About

Raquel Meyers

Raquel Meyers is a self-taught Spanish artist who is now based in Sweden. Her thing: creating animations on the Commodore 64, the cult 80s home computer. She can literally spend hours on end typing the animations pixel by pixel, which she will then use in her performances. In her KYBDslöjd protocol, there is no such thing as CTRL-Z, meaning that corrections aren't an option. Any unintended strike will force you to start all over again. Her aesthetic is pixellated, filled with quirky characters and psychedelic colours. The 8-bit architecture goes beyond the simple vintage appeal of old video games by bringing to life an alienated and unsettling reality. To Raquel Meyers, old technologies are not "dead media" from the past that are being reanimated to serve self-centred monologues. She sees them like a tool that she uses to challenge herself. Many festivals and cultural centres have hosted her work, among which Transmediale, Fylkingen, Piksel, Mapping, La Casa encendida and Cimatics, Liste Art Fair Basel, Ars Electronica Centre, Alingsås Konsthall, Bonniers Konsthall, Xpo Gallery, Click New Media Arts Festival, Alt_Cph, BEK- Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, LABoral, as well as iMAL.

Medias

The conference

KYBDslöjd. Type In Beyond the Scrolling Horizon

Raquel Meyers’ aesthetic is akin to the brutalist movement in architecture. Here, technology and the series of keystrokes tell a simple story where text is used unadorned and roughcast like concrete. Brutalism is often associated to dystopia, and yet KYBDslöjd evokes an object of nostalgia through the constant repetition of its creative process. The artist subtly hints at concepts of our times: consumption and the obsolescence of hardware and software.

Medias