source: ofluxonet
Since 2014, Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda have been operating together as an artist duo under the label Pakui Hardware. This name derives from Pakui, the extremely quick servant of the Hawaiian fertility goddess Haumea. Legend has it that the children of the goddess were all born from different parts of her body. The fertility symbolism of this myth, based on fragmentation and acceleration, and the term hardware raise the question as to how today’s world determined by technical and economic rationality might still be based on myths.

Pakui Hardware are particularly interested in the close relationship between technology and economy. At the center of their work is the question how this relationship changes our real, physical, and bodily worlds and thereby blurs the dividing line between the natural and the artificial worlds. “In all our projects, we test the real vs. the fake or the real vs. the more real—in a sense that we attempt to create a specific twist where this distinction is troubled.” (Pakui Hardware)

Vanilla Ice und Vanilla Eyes

The exhibition title indicates artificial organs, and contains a pun that highlights the interpenetration of the natural and the artificial, the real and the fictional. The production of artificial aromas like vanilla is not only a sign of scientific progress but also challenges us to reconsider our established notions of the natural and artificial, the given and the man-made. “Although the current inventions and products of synthetic biology mainly focus on more mundane things such as flavors and fragrances, the instrument for enhancing and, finally, tailoring human beings has been invented and released into action. From vanilla ice to vanilla eyes?” (Pakui Hardware)

The installation, jointly designed by architects Petras Isora and Ona Lozuraitytee and the two artists, creates a kind of laboratory full of allusions to the research and production of future organisms and life forms.
Transparent, ephemeral, and fluid materials oscillating between the organic and the synthetic determine the appearance of the installation. Nano sculptures emit futuristic laser beams, small ceramic asteroid-shaped objects are embraced by neon light tubes, creating an ambivalent artistic paradise. The room is divided by a transparent wall beneath which unnaturally blue water collects in Plexiglas containers. A hatch in the dividing wall stands for permeability and is a metaphor for the connection between real scenarios and visions of the future.

Transformations and moments of change are the recurring features of the work of Pakui Hardware. A typical example is the media transfer of found images from the Nasa Archives into relief-like sculptures.

The historical and contemporary points of reference for this work are found in the bio-tech thriller The Andromeda Strain (1971), in which dangerous extraterrestrial viruses are neutralized in underground chambers, and in current events like the US government’s Asteroid Acts, which permit private companies to conduct biomining using bacteria to extract raw materials on asteroids close to the Earth. The Asteroid Acts are a future scenario in the present that reveals the close links between the interests of capital and genetic biology. They mean that the Anthropocene will be exported as a universal print of human knowledge and action to extraterrestrial cosmic realms.

Pakui Hardware focus on already long existent and implemented systems and programs to design nature, with the aim of making their underlying mechanisms transparent. The works of this artist duo are not simply naively protesting against unstoppable developments but rather make us aware of matters that are concealed and hidden, uncanny and underestimated, internalized or repressed, wanting to keep us in touch with and responsible for reality.
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source: curamagazine
The exhibition title indicates artificial organs, and contains a pun that highlights the interpenetration of the natural and the artificial, the real and the fictional. The production of artificial aromas like vanilla is not only a sign of scientific progress but also challenges us to reconsider our established notions of the natural and artificial, the given and the man-made. “Although the current inventions and products of synthetic biology mainly focus on more mundane things such as flavors and fragrances, the instrument for enhancing and, finally, tailoring human beings has been invented and released into action. From vanilla ice to vanilla eyes?” (Pakui Hardware)

The installation, jointly designed by architects Petras Isora and Ona Lozuraitytee and the two artists, creates a kind of laboratory full of allusions to the research and production of future organisms and life forms.
Transparent, ephemeral, and fluid materials oscillating between the organic and the synthetic determine the appearance of the installation. Nano sculptures emit futuristic laser beams, small ceramic asteroid-shaped objects are embraced by neon light tubes, creating an ambivalent artistic paradise. The room is divided by a transparent wall beneath which unnaturally blue water collects in Plexiglas containers. A hatch in the dividing wall stands for permeability and is a metaphor for the connection between real scenarios and visions of the future.

Transformations and moments of change are the recurring features of the work of Pakui Hardware. A typical example is the media transfer of found images from the Nasa Archives into relief-like sculptures.

The historical and contemporary points of reference for this work are found in the bio-tech thriller The Andromeda Strain (1971), in which dangerous extraterrestrial viruses are neutralized in underground chambers, and in current events like the US government’s Asteroid Acts, which permit private companies to conduct biomining using bacteria to extract raw materials on asteroids close to the Earth. The Asteroid Acts are a future scenario in the present that reveals the close links between the interests of capital and genetic biology. They mean that the Anthropocene will be exported as a universal print of human knowledge and action to extraterrestrial cosmic realms.

Pakui Hardware focus on already long existent and implemented systems and programs to design nature, with the aim of making their underlying mechanisms transparent. The works of this artist duo are not simply naively protesting against unstoppable developments but rather make us aware of matters that are concealed and hidden, uncanny and underestimated, internalized or repressed, wanting to keep us in touch with and responsible for reality.
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source: mumokat
Since 2014, Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda have been operating together as an artist duo under the label Pakui Hardware. This name derives from Pakui, the extremely quick servant of the Hawaiian fertility goddess Haumea. Legend has it that the children of the goddess were all born from different parts of her body, while Pakui is known for being able to circle the Hawaiian island of Oahu six times in just one day. The fertility symbolism of this myth, based on fragmentation and acceleration, is Pakui Hardware’s point of reference for an exploration of a contemporary social dynamic of the body based on technological innovations. Every day on Wall Street endless rows of numbers flicker across the television and computer screens. They transform the flow of capital into purely virtual transactions, while mobile technologies in all fields of our lives are creating new high-tech sensations in record time. This is a reality shaped by virtualization and by dematerialized visions of the future, beneath which the two artists reveal the tangible uncanny and unpredictable effects.

In their first solo exhibition in a museum in Austria, Pakui Hardware transform the exhibition gallery into an incubator for still unknown (hybrid) beings of the future. This is all inspired by the 1970s science fiction film The Andromeda Strain, and by synthetic biology’s potential to create artificial organisms, leading to a scenario of possible new lifeforms and lifestyles.
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source: pakuihardwareorg

Pakui Hardware* is the name (coined by Alex Ross) for the collaborative artist duo Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda, which began in 2014. The title Pakui Hardware refers to Pakui – special attendant of Hawaiian Goddess of fertility, Haumea – who could circle Oahu island six times in a day. Thus Pakui Hardware is high-speed and brand politics as mythic semio- commodity as well as the desire to transcend the material limitations. Semio-Capital meets materiality.

The duo’s work spans around the relationship between materiality, technology, and economy. How technology is shaping current economy and the physical reality itself, including the human body. In relation to the velocity of technological development, the matter becomes both an obstacle and a vehicle. These questions are analyzed through such examples as High Frequency Trading, technological prosthesis and digital materiality.

Their solo shows include venues of kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, 321 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, NADA New York (represented by Galerija VARTAI, 2014). Other projects include Popcorn, Pepsi, Petabytes: Intro, Cage, New York, Now More Than Ever, Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2012), Anything is Always Nearby or Next to Something Else, Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2013). The artists have participated in group shows at Moderna Museet, Malmö, Sweden, CCS Bard / Hessel Museum of Art, New York (2014), and ar/ge Kunst Gallery Museum, Bolzano, Italy (2013). The artists are IASPIS grant holders in Sweden, fall of 2014.

Ugnius Gelguda is represented by Gallery VARTAI (Vilnius).

Neringa Cerniauskaite is an artist, curator, writer. She contributes texts for exhibitions’ catalogues and international magazines (Artforum, Flash Art, Parkett, ARTMargins.com, MAP, Mousse magazine). She is an editor of the web-based art magazine www.artnews.lt that was launched in 2008. She is a M.A. graduate, 2014, at Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies, NY.

Both artists are based in Vilnius and Brooklyn, New York.