These 3 video works were made for an exhibition titled The Golden USB.This was exhibited at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in 2017 when Ibghy & Lemmens were Stonecroft Artists in Residence. They developed collaboration with local poet Sadiqa de Meijer, Queen’s Physics Technologist, Bernie Ziomkowitz and members of the Kingston Seniors Centre as well as a committee of “advisors” from among community members and Queen’s Faculty while using equipment and spaces in the Queen’s Film and Media Department. These are “samples” from their ongoing Golden USB speculative catalogue.

The Golden USB is an installation that gives form to the idea of an interstellar trade capsule. Housed in a gold USB flash memory device, the capsule is intended for travel aboard a probe headed towards the stars beyond our solar system. Following in the footsteps of the Pioneer Plaque (1972-1973) and The Golden Record (1977), which introduced human civilization to extraterrestrials, The Golden USB (2014-ongoing) is an invitation to make contact and begin a trade relationship.

The work revolves around the Trade Catalogue of Everything, a digital file listing everything and anything-land, water, air, plants, animals, fragments of nature, but also the products of human culture, industry, invention and know-how-that may be of interest to alien life. Through a proliferation of spoken words, filmed performances and actual specimens, the contents of the catalogue are revealed in the exhibition space, transforming the items presented into “samples,” that is to say, objects of appropriation and speculation.