The convergence of visual culture and digital devices has brought unprecedented connectivity, while it has contributed to an expansive and unsustainable media (eco)system. The materiality of communication, devices, and their infrastructure has come to indicate a visual culture that is materially extractive and computationally heavy. At the same time, this digital culture creates specific subjectivities, relational engagements, and perceptual effects.

The residency at iMAL has served in function of ‘speculation’ and inquiry into the simultaneous de-acceleration of (digital) visual culture's perceptive and affective interactions, alongside the degrowth of its computational and technical strata.

During the residency, I focused on the examination of digitality's disconnected materialities and its complex and multifaceted temporalities. I looked at digital images as code, and as computation, and at how they evolve at multiple levels of technical execution, in addition to exploring its theoretical implications. Thinking about the speed(s) and materiality/ies of digital media, I have been interested in the idea of the (im)possibility of sustainability within digitality. But also by the role that digital images (and media) play in shaping our perceptual engagements, our social attachments, and our investments in the ‘world’.

Looking at the implications of digital media, in relation to materiality and the planet, and to our perception and awareness has made me further question what sustainability could possibly mean in relation to media. Is addressing its material, and affective implication enough, or is this a broader question of (media) culture?

The project Sustainable Media speculates on the degrowth of visual culture and computation in line with ecological concerns, and on its reconfiguration in terms of material, computational, and affective operations.

By examining the relationship between technical processes of perceptual coding and a broader socio-technical coding of perception, the project ultimately surveys the possibilities of deceleration of visual cultures’ perceptual engagements while attempting to degrow its computational strata.

Ava Zevop is a Ljubljana-born, Brussels-based visual and new media artist, and an independent researcher. Recently, she has shown in solo exhibitions Rise and Fail of Algorithmic Cultures (2023) at the Ravnikar Gallery Space, In the Beginning, There Was Static ... In the End, There Was the Webbed Wide World (2022) and Webbed Wide Worlds (2023) at osmo/za, and in group shows Fever Dream at Galerija Kresija (2023), at the Design FEST Gent in the Design Museum Gent (2022), in the exhibition Let it be Queer! in the City Gallery of Ljubljana (2021), and at the 26th edition of the International Festival of Computer Art (MFRU) - Infrastructural Complex: Altered Earth (2020), amongst others. Additionally, she has participated in academic conferences on technology and migration, such as the Digitized Migrants Conference in Istanbul (2022) and STS Italia (2023). In her media art practice, she has previously focused on machine learning as an epistemological paradigm, while she is currently exploring digital cultures’ (un)sustainability.

Portrait: Marijo Zupanov / Ravnikar Gallery Space

Visual: Ava Zevop