FELICITY HAMMOND

Autonomous Body

Autonomous Body aims to make new connections between the history and future of car manufacturing and the extractive processes that enable it. The work explores how both the tangible and intangible processes of car production are globally networked, from mine to machine. Felicity Hammond’s project interrogates the processes that bind data mining and geological mining, using staged photography, collage and AI to understand how digital photographic images are propelled from mineral to pixel, from the subsurface to the screen. Starting from this inquiry, the artist focuses on the highly specific area of car manufacturing drawing a connection between the mining processes that have historically powered it and the ones that propel their futures as electric machines. As we move towards an era of autonomous vehicles, the process of photographic imaging becomes central to the car’s operation. The project shows how contemporary electric car manufacturing embraces industry 4.0 principles, in contrast with the automotive as a symbol of 20th century industrialization. The extractive processes that contribute to both ends of these production processes are the element that binds them together. Photo-collage is the technique chosen to collapse the many registers in which the car operates: environmental impact, industrial change, excavation and labour. Using automotive paint and hydro-print, the artist displays a visual language that alludes both to the culture of car races and car modification and the transformation of the manufacturing processes needed to preserve the future of the automotive industry.

Felicity Hammond was born in 1988 in Birmingham, UK, and is currently based in London. Hammond received an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in London in 2014 and a PhD in Contemporary Art Research from Kingston University in 2021. Through her art works and research, she investigates the power of photographic media, shining a light on its material relationship with territories such as the urban terrain and the planetary mine. Hammond’s expanded photographic practice spans installation, collage and photo-sculpture, acknowledging the ongoing entanglement of digital and physical space.