR-codes and prices attached. Each step of a cloud-acquirement is guided by several new media techniques and justified by a manifesto based upon a default land-property contract. All certificates are archived on the online map cadastre. With rising carbon emissions, cumulus clouds are threatened to disappear in 100-150 years. Catastrophic for the planet but very good for the cloud market, since all markets are based on scarcity and demand… Climate change becomes a paradoxical marketing tool whereby spectators are provoked to reflect upon their own position between climate justice or economical growth.
Buycloud has been exhibited in various international exhibitions and has now created a community of over a 120 cloud owners.
The infrastructure of a cloud-acquirement are conducted in the Commodifying Cumulus Cloud Manifesto
Clouds are sold and archived on www.buycloud.space
www.buycloud.space
Exhibitions
Current:
Stiftung Kunst und Natur,
Museum Sinclair House, Bad Homburg, Germany
2023
The smell of internet, 38cc, Delft, Netherlands
2022
Les Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France
Casa Banchel, Madrid Design Festival, Spain
Dutch Design Week, Dutch Design Awards, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Netherlands
Super Future Design Festival, Hannover, Germany
Lowlands Festival, Biddinghuizen, Netherlands
Institute of Cartopology, Correctionville, Netherlands
2021
C/O Berlin, Songs of the Sky, Berlin, Germany
SUPER T-market; Tomoko Mukaiyama, Muziekgebouw aan t IJ
SUPER T-market; Tomoko Mukaiyama, Spiral Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Salone del Mobile Milano, Missed Your Call, Milan, Italy
Nederlands Film Festival (Dutch Film Festival) Gouden Kalf Competitie, Utrecht, Netherlands
Virtual SUPER T-market; Tomoko Mukaiyama
(non)Depleted, Gr_und, Berlin, Germany
Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Talks
2022
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
C/O Berlin
2021
Institute of cartopology
Nederlands Film Festival, Storyspace
2020
Salone del Mobile Milano, New Institute
Dutch Design Week
Awards
Winner: Dutch Design Awards
Official Selected: Gouden Kalf Digital Culture, NFF
Publications
Introduction of Die Unterwerfung - Philipp Blom
Dutch Designers Yearbook 2022
Pidgin, Princeton University of Architecture
Les Rencontres d’Arles Catalogue 2021
Songs of the Sky Catalogue, C/O Berlin
Tubelight #121
Press
World Art Foundations
Archipanic
Art-In-Berlin
Culture all Nippon
Blog Craigberry
Livestream Super T market; sideprogramm of concert from Tomoko Mukaiyama. Buyclouds contribution on 39:00’
