Carlos Sáez (1988) is a Valencian multimedia artist, working at the confluence of digital and physical the ensemble of his production includes illustrations, 3D, videos, sculptures and laser installations among other media. Hardly confinable in the exhibition space, Sáez’s art lives at the verge of different realms: whether it’s editorial commissions, audiovisual performances, hardware relics or accidental experiments posted online, they all grow and branch out within a broad theoretical womb focused on the complex relationships involving humanity and technology.

Scrolling down through Sáez’s instagram account one picture caught my eye: a self-portrayal while crouched on his knees with a monkey's tail sticking out from behind his back, a loving homage to Kemonomimi in anime, a Japanese word to describe humanoid characters that posses animal-like features. The interest in Japanese animation and Internet culture is more noticeable in early works, including some illustrations and mesmerising digital collages (Human Appearance Optional, 2018); but Sáez achieved notoriety with his Hardware Fetish serie, started around 2018. Occupying the exhibition space as machinery monoliths — gleaming grey silver surfaces with acid-green concretions — the junk aesthetics of Sáez's sculptures recount a collective toxic love for over-consumption besides being a personal elegy on electronic garbage and the voids left by its lack of function. When there’s no more data flowing in the circuit, what remains and what is revealed?

Upraised as an archaeological relic of renewed beauty, an unused piece of hardware is also the trace of ongoing earthly devastation. The whole idea developed on technological progress has become in fact unsustainable: while some enjoy dreaming about a metaverse-ish utopia, planned obsolescence chokes lands and waters. But even if sometimes techno-enthusiasm goes a bit off the line, it can be a resource when it allows us to rethink certain transhumanist notions as subversive and irreverent queer strategies: the concept of morphological freedom recurs throughout Sáez's production, not only in terms of the virtual possibility to modify yourself in a digital environment as it is materially expressed in the creation of wearable prostheses — such as the Chihuahua Claw and Exoskeleton (2019) designed for the Latinx producer and musician Arca. A hyper fantasy of cyberpunk allusion is made by instant.

With so many possibilities still unexplored, Carlos Sáez has recently opened up to other fields of artistic production and many collaborations, moving between art directions, commissions and undisclosed personal projects.

In your early works the digital realm was more explicit. How has your practice changed over time?

I do identify a more strictly digital stage at the beginning of my career in which I developed work for the internet only. When I started with Cloaque.org, all my work was video or web. Now I apply that digital influence on sculptures and physical installations. Virtuality still persists, but only on a conceptual level. My work changes a lot, both technically and visually, even in short periods of time. I haven't used the same discipline or medium for a long time. The only constant in my work is the relationship between the human being and technology as a conceptual matrix. From here, everything evolves a bit more unpredictable.

From software usage to physical manipulation of materials through saws, smashers and grinders… there’s a lot of experimental diy approach to materials and techniques. What’s your first approach when starting a piece and how does it evolve until the final result?

It’s pretty different each time, but generally, there is something that catches my attention and that I want to explore. It is mostly new feelings, behaviors, or ways of thinking that I have for the first time as a consequence of some technology in my life. Then I explore this idea, talking with friends or searching for information about it. Usually, ideas begin to consolidate at this moment. Perhaps by then, I will already know if the work is going to be presented in a physical or digital form, or both. The way to get to that final form is usually very chaotic, there is no plan. Almost all of my physical works, at some point in the process, have been digitally converted, and vice versa.

In the series "Hardware fetish", electronic junk is recovered and reclaimed as a new bearer of meaning. At a time of ecological crisis and hyper-consumerism (e.g. e-waste as a contemporary phenomenon), how does your work relate to present issues?

This idea arises as a consequence of current times. In his Dead Media Proposal, Bruce Sterling suggests an archeological gaze on technological remains from recent times in order to understand the present we live in and also avoid mistakes from the past. This is a common practice among a lot of artists and artisans nowadays. Whether from a responsible or aesthetic perspective, working with abandoned technology not only evidences and responds to an abundance of materiality, but also offers a set of communicative possibilities. There is a strong communicative power in machines without their fluid of information or functionality. I like to play with this to create new stories.

An additional dynamic, spatial and performative component enriched your practice through works such as laser installation Dual Mismo and wearable sculptures Máscara láser and Light Wings (designed for musician Arca’s Mutant:Faith performance). Is the immersive dimension of the live experience something you would like to continue exploring in the future?

I would love to focus more on live experiences in general. There is this series of audiovisual instruments I made; some installations and software designed to create live audio and video performances, but I still don’t feel ready. Scenic panic is something I have to deal with, but I also don’t want to force it. I will also be happy to set them up for someone else to use.

Coming from transhumanist philosophy, the concept of morphological freedom recurs in many of your productions. As the desire to modify the body according to one’s individual will, the belief in morphological freedom transcends the usual notion of natural as innate and uncontaminated. How this concept has affected your life and production?

The way we seek technological advances and how we respond to them as a society is what inspires me to create. This doesn’t refer uniquely to new technologies, but to the whole concept of tools and knowledge that reshape collective consciousness. In the last two decades, the progress in information technologies has provided us with a whole new perspective on ourselves and new values still waiting to be applied. There is more to improve now in the human realm than in the technological realm.

The fluidity of networked relationships had a great role in redefine not just geographical boundaries but even the topographies of the flesh (identities and bodies are much more recognized as a multitude of existing diversities). But the web as a whole shaped by whoever enters in it, has also dark spots — sometimes deeply strange, uncanny or beyond legal. Are there any particular phenomena within internet culture that fascinate or frighten you?

My favorite waves generated on the internet are those whose core is the liberation from physical ties (corporeal and geographical) and the liberation from religious education or taboos.

Sometimes the tendency to believe in a kind of future techno-utopia prevails over the actual complications regarding new technologies. How do you imagine the future relationship between the human, technology and other species?

The present scenario doesn’t inspire utopian stories. Environmental generational amnesia is a fact. We adapt to more and more polluted environments with each generation. We seem far from this idea of technology integrated into the nature of which we are apart, and the current concept of "technological nature" isn’t fun at all. The excessive consumption that derives from the main site of the progress of technology is unsustainable. It's not nature we have to worry about. She will stay.

I know you’re working on new projects including full art direction for a musician and even thinking about launching some NFTs… what can you reveal about these latest works? And as you’re approaching for the really first time to a new market dynamic, what expectations and thoughts you have on NFTs?

Yes, I needed a short break from the contemporary art ground. Otherwise, it can easily become a routine. In the last few months, I resumed my work as creative director with pablopablo, a young producer who is about to launch his first album. I love projects where you have to create a whole universe from scratch because they involve so many disciplines. This case was a total crossover from video direction to costume design or installation. We have a lot of fun working together. Regarding NFTs, I’m taking it slow and without expectations. I’m still testing the ground and figuring out if there is some way I can contribute positively to the community. Whatever I do, it will be something linked to my next show.