The Internets

Bytes, bodies and atoms relocate incessantly in hybrid space, combining into ever-new configurations of the reality that contemporary human beings inhabit through being plugged into their terminals. But sometimes the battery goes flat, or for whatever reason one must go offline, leaving the internet behind. Then, just as in The Matrix, Morpheus arrives with the greeting: ‘Welcome to the desert of the real.’

Szymon Rogiński has adopted the role of Morpheus to perfection. His photographs in the series The Internets reveal the Real in hybrid space. The shots taken in smaller and bigger towns are unique in their repeatability. Which, in turn, reveals the actual consequences of the hybridisation of space away from the flash ‘selfie points’, yet close to the experience of the contemporary digitariat, who—with their tireless hard slog at all the stores that sport the sign ‘Computers’, where software and hardware can be bought or serviced—have been keeping digital civilisation alive. What a glorious effort that is!

Edwin Bendyk, The Morphology of Hybrid Space

The Internets, 2019
Publisher: National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning ( niaiu.pl )
Texts: Edwin Bendyk, Monika Kostera, Bolesław Stelmach
Graphic design: Noviki Post Studio ( noviki.net )
Managing editor: Karolina Andrzejewska-Batko
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Print run: 300 copies (400 PL)
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The prototype for this publication was Szymon Rogiński’s artist’s book The Internets, produced in a run of 5 copies for the exhibition Things to Learn from Facebook, organised by the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok at the Giorgi Leonidze State Museum of Georgian Literature as part of the 3rd Tbilisi International Triennial in 2018. This full edition includes additional photographs and texts.

Available at Bęc Zmiana sklep.beczmiana.pl/pl/p/The-Internets/5104