Lungs: Slave Labour
Lungs: Slave Labour, by YoHa, is an art installation based on the prisoners the Nazi party used in a munitions factory during World War II. The art piece uses the biometric data collected by the Nazis on the prisoners to calculate their lung capacity and simulate the sound of their breathing. Ironically, the munitions factory the prisoners were forced to work in is now an art gallery and was the first space this piece exhibited in 2005. YoHa, the artist group, is led by Matsuko Yokokoji and Graham Harwood. The group focuses on technical objects and trying to understand complex technical topics. Currently, the piece is on exhibition with The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics in the Vicki Myhren Gallery in Denver, Colorado.
Initially installed in 2005, the piece was quickly acquired by a larger collection and began traveling with a group of similarly themed artworks. Over the last fifteen years, the piece has had the opportunity to morph with each exhibition. In each show, there is an old computer in the middle of a simplistic desk with speakers on either side of the desk. In front of the desk is a chair for the viewer to sit in while they appreciate the piece. As well, a light source is involved in the installation, either mounted from the ceiling or a simple desk lamp depending on the exhibition. The installation has a simple industrial desk with speakers on either side and an in some instances, an additional large speaker below the desk. In the Vicki Myhren gallery exhibition, the desk is a rugged wooden desk, and there is only one speaker on either side of the desk. Unlike the original exhibition, there is no computer or additional speaker beneath the desk in the current show.
In the first installation, the speakers on either side of the desk were two stacked rectangle desktop speakers. As well, there was one below the desk that was about a square foot, so it would be able to displace more air and project further. Despite the computer monitor being older, the audio equipment was up to date. Similar to the speakers, the computer used was a MacPro desktop that was beneath the desk on the left side. The computer needs to compute the lung capacity of an individual based on World War II-era data and display its computation on the monitor. The monitor displays the data in real-time and demonstrates what the computer is doing visually. At the top of the monitor is a static header that has the title of the piece, and below it is the individual’s data. Displaying date of birth, the date they were entered into the database, an end date, work location, gender, where they came from, place of birth, height, age, and calculation of breath. Interestingly YoHa added a name at the top; however, the data set provided to them by the government was anonymous. YoHa added the name to make the piece more relatable to the viewer. Using the data, the computer estimates the sound of that individual breathing and outputs it through the speakers. A digital breath can be heard via the speakers with a slightly retro vibe to it. Viewers of the original installation could feel the sound wave as opposed to just listening to it, and in a piece as impactful as this, it is important to feel.
https://zkm.de/en/artwork/lungs-slave-labour
The data set used by the computer contains 4,500 forced workers who worked in Hall A of the Deutschen Waffen und Munitionsfabriken A.G. during World War II. Deutschen Waffen und Munitionsfabriken A.G. was a German arms company that produced weapons and ammunitions dating before World War I. The company produced historical weapons such as the Luger pistol. Although the company committed other atrocities and had an estimated total forced workforce of 57,000, Hall A and it’s 4,500 forced laborers are the focus of Lungs because the first installation of the piece was in Hall A. YoHa’s piece recognizes the atrocity and brings to light one of the many awful things that occurred during the war. Today the building has the ZKM Center for Art and Media, the University of Arts and Design, and the Karlsruhe Municipal Gallery. Lungs was on display at the ZKM from March 20th to October 3rd, 2005.
YoHa focuses on the technical side of their work and makes sure to add great detail to their pieces. Particularly with Lungs YoHa focused heavily on the data of the prisoners because, without useful data, the audio of breathing would have been less valuable. Fortunately, the artist was able to find archived data kept by Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, a german government body, who provided a 57,000 individual anonymous data set of forced laborers. Originally the Nazi party was using IBM supplied computers to assist in their operations. Graham Harwood has an interest in computers and computing. He was fascinated by the American inventor Herman Hollerith’s electromechanical punch-card machines, which was the technology that IBM was using at the time and thus the technology the Nazi party used to document their acts. Harwood found that even current-day computers are impressive and terrifying in the ability to capture data, calling it “a beautiful monster” (NET). With the good data collection the Nazis had done, YoHa was able to display meaningful and in-depth data on each laborer. This level of data collection is one of the features that makes experiencing Lungs very impactful.
As the installation processes an individual’s data, it outputs their estimated lung capacity in such a way that displaces an equivalent volume of air. YoHa’s software is designed to not only display the information on the laborers but also forcibly project the individual onto the viewer. That is why the original installation had a significant amount of speakers. YoHa intended to bring reality into the face of the viewer, quite literally. Unfortunately, many horrific acts were committed in World War II, and most people prefer to forget the wrongdoings. Topics like slavery are ones that current societies would rather move on from because their heritage and ancestors’ actions are not ones they could control or are responsible for. Displaying this installation in the very place that the atrocity occurred brings back the reality of what happened. Viewers of the ZKM installation are directly confronted with the actions of the builders of the very building they were sitting in.
Endless War installation shot #3, at Kunsthal Arrhus. Photo: Arrhus, 2013.
“It’s too much; it’s impossible to read it all or get the full overview of all the revelations. But the impact all over the world is enormous.”
Similar to Lungs, Endless War, which was a collaboration between YoHa and Matthew Fuller, was an installation that exhibited in 2011. The focus of the piece is the ongoing war in the middle east, but more specifically, data associated with the conflict. The artist used data from the 2010 WikiLeaks dump titled the Afgan War Diary. The data has over 91,000 reports between 2004 and 2011 on the conflict. The diary was compiled and maintained by the US Department of Defense. Similar to the Lungs piece, YoHa used a computer to display the bits of the data collected, but because of the sheer quantity, YoHa elected to use multiple projectors and cover a wall with data from the report. The founder of WikiLeaks said himself, “it’s too much; it’s impossible to read it all or get the full overview of all the revelations. But the impact all over the world is enormous” (Endless War). Endless War is the modern-day Lungs, more complicated and messier. In 2010, YoHa did the Database Documentry, which is based on using the massive amounts of medical data that doctors collect. With the data, YoHa thinks incorporating art into a traditionally quantitative process could have the potential to connect with the patient in a more meaningful and efficient way. YoHa’s work has a common theme of social activism and analyzing technical components like data that most artists would not focus on. Their pieces like Lungs, Endless War, and the Database Documentry work to better the public while also talking about unpopular issues.
“Each piece of data is a person in some way or some piece of a person”
While discussing Lungs, Kara Swisher, chief editor and founder of Recode, said, “each piece of data is a person in some way or some piece of a person” (Johnson). Ultimately the point YoHa wants the viewer to walk away with is that. Impressing on the viewer with a hard-hitting topic like slavery, coupled with the Nazi party, can grab attention. The projection of individuals and the physical representation in the air moving due to the breaths of the laborers is heart-wrenching. The take away from Lungs is not any single breath, not the atrocity that was committed or IBM’s actions, but that the data on the screen with an age, weight, and height is someone. That is a real person. That data, although based on them, does not fairly represent that individual, their emotions, their actions, their consciousness. YoHa does an incredible job bringing to light this issue of demoralizing data by each simulated breath his computer speaker outputs.
Reference List
“Database Documentry,” 2010. http://yoha.co.uk/database_documentary.
“Endless War - YoHa with Matthew Fuller,” 2011. http://yoha.co.uk/endless.
Ihls, Julia. “Graham Harwood: Lungs: Slave Labour: 2005.” ZKM, 2005. https://zkm.de/en/artwork/lungs-slave-labour.
Johnson, Eric. “How Do You Preserve Art When It Was Made for People Using Netscape Navigator on Windows 98?” Vox, February 25, 2019. https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2019/2/25/18236624/net-art-rhizome-michael-connor-new-museum-art-happens-here-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast.
“Lungs.” NET ART ANTHOLOGY: Lungs, n.d. https://anthology.rhizome.org/lungs.
“Lungs,” March 20, 2005. http://yoha.co.uk/lungs.
