Celeste Perret ~ toilet is the techno project

Celeste Perret's "toilet is the techno project" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 2, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.

Here you will find the documentation of Celeste Perret's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

toilet is the techno project

Celeste Perret's question: What are the clogs of "our" complot ?

Celeste's introduction: In this menacing era, all that gets silenced, expressed, out of breath. Lisssssten, but listen: it is important to speak. With or without, computers scripts are always operating even into bellies, to regulate flows of feelings. I am bloated of gassy conspiracies, of waining the political into bureaucratic policies. That said, here is a coordinate on the edge of a land line. I blink three times scrolling through letters of condolences. These twenty minutes are yet to be written. How may I contribute if I don’t have a ground to start from?

Bethany's report: The stage is set with bean bags, circular cushions, an electronic sound machine, and microphones, creating a welcoming, communal space. The performance begins with an Italian voice speaking over a layered soundscape of static, fragments of radio stations, snippets of news, pop music, and old political speeches. The performer emerges from the audience, holding a small handheld radio that continues to produce the fragmented soundscape. They step onto the stage, remove their shoes, and begin to speak, their words appearing as live subtitles projected on a screen behind them. The performer invites second-year students onto the stage to join them. As the students move past the electronic sound machine, it activates, adding new tones and textures to the already layered soundscape. The students sit in a circle on the cushions and bean bags

The performer begins reading letters they’ve written, moving around the circle and sitting alongside their peers. The letters reflect on their experiences whilst at the DAI, addressing themes of identity, connection, and learning. One letter, addressed to their "mother tongue," expresses a longing for a language they cannot fully access. Another speaks to distant relatives, comrades, and sisters, emphasizing the importance of agency in storytelling:

"If we don’t become the co-writers of our own stories, they will be written for us."

As the performer moves closer to the electronic machine, the pitch of the sound increases, creating an urgent tone that indicates increased proximity. This interplay of sound and movement highlights the complexities of communication—what gets said, what gets lost, and how proximity changes the resonance of what we hear and feel.

The handheld radio remains central, tuning into different stations, blending static with fragments of sound. Eventually, the performer finds an Italian song on a station which fills the space as they place the microphone near the radio. The live subtitles translate the song’s lyrics, allowing the audience to experience the shifting relationship between affect, communication, meaning and translation.

The performance grows increasingly reflective, drawing on words inspired by Audre Lorde to address their “sisters and resistors.” The performer acknowledges the freedom to speak and the courage they’ve drawn from the solidarity of their peers and mentors. The soundscape intensifies as static and resonance overlap with music and speech, creating a layered, almost tactile experience of communication and connection. The performance ends as a poignant meditation on shared and personal histories. It highlights the beauty of immediacy, the necessity of embracing difference, and the courage to navigate the static that often obscures connection. The performance unfolds as an intimate reflection on the performer’s time at the DAI, celebrating the relationships they built and the lessons they learned. It’s a love letter to communication, proximity, and the shared process of learning.

Inti Guerrero:  Inti described the performance as a touching and reflective start to the day, praising its format and the playful, intelligent way it engaged with technology. They noted the growing interest among artists in working with machine learning and AI but appreciated how this piece demonstrated that technology doesn't need to be deeply embedded in such advanced systems to be impactful. By incorporating transcription, radios, and other simple tools, the performance created a deeply bodily and tactile experience, blending technology with physicality in meaningful ways.

The work reminded Inti of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark and her therapeutic practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly her use of light therapy and group therapy as forms of healing during her time in exile for "un-American" ideology. These connections underscored for Inti the personal and political dimensions of the performance, as well as its resonance with historical practices of resistance and creativity.

Inti also referenced another Brazilian artist whose Tower of Babel project used radios tuned to international frequencies, compiling domestic videos and aligning each with a different global station. This reminded them of the performance’s use of radio frequencies to bridge geographies, cultures, and temporalities. Both works, in their own ways, explore the airways as a space for cultural and intellectual exchange, evoking what Inti referred to as "colonial cannibalism as cultural reappropriation."

The thread imagery in the performance also sparked connections to participatory works, where a single thread might be passed through the mouths of participants to symbolize connection and shared experiences. Inti reflected on how this tactile and symbolic gesture paralleled the radio’s role in the performance, where frequencies became threads connecting disparate voices and places.

Antonia Majaca: Antonia began her response by expressing her gratitude for the performance, describing it as a fantastic way to start the day. She appreciated how it set the stage not just physically but emotionally and collectively, creating a shared experience for the audience to reflect upon together. For her, it established a foundation for deeper engagement.

She reflected on how the performance addressed the intersection of politics and bureaucracy, highlighting how political meaning often disappears within bureaucratic processes. This led her to consider the limits of communication and the forms of gathering, particularly in moments of solidarity. Antonia emphasized how precious these moments are, noting that they require active encouragement and openness among individuals. However, she acknowledged that this is not always easy—accepting differences can be uncomfortable, as people are conditioned to resist difference rather than embrace it.

Antonia praised the performance’s invitation to support others on stage, describing it as more than choreography. She saw it as a physical intervention in space, embodying the power of coming together while maintaining what she called a “positive dissociation.” This, for her, reflected the paradoxical ability to remain connected while also holding onto individual differences—a balance that is both difficult and vital.

The use of letters as a central narrative form stood out to Antonia. She noted the deep historical significance of letter-writing in leftist organizing, particularly within anarchist traditions. The phrase "in solidarity," so often used in this context, resonated with her, as it invokes a shared commitment that is universal in its particularity. Coming from an anarchist background herself, Antonia reflected on the challenges and meanings of such salutations, which aim to unify while honoring individuality.

She was reminded of Nicolai’s 2006 project Yours in Solidarity, which explored the connections between revolutionary movements and their personal correspondence. Antonia saw parallels between this and the performance, both in the format and its potential for fostering long-term engagement. She found the blending of the personal and the political in this format uniquely powerful, tying individual experiences to collective action and reflection. 

Ramon Amaro: Ramon began his response with gratitude, thanking the performer for waking him up with such an engaging and thought-provoking start to the day. He framed his reflection as an exercise in "twisting the plot archetype," asking the audience to close their eyes and imagine replacing the word "thinking" with "solidarity." He then touched on themes of biotech control, critical solidarity, and the mechanics of algorithmic capital, referencing Audre Lorde and reading excerpts from Luciana Parisi and Denise Ferreira da Silva to introduce an alternative techno-perspective.

For Ramon, the performance beautifully reconfigured relationships, prioritizing human connections alongside relationships with machines. He noted the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion, observing how human-to-human relationships can be altered and reimagined, yet algorithmic processes often remain outside the realm of direct influence. He referenced Parisi and Ferreira’s argument for "setting the technical object free," but not in the sense of tech libertarianism. Instead, Ramon emphasized using technology to develop new languages of solidarity—creative approaches that resist purely logical frameworks.

He drew a compelling parallel to Frantz Fanon’s work with radio during the Algerian War. When France used radio to pump propaganda into Algeria, the resistance’s first impulse was to turn the radios off, disengaging from the tool entirely. Fanon urged them to rethink this approach, seeing the radio not as inherently oppressive but as an object that could be repurposed. By amplifying their own transmissions and sending signals back to France, the resistance reclaimed the tool for their own narratives. For Ramon, this example resonated deeply with the potential of technology in solidarity-building: the tools themselves are not bound to their original purposes—they can be reconfigured.

Ramon challenged the notion that technology, like the algorithm, is solely a product of Western creation. Just as language evolves and can transform relationships, so too can technological objects be used to reshape our connections. He encouraged the audience to consider how these tools can help us imagine new phases of solidarity, moving beyond the restrictive logics that dominate contemporary discourse.

 AEROPONIC ACTS 2024 ~ Chameleon Orbit