Cantoni discussed the nature of living matter with artist Laura Lima, his mentor in the category Living Matter. The conversation revolved around a key question: Must a thing be organic to have agency? As a result, the two focused on creating a work that explores where the boundary runs between living and nonliving matter, and whether inanimate objects possess agency and can thus become subjects.
Saverio Cantoni
Living Matter
Organism 518400
Saverio Cantoni
What defines space? And what defines agency? In his piece Organism 518400, Berlin-based artist Saverio Cantoni creates an environment that becomes activated by everything within it—visitors as well as inanimate objects, material or immaterial. Investigating what constitutes living matter, Cantoni suggests that a wireless network that invisibly delineates space can be considered a subject with agency. Cantoni’s room at the HKW will include unpredictable variations, inserted as tools to destabilize our perception of the ordinary and an invitation to explore the conflation of subject and object.
