Artist Statement: Mark Lumsden
June 2026
My work is an analysis of my experience working in IT infrastructure for nearly 30 years. I use the objects and experiences that are part of what it is to live and work in the field of IT infrastructure as a conduit for critiquing the visible and invisible interactions of data and data processes which exist in all facets of our lives today. The digital technology which affects how we work, how we do 'leisure' and of course how we do art, has increasingly penetrated into every corner of our experience and for that reason, its effect would seem be have a persuasive directional power over aspirations and behaviours and is worth monitoring.
IT infrastructure is an enabling force for capitalistic global resource organisation and utilisation and the direction it takes us manifests in what we value and what we do. Importantly for systems within this system (of which art is one) there would seem to be little or no way to escape the event horizon of its grasp. Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer recognise this and their work is influential what I do. I use ready-made objects, diagrams and assemblages to subvert Information Technology's place in our daily lives, from physical objects to random questions that appear in websites while browsing them, I attempt to transistion the viewer into being aware of a relationship of what may seem like hidden things (cables, data centres, wifi signals), but what in effect have a direct influence on their lives by being part of the larger technological wave of control.
IT infrastracture is somewhat like a national energy systems, or a water utility distribution system, it is largely hidden from view. Some of its appendages do appear from time to time, for example you may see an odd cable or wireless access point in a corner of a room but the vast majority of it is hidden. Data centres for example may be unmarked buildings in the centre of a city or hidden in a valley in the countryside. However, its effect is unlike any other (hidden) utility system. IT infrastructure's power is in giving and receiving information. The information it can give and receive can damage us. Read about Carole Cadwalladr's investigations in to various tech companies abuses of selective advertising or data snooping. An interesting question that perplexes me is how much is IT infrastructure responsible for our age of post-truth politics?
A writer who exposes infrastructures relationship with art and capitalism is Marina Vishmidt. See the essay "Between Not Everything and Not Nothing: Cuts Towards Infrastructural Critique", 2017, Sternberg Press (https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/23935/). Also Jonathan Crary's books '24/7' and 'Scorched Earth' are a good read and are extensively critical of such subjects.