The Phone Hammer, non-reversible stop to obsession

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Can the sometimes catastrophic ‘unboxing’ of new technological products be considered ‘luddism’? Actually, it’s the opposite, as we can see in endless YouTube videos. Still the accidental destruction of an expensive smartphone generates chilling reactions in the audience, who are emotionally attached to their own devices. As a direct response to what conceptually lies behind this, Garnet Hertz has customised a series of small ‘emergency’ hammers labelled as ‘The Phone Hammer’ with an integrated cable cutter, which have been freely distributed as a limited edition to the audience. In the explanatory video he performs the destruction of a smartphone through it, embodying the seemingly natural aesthetics of surreal YouTube videos, together with the political argument: the need for a deliberate and non-reversible physical break in connection with our virtual world.

 

Garnet Hertz – The Phone Hammer