CUBE-COLA ASSEMBLY LINE
KATE RICH (AU/DE/UK) & KAYLE BRANDON (UK)
EXHIBIT FRI 22.06.12 – SAT 08.09.12
Cube-Cola is an open source soft drink, licensed under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL). In 2003, artists and bar managers Kayle Brandon and Kate Rich from Bristol’s Cube Cinema downloaded an unclear recipe for open source cola found on the internet and began experimenting.
From this, Cube-Cola has developed as a public experiment and user-operated soft drink that draws on the combined expertise of The Women’s Institute, polymer physicists, computer geeks and kids to finesse its production. The recipe and instructions for making it remain freely available in the public domain, anyone can make or modify the recipe as long as they continue to license it under the GNU GPL. Bypassing aggregated distribution, Cube-Cola ships in concentrate form via Royal Mail and hand luggage to cola drinkers worldwide.
For HACK THE CITY, Cube-Cola presents a living assembly line in Science Gallery where the artists will compile cola from its raw ingredients. The exhibit acts as a ‘factory vivant’ or compact supply chain, bringing together production, distribution, science and sociability around the same table. It is a calculated hack into one of the more persistent black boxes of our urban environment.
BIO: Kayle Brandon is an interdisciplinary artist working within public and social contexts. She regularly works in collaborative, collective scenarios, often merging art with activism. Her main areas of interest circle around peoples’ relationships to nature, urban space, animals, architecture and survival. Kate Rich is an artist, trader and co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT). In 2003 she established Feral Trade, which forges new ‘wild’ trade routes across hybrid territories of business, art and social interaction. She is currently moving deeper into the infrastructure of cultural economy, developing protocols for cash, catering, sports and survival in the cultural realm.