Research-based art project that reflects on the notion of techonological recycling, as well as its economic and environmental impacts in the Global South, particularly in Mexico. Conceptually, the project investigates the articulation between labor, extraction and materiality, and is situated at the intersection between the economic, political and historical. 
 
Electronic scrap becomes a testimony not only of industrial practices and consumption habits, but of a complex history where the origin of the material, its application within the technological field, its rejection and possible recovery, are always surrounded by conflict and struggles to extract values. 
 
The title refers to a traditional Mexican song from colonial times, used by Franciscan monks to homogenize Catholic and indigenous rituals. The lyrics refer to the preference of fruit over gold and silver, a strategy to divert the attention of the population.  
 
The artistic proposal consists of an installation composed of the technological remains, resulting from the participatory process of dismantling keyboards carried out at the Santa Monica arts center, and a coin commemorating the colonial extraction in Mexico, made from the silver recovered in this action of dismantling, and the result of research carried out by the artists.

Links of interest: 

https://tresartcollective.com/ 

https://medialabmx.org/ 

www.koniclab.info 

www.ecoss.barcelona 

Map of mining extraction in Mexico (2006-2020):

https://medialabmx.org/noQuieroOroNiQuieroPlata/ 

TRES (ilana boltvinik + rodrigo viñas) + Medialabmx (Leonardo Aranda Brito) / No quiero oro, ni quiero plata… lo que quiero es el quinto irreal.

Collaboration: Solidança (Catalonia),

Extraction of the silver: Faculty of Chemical Sciences of the Universidad Veracruzana (Mexico)

Production: Kòniclab / ECOSS

Video: No quiero oro, ni quiero plata

Camera: Ollin Yahveh Miranda

Camera and editing: León Boltvinik

Score: Galo González

Video workshop keyboard disassembly: Sonsoles Miguel

Acknowledgements: Andrea Badia, Azahara Cerezo, Mar Merino, Eva Romero, Chistina Schultz, Gerard Valls (Video-Action keyboard disassembly), Blanca Callén (Restarters BCN), Anna Ferrer (Barcelona + Sostenible), Banc de Recursos, Millor que nou!, Andròmines (diffusió disassembly of keyboards)

TRES (ilanaboltvinik and rodrigo viñas, Mexico City) is an artistic research collective founded in 2009 that has focused on exploring the implications of public space and garbage through artistic practices, centered on methodological intertwining and dialogue with science, anthropology and archeology. They explore in the waste its capacity to store material, economic and symbolic information that at the same time functions to elaborate an individual or collective portrait of society.  
 
Medialabmx (Leonardo Aranda) is a civil association and autonomous space, based in Mexico City, dedicated to the investigation of the links between art, technology and politics. Founded in 2013, Medialabmx works with different expressions of electronic media and artisanal technology, for the development of artistic and pedagogical projects that seek to question the tools, forms of organization and discourses that define the current technological landscape.  

The Kòniclab platform, formed by Rosa Sánchez and Alan Baumann, does research and artistic experimentation linked to technology, with applicability in interactive stage projects and intermediate and interactive installations. One of its activity programs is ECOSS, a project that articulates singular events, with the objective of promoting innovation in digital and interdisciplinary art from a critical, environmental and gender perspective. His company Kónic Thtr is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the use and incorporation of interactive technology in creative projects.