The global financial markets are vast, complex systems governed less by individual intention than by algorithmic velocity. At the top, immense fortunes are generated not through traditional trade but through milliseconds – automated decisions executed by servers housed in secretive data centers. In this arena, capital doesn’t sleep; it accelerates. Servers are the infrastructure of power, not unlike oil fields or railroads in previous centuries.
These forces form the backdrop for Bob Demper’s artistic practice. As both a visual artist and filmmaker, Demper builds environments that explore contemporary structures of power. For This Machine, his exhibition at TUR, he has constructed an installation that operates as both a work in its own right and, when needed, as a set for his ongoing feature or longer film project, begun in 2019.
Demper constructs environments that hover between the familiar and the fabricated. They resemble movie sets in their capacity to suggest narrative and hold atmosphere. These are not stages in the theatrical sense, but sculptural scenes – carefully arranged, tonally specific, and suggestive rather than prescriptive. They do not explain; they evoke. In This Machine, the viewer is invited into a space where meaning is not fixed, but flickering — where a story might begin, or where a question might take root. The work quietly proposes that the global financial system – dominated by opaque algorithms and automated trades – has become so complex, so abstracted, that no single human fully understands its operation. And perhaps that’s the point: in systems without oversight, power becomes invisible, and reality itself begins to distort.
At the core of Demper’s ongoing project is Donny, a burnt-out financial worker drifting through a landscape shaped by the aftermath of institutional logic. The film is not constructed in a conventional, linear fashion. Instead, it evolves through fragments – scenes filmed in and around each exhibition, shaped by the material and spatial qualities of the installations themselves. For This Machine, Demper introduces a new character for the first time: Donna – Donny’s coworker, not boss and neighbour – marking a shift in the unfolding narrative.
At the heart of This Machine is a tension between visibility and concealment, artifice and infrastructure. What is real anymore, when decisions that shape our economies, societies, and futures are made not by people, but by code? The global financial markets – so often abstracted, algorithmic, and unreachable – operate with a kind of surreal detachment from daily life. Demper mirrors this quality: blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, constructing worlds that feel both intimate and estranged, credible and illusory.
This Machine doesn’t provide answers or explanations. It offers a space of suspension – where complex systems are not decoded, but felt. It invites viewers to sit with uncertainty, to sense the contours of forces that are normally hidden from view. In doing so, it opens up a quieter kind of attention: one that acknowledges how much we don’t know, and how urgently we need to learn to see in the dark.
Bob Demper (b. 1991, The Netherlands) is a visual artist based in The Hague. With a background in filmmaking, his practice spans film, installation, video, and sculpture. Demper’s work is characterized by a meticulous engagement with structures of power, particularly as manifested in financial systems, corporate aesthetics, and emerging technologies. He has exhibited at institutions including 1646 (The Hague), Museum Helmond, and Art Rotterdam, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions and screenings across Europe. His current research explores the sociopolitical consequences of algorithmic and automated financial models through speculative environments that blend cinematic tropes with sculptural precision.
Exhibition Curator and text: Edd Schouten
Project Manager: Kristīne Ercika
Production Manager: Ada Ruszkiewicz
“This Machine”
Bob Demper
28.05 – 28.06.2025
TUR, Riga
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
Bob Demp, This Machine. Photo: Kristīne Madjare
