When Neringa Černiauskaitéėand Ugnius Gelguda founded Pakui Hardware in 2014, the bodyincreasingly began to be experienced a post-natural, porous interface. A malleable entity,it revealed itself perpetually reshaped by an interplay of personal transformations,interpersonal relations and structural power mechanisms. Attuned to philosophies such as newmaterialism, bio-capitalism and necropolitics as well as closely connected to scientific andtechnological research, their sculptural installations have since then introduced the viewerto ecosystems that intensify emerging sensorial patterns by abstracting the shapes thatusually convey them.Drawing on their recent exploration of prosthetic bodies through digitalization andquantification of health, Pakui Hardware’s first personal exhibition at carlier | gebauer,Berlin opens a new chapter in their research. With Absent Touch, the duo focuses on therecent rise of remote-health-care technologies and services, a phenomenon also known as“virtual care” that encompasses telemedicine, telehealth and robotic surgery.While the environment at the gallery brings to mind various hospital spaces, merging asurgical unit with a waiting room, the interaction between the works, as well as thecontrasting materials used for each, introduces a more ambiguous tone. Placed under surgicallamps and on operating tables, fragile objects combine stainless steel elements withtranslucent, rounded glass shapes and delicate, billowy fabric drapings while on the walls,a series of photograph brings forth certain details of the sculptures, delineating possiblemodes of contact, negotiation and tension.Echoing researcher Jeannette Pols for whom there is no “cold” technology and “warm” body,Pakui Hardware delineates “a lingering moment between actual and virtual bodies” whilerefusing to adopt a black and white view on technology. Of this, virtual care is a tellingexample. A short-term remedy to the limitations of accessible healthcare, it also risesa looming threat of personal data being gathered by big corporation. A way of easing theawkwardness sometime arise through an in-person exchange, it however leads in many othercases to a sense of neglect.Absent Touch leaves questions unanswered and Gordian knots entangled. Here, presence isreduced to traces, shells and imprints; while feelings are fleeting, muted and withheld.As we roam through the exhibition space, careful not to shatter a precarious stasis, weconstantly feel as a threat. Slowly, we grow accustomed to the experience of a space wheremotion precedes cognition and adjustment knowledge, one that mirrors the ethical complexityof a potential yet already nearing future.
