Pulse Agglomerate is a biometric memorial performance in which one hundred light bulbs flicker to the rhythm of the heartbeats of Donetsk residents, recorded in 2013 at the Izolyatsia cultural centre.
These heartbeats were first recorded within Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s installation Pulse Room at the Izolyatsia cultural centre in Donetsk. Visitors placed their hands on cylindrical sensors; their pulse was recorded and transmitted to the nearest light bulb, which began to flash in time with their heartbeat. Each new recording pushed the previous ones along the grid, creating a living, ever-changing archive of human presence.
In 2014, shortly before Russia’s invasion of the Donetsk Region and the subsequent transformation of the centre into a torture chamber, the computer containing these recordings was returned to the artist. Now, these heartbeats will pulse once more during a memorial procession performed by Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City) is a Mexican-Canadian media artist known for large-scale interactive installations at the intersection of architecture, performance and technology. His “anti-monuments” require audience participation — often collecting biometric data such as fingerprints or heartbeats — to create dynamic collective images. He was the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and has received two BAFTA Awards for interactive art, the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. His works are held in the collections of MoMA, Tate and SFMOMA.
Maria Kulikovska (b. 1988, Kerch, Crimea, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian multimedia and performance artist, architect, researcher and lecturer. She has been forced to flee twice: first from Crimea in 2014 following Russia’s annexation, and then from Kyiv in March 2022 following the full-scale invasion. Her work explores the vulnerability of the body in the face of war, power and borders, opening up space for feminist and queer discourse. In 2012, in Donetsk, she created Homo Bulla for the IZOLYATSIA Foundation — three transparent soap sculptures cast from her body that were intended to gradually dissolve into the ground, becoming one of the foundation’s most recognisable symbols. These sculptures, together with the work Army of Clones, were later used by Russian occupiers for target practice. She is the founder of Flowers of Democracy (2015), co-founder of the School of Political Performance (2017), and initiator of GARAGE33 in Kyiv (2019). Her work has been exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery (London), the Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), the Albertina Modern (Vienna) and the Ludvig Museum (Budapest).
The performance is presented by the Izolyatsia Foundation (Kyiv) in collaboration with Atelier Lozano-Hemmer (Montreal), Max Estrella Gallery (Madrid) and bitforms gallery (New York) as part of the Zero 10 digital art exhibition at Art Basel.