Karen Harkema South African, b. 1969
with assemblage of electrical wires and clear tubes on board.
rigid grid. The background features a meticulous, hand-painted
lattice of organic shapes, reflecting a generative, formulaic approach
to painting. Onto this landscape, the machine is inserted in a strict
grid format, representing the battle between the algorithm’s desire
for absolute system and the analog world’s insistence on chaos.
In the final rows, however, the work depicts a liberation from this
woven logic.
The nerves of the machine, the yellow and black wires,
breaks free from their structural pins. They are erupting from the
grid, returning to the unruly, 3D textile-like tangles that characterize
the pre-digital era of craft.
If the Core Rope Memory of the Apollo missions represented the
ultimate binding of software into copper—a permanent,
unchangeable weave, this work represents the un-weaving of that
code. It suggests that the molecular machine of the human spirit
cannot be fully contained by the formulaic recipe of the algorithm.
By rejecting the binary over & under of the loom, the wires burst forth
to reassert the tactile, messy reality of the physical world.
This is a performative act of entropy: the frozen logic of the core
memory is thawed, allowing the data to once again become a living,
breathing organism that resists the archive