Tracking evil businesses – The Megacorp. Business conglomerate

Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman

Images

Andreas Zingerle and Linda Kronman

Artist Statement

“Megacorp.” is a corporate conglomerate inspired by its equally powerful counterparts in science fiction. The artwork is based on a collection of fake websites scraped from internet by the artist duo KairUs. These companies exist only virtually and are used by cyber criminals for phishing attacks or to support scam stories. The “Megacorp.” exists therefore as an umbrella company for subsidiary companies that are 100% dummy cooperations. “Megacorp.” operates on a global scale and is constantly growing with firms represented in almost every branch of industry. The strategic objectives according to the “Megacorp.” Mission statement is to: “offer complete services from one source which can serve the entire market”. Accordingly the subsidiary companies cover domestic and international export, real estate agents, insurance companies, law firms, security companies, banks, educational institutions, hospitals, online commerce, economic communities and ministries.The functions of “Megacorp.” are presented in the form of an interim report and company visuals. By examining the fake websites the artwork reflects both the imaginary and the real world ‘megacorps’, questioning centralization of power.

Written Document

Project Website

↳ http://megacorp.kairus.org

Video Documentation

Artist Bio

KairUs is a collective of two artists Linda Kronman (Finland) and Andreas Zingerle (Austria). Currently based in Daejeon (Republic of Korea), they explore topics such as vulnerabilities in IoT devices, corporatization of city governance in Smart Cities and citizen sensitive projects in which technology is used to reclaim control of our living environments. Their practice based research is closely intertwined with their artistic production, adopting methodologies used by anthropologists and sociologist, their artworks are often informed by archival research, participation observations and field research. Besides the artworks they publish academic research papers and open access publications to contextualize their artworks to wider discourses such as data privacy & security, activism & hacking culture, disruptive art practices, electronic waste and materiality of the internet.