OBJECT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE 

Mixed media. 2017 

Max Mesiats’ Object of Cultural Heritage #5438 is a "total installation" that positions the artist as a media archaeologist operating between the digital past and the physical future. The centerpiece is a field tent, staged as if recently abandoned by a researcher: notes are scattered, coffee sits unfinished, and a computer relentlessly broadcasts data.

The project excavates the ruins of 123Dcatch.com, a defunct social network where users once uploaded 3D scans of their personal lives to seek validation in the form of "likes." Mesiats extracts artifacts from this digital graveyard based on a binary of popularity: the top 25 most "liked" objects (such as a Montmartre croissant or the meme-sculpture "Homunculus Loxodontus") and the top 25 most ignored, invisible objects.

During the exhibition, a 3D printer works continuously, manifesting these digital ghosts into physical form using degradable plastic. By synthesizing the "rotting burger" of Manhattan back alleys with the Great Pyramid of Giza, the artist collapses time. He explores the socio-cultural landscape of the recent internet age while simultaneously inhabiting a future where these plastic casts are the only remaining evidence of our civilization. The viewer is left to question what truly endures: the biodegradable plastic artifact, the digital file, or the sand from the installation floor that they carry home in their shoes.