Seminar: Maria Roszkowska

“Artisanal Electronics: Digital Repair Cultures” was a mini-conference we held at July 6.

To finish off the designer Maria Roszkowska (disnovation, Paris) presented a project called Shanzhai Archeology – a collection of original phones from the technological interbreeding Made in China. This project casts a critical look at the production of technology through an artistic interpretation of a recent historical fact, still poorly known: the shanzhai. Often presented as mere counterfeits of low quality, these objects nevertheless draw many unusual technological trajectories that make them the revealers of technological possibilities literally out of European standards. As odd-looking hybrids, these puzzling artefacts question a hyper-normalised western technological imaginary.