The Golden Fog Collector
The Golden Fog Collector is a large-scale golden net that captures water from fog and returns it to the pond it hangs on, exploring the entanglement of material, technology, ecology, and history. Installed in a landscape that was once the cradle of humankind, which has been scarred by gold mining and is now facing water scarcity, the installation transforms a tool driven by extraction into a gesture of restoration.
The net reflects one of the earliest human technologies: an ancient tool that extended humanity’s capacity to catch, gather and carry, providing the roots of a later-inflamed anthropocentric technological evolution. The gold threads used in the installation are sourced from traditional European manufactories that recycle gold circulating within Europe, originally extracted from various parts of the world and used in gold-decorated objects. By returning this gold to South Africa and building an unusual relationship between water and gold, the work invites reflection on the politics and enduring consequences of value assigned to materiality.
Ebru Kurbak (TR/AT)
Ebru Kurbak is an artist born in Izmir, Turkey, and based in Vienna, Austria. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads her long-term arts-based research project The Museum of Lost Technology, awarded an Elise-Richter-PEEK Grant by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
Kurbak’s work critically explores the entanglements between art, technology, culture, and power. A major trajectory in her practice investigates the historical, social, and spatial segregation of knowledges under colonial modernity, engaging particularly with the largely undervalued string- and fiber-based technologies rooted in women’s, Indigenous, nomadic, and prehistoric cultures.
Kurbak has held residencies at leading art and art-and-technology institutions including La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris, FR); V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (Rotterdam, NL); LABoral Cultural Center (Gijón, ES); NIROX (Krugersdorp, ZA); 18th Street Arts Center (Los Angeles, US); and EYEBEAM (New York, US). Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, AT), ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE), SIGGRAPH (US), Microwave Festival (Hong Kong, HK), Istanbul Design Biennial (Istanbul, TR), Piksel Festival (Bergen, NO), and MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Vienna (Vienna, AT), among others. Kurbak received the LACMA Art + Technology Grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2019.