CU AGENT
Cu Agent is an art installation, exhibited in Cyprus, composed by a portable radio inside a copper cube designed as a Faraday Cage: a conductive shell (copper) acts like a signal barrier, trapping outside some electromagnetic waves, like radio waves, so they can’t reach the interior. Close the door—we hear only white noise. Open it—radio broadcasts return.
Engaging Cyprus’ etymology (the word copper, or cuprum in Latin, derives from the Latin genitive of the name Cyprus, namely Cyprium, "of Cyprus"), the work interrogates the geopolitics of the island’s depleted mines contrasted with foreign military bases extracting regional data flows.
Copper, is a reddish, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity, with symbol Cu in the periodic table. It’s with the use of copper that we see the beginning of metallurgy (Copper Age), marking a critical stepping stone toward complex technological societies, including our modern society based on information technology, and copper became widely recognized as a symbol of early technological advancement. Copper was the first smelted metal, and particularly when it was mixed with tin to make bronze, proved far more useful than stone and clay.
While Cyprus was once the largest copper producer around the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, and served as a main copper source for the Roman Empire alongside Spain, the easily accessible high-grade deposits have been largely depleted over millennia of extraction. Today Cyprus is de facto divided as follows: approximately 59.7% controlled by the Republic of Cyprus (EU), 34.9% occupied by Turkish forces (internationally unrecognized), 2.7% comprising the UK's Sovereign Base Areas (Akrotiri and Dhekelia), and 2.7% constituting the UN-patrolled buffer zone ("Green Line"). The two British Sovereign Base Areas are explicitly used for signals intelligence gathering. The territory serves as a station for signals intelligence and is thereby part of the United Kingdom's surveillance-gathering work in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. These bases were retained by Britain when Cyprus gained independence in 1960.
The radio installed inside the cube is a Perdio Super 7 portable radio, produced in UK in the 1958. Copper today no longer serves as the primary material for tools and weapons like in the Bronze Age, it functions almost exclusively as a critical conductive material in global infrastructure: enabling data transmission through undersea cables, powering electrical grids, and connecting devices via microchips and wiring that form the physical backbone of worldwide digital networks. This transition, from structural substance to invisible conduit, highlights how copper now silently fuels connectivity rather than shaping objects.
Cu Agent is being presented during Larnaca Biennale 2025 (15 Oct - 27 Nov), in the Medieval Fort of Larnaca, Cyprus, as a prototype to be further developed, engaging with the concept of how technology manifests as both benevolent and hostile forces through the lens of contemporary society (encompassing Information Technology, the Digital Economy, threats like the Carrington Event, phenomena such as Havana Syndrome, and related modern tensions), and reflecting upon the fact that metals, as well as other materials, have specific properties that have shaped human technology in different waves: Copper has been indispensable to human civilization since the Chalcolithic era—initially forged into tools, weapons and ornaments—then waned as iron and steel dominated, only to explode in demand after electricity’s discovery due to its unmatched conductivity, wiring the modern world from power grids to microchips. Copper’s story epitomizes how foundational materials have their own agency, hence the title Cu Agent.
Copper also served as the monetary backbone for millennia: from ~3000 BCE onward, copper (and its alloys like bronze) became humanity’s dominant coinage metal for small transactions across civilizations, though frequent debasement (replacing silver with copper) eroded public trust and fueled inflation. In modern finance, it’s dubbed "Dr. Copper" for its uncanny sensitivity to global economic shifts—geopolitical tensions, supply chain snarls, or demand spikes instantly rattle its price, making it Wall Street’s go-to barometer for real-time economic health.
Copper’s legacy—forged first into ancient weapons (Sumerian daggers, Egyptian spearheads), domestic essentials (Roman plumbing, Chinese ritual vessels, Mesopotamian mirrors), and global coinage—then reborn as industry’s electrical backbone (telegraph wires, power grids, microchips), proves its role as civilization’s raw nerve, human progress literally conducts through its atoms.
Copper is historically associated with the planet Venus, which the Romans linked to their goddess Venus, equated with the Greek Aphrodite, who, per Hesiod’s Theogony (c. 700 BCE), was born from sea foam near Petra tou Romiou ("Aphrodite's Rock") on Cyprus’s southwestern coast.
The artwork is a continuation of the study of metals started with The Kit of The Fittest.