video game and interactive installation
Hallein, Austria
While society shuns black magic like susuk* as taboo, it accepts equally exploitative systems like credit and loans. Both forms of debt lock individuals into cycles of obligation, material and spiritual. Debt becomes a tool of submission, exposing deeper truths about dependence and control.
This speculative ATM playfully envisions a cheeky intersection of technology, mysticism, and economy, transforming a mundane financial transaction into an intimate ritual. As an interactive piece, it invites users to submit something personal in exchange for a return, blending vulnerability with the mechanics of exchange. By acting as a portal where ritual meets finance, it challenges the divide between institutional systems and occult practices, revealing their shared roots in debt and submission. In uncertain economic times, both tools serve as mechanisms of control, feeding the human hunger for immediacy. Donna Haraway’s cyborg—a boundary-blurring figure—resonates here: the susuk ATM reimagines the consumer as a hybrid of desire and debt, navigating the blurred lines between agency, technology, and mysticism.
*Southeast Asian magic charms