Waste Does Not Communicate. detail, 2020, DVD (colour), 19’34”, ink on paper, film by Yannick Spiess

Waste Does Not Communicate. still image from performative video, 2020, DVD (colour), 19’34”, ink on paper, film by Yannick Spiess

The signs written on screen are 5 lines of code written in Ahee and translate to ‘Waste Does Not Communicate’ in JavaScript. Ahee is an alternative programming language that is esoteric and inefficient and therefore not very widespread. It was developed exclusively in Hangul, and exist as a proof-of-idea.

The American personal data collection company Acxiom divides people into 70 categories based on economic parameters alone. The group that has very little in customer worth is called "Waste."¹ Waste is a digital outcast who is not present on the network at all. In that sense, Ahee can be seen as Waste.

But Ahee is a Luxury. Because it escapes the achievement-principle entirely—especially in the sector of digital computing, where everything is streamlined to be as efficient as possible. Ahee is outside the digital landscape of multitasking between different sources of information and processes. Ahee has nothing to do with practicality or processuality. Ahee does not communicate, but stays the way it is “So-Sein.”