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Annie Åkerman

Walls divide space into four separate chambers, which are also entwined. They are built to contain, but also to let things through. Peep-holes, mouths, and openings are conduits or arteries that manage the circulation of flows, and just like in a sewer there are both fluids and debris in rotation. Some of these permeable structures lay bare the movements of power and information. Others show what is supposedly forged on the inside.  

A succession of transformations take place in these rooms. Each section is assigned a particular task that helps promiscuous matter change its form and appearance. This has similarities to a machine, or perhaps a vehicle. If the template is read as a diagram, the innards of cattle can be used as a cipher for how much the system can stomach. Ideas worth regurgitating and a framework big enough to host them. Maybe this is not so different from a technical blueprint, or stage directions in a play. And once inside the bowels, other sketches depict operations that can be performed with an increased focus on efficiency. Attention is placed on infrastructures that condition absorption, and devices that enable you to swallow the world at the highest possible speed. Things, words and junk travel back and forth between the entrance and the four abdomens. Literal ruminations overlap with figurative ones. Partially digested thoughts return in repetitive cycles, before giving in to corrosive juices that undermine the solidity of both language and objects. 

The cud is chewed pensively over and over, along with the question of what it is like to be stuck on the inside as this happens. The slow simmer of units breaking down into smaller chunks results in some sort of osmosis. And somewhere between the dissolving script and the engineered guts of animals there are doubts about who is being instrumentalized, and where the energy really comes from.  

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