Output details

PARASITE

Parasite is a 10 screen audio-visual installation produced in response to malaria. Data drawn from patients is used to power software that corrodes fragments of archival documentary footage of malaria derived from 'eradication' campaigns in Europe and America in the early/mid 20th century. The intention is to evoke awareness of the cyclical, recursive elements of a disease that is inherently connected to issues of economic disparity, global politics, as well as scientific issues of drug resistance and vaccine development.

Parasite was developed following a residency with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute where Robinson built a collaboration with scientists on the Malaria Programme. Historical research was carried out at the Wellcome Trust library and film archives, and the Imperial War Museum. Knowledge of varied disciplinary perspectives was facilitated by a Bright Ideas residency at the UK Genomics Forum, Edinburgh, where Robinson met with specialists from medical history, malaria fieldwork, bioinformatics, technology and medical anthropology. Artist David Strang undertook the commission to write the software ‘parasite’ and worked together with Robinson on the sound composition that was created using mosquito recordings from the insectary at Sanger Institute.

The methodological approach is premised on chance led interactions between science and history: it draws on and develops concepts, especially those around topologies, advanced by philosopher of science Michel Serres; it also references contemporary thinking around the notion of assemblage (Foucault and Deleuze). Within the artwork interplay between control and non-control become increasingly evident as the affects of non-human agency – a software ‘parasite’ – manifest visually. The artwork employs a process that, to some extent, parallels disease processes in the biological world.