BetaBunker
An ongoing joint project by Agnès Villette and Grégoire Dupond.
VR visualizations design, software, coding and projection by Grégoire Dupond.
In an age of atomised knowledge, miniature hardware and exponential data, caves and bunkers become new refuges for machines, robots and computers to process information. Sweden inherited a lot of nuclear bunkers from the Cold War, such as the one we visited a few months ago, lost in the middle of farm lands and lakes. Hidden under a granite mountain, XXXX (we cannot disclose the name for security reasons) is one of the biggest data centre in Sweden. The secluded location and the cold climate offer a perfect setting against physical intrusion and cyber attacks. In an uncanny backward move to our ancestral modes of living, caves and bunkers are becoming centres of power, hidden away from control. The cave is transforming itself into a tactical zone hidding information and processing data, away from states. In a retrofuturist time loop, the military nuclear architecture recycles itself into new purposes.
Hollow Chambers: 5 to 10 of March 2019
Hustle:Beta Bunker Installation in Group Exhibition, Science Gallery, Detroit Science Museum, 16th of June – 26th of August 2018
Going Underground:Beta Bunker and the military monolith, Conference : Going Underground: Design, Reputation, and Disorder in the Subterranean Infrastructure of the Global City, Birkbeck College, London, 18th of May 2018
