Post Snowden Nails

2016
nailart, with Nadja Buttendorf
Five micro SD cards glued to finger nails, total capacity 128 GB, curated digital content

Post Snowden Nails is a project I did with Nadja Buttendorf who invited me to her nail art program Nadjas Nail Art Residency. All pictures & more info at her residency-page.

Aram Bartholl
2016

Five micro SD cards glued to finger nails, total capacity 128 GB, curated digital content

Post-Snowden Nails is a set of five micro SDcards glued to the finger nails of one hand. Each card contains a different set of data which can be accessed with the help of a SD-card-USB adapter. The data finger nail plugs directly into a computer USB port (or phone), in some cases an extension cable might be useful.
Thumb: Live Linux OS. A full operating system on a thumb nail. This is a real thumb drive! 2 GB.
Index: 6000 books of Henry Warwicks offline Library “Alexandria Project”, also see “The radical Tactics of the Offline Library“, 32 GB.
Middle: A collection of more than 66.000 computer viruses from the virus archive collective VX Heaven, 7 GB.
Ring: The full data base of deaddrops.com. All Dead Drops which have been made since 2010 and the content of the the five original Dead Drops which were exhibited at the MoMA in 2011, 6.5 GB.
Pinky: The full english Wikipedia including the offline reader Kiwix to browse some of the 5 million articles offline. 62 GB.
Press: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/usb-manicure-data-nail-art-fingertips

Exhibitions:

  • The Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2018
  • The Principle of Hope, Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, 2021

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