Rehearsals for Reality
osmo/za, Slovenska 54, 8th floor (Doirrean O'Malley, Tom K Kemp, Špela Petrič; 9 -29 Aug) & Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana (Cécile B. Evans 18 Aug), both Ljubljana
09 – 29 August 2024
Exhibition Opening
9 August at 20.00
Opening Hours
Thursdays & Fridays 17.00–19.00
Saturdays 12.00–14.00
‘Rehearsals for Reality‘ will highlight hybrid practices and perspectives – between documentary and fiction, fully improvised roleplay, rules-based gameplay and scripted action with actors, non-actors and artificial entities, palimpsests of current and near future times and spaces – foregrounding the blurred thresholds between reality and fiction to expose the constructed nature of our worldviews and present wildly new imaginaries, identities and ways of being. Not only will the impact on the development and maintenance of the self be explored, but also wider discussions of political inclusion, activism, gender, agriculture, medicine, education and virtualization.
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Cécile B. Evans: ‘Reality or Not’ (2023) (at Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana 18 Aug 2024)
Reality or Not follows a group of high school students from a suburb north of Paris who are invited by an American producer to participate in a reality TV show only to reject their own reality. Their story of radicalization is encouraged by the Producer (Evans) and narrated by their former teacher (Alexandra Stewart) as the students begin a practice of world jumping that moves the film across disparate realities. Alongside this group of young people, an eclectic array of characters construct interwoven storylines ranging from a former Real Housewives star turned hacker who attempts to take down the International Monetary Fund to a group of failed renders of a virtual influencer that unite to form a workers collective. The 35-minute film is lodged with penetrating humor to deliver cutting overviews of contemporary culture and seductive images that play a vital foil to the assault of ideas, luring audiences magnetically into the realities unfolding. “No you, no me, no storylines”.
Credits:
Coproduction: Fondazione MAST & Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Bologna;
Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains; Tourcoing
Support: School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester, Sandra Murail
Additional support: Louvre, Paris; Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, Roissy-en-France; Arts at CERN, Geneva; DAAC Créteil in association with the Lycée Suger, Saint-Denis; LAYR, Vienna; Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles
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Tom K Kemp: ‘Dead Minutes’ (2023) (at osmo/za 9-28 Aug 2024)
A group of specialists in systemic change wake to find themselves dead and in a hell of their own imagining. Over a series of meetings, they attempt to apply what they know and believe in to improve societal and material conditions in the afterlife. The underworld, typically a timeless realm of subjects without will, takes on a newfound mutability. Potential projects of deathly reform emerge from an abundance of analysis, blending sincere idealism, societal analogy, behavioural modelling, historical record, and metaphysics. By assigning political agency to the totality of all the dead people in human history, the film draws links between the infernal imaginary and contemporary systems modelling. Ideas of the rational actor, the subject or the agent become unravelled, leading to a shared refusal of both the conditions of the dead world, and ultimately those of the living.
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Doireann O’Malley: ‘Prototype I’ (2017) (at osmo/za 9-28 Aug 2024)
Prototypes is a trilogy which explores gender and its manifestations in a post-speculative mind/body assemblage of scenes, set within the modernist Interbau housing development in the Hansaviertel area of Berlin. It explores new perspectives on trans identity through the lens of a post psycho- analytic, schizo-analytic methodology, entangling rhizomatic forms of thought, systems theory, plant biology and consciousness, machine learning and quantum transformation. The films approach the exploration of multiple subjectivities with trans protagonists through dream analysis & group psycho-analytic workshops engaging with the multi-layered unconscious. The script was produced collaboratively with the participants through dream analysis, writing workshops and quotes from renowned theorists, as starting points to explore the manifestation of gender beyond desire and ego drives.
Prototype I is a multi-screen film installation, a series of dreamscapes interrogating trans* semiotics through psychoanalytic practices, speculative technologies and live action role-playing. The work references scientific and medical investigations into the human psyche that address wider philosophical concerns relating to biology, gender embodiment, sexuality, utopianism and bio-molecular advancement in human evolution.
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Špela Petrič (with Reon Cordova and Janita Chen): ‘AIxxNOSOGRAPHIES’ (2023) (at osmo/za 9-28 Aug 2024)
As AI is tested for use in every sector of society, we peer into the near future through an interview with the chief researcher of a medical regulatory body to learn how they have dealt with issues arising from the implementation of AI in healthcare. The installation is a remix of material generated during Petrič’s artistic research covering the topic of automation of care (2021–present). It includes an audio map on the use of synthetic data in medical training created by Reon Cordova and a visual map outlining actors associated with AI-assisted genetic screening of newborns for metabolic diseases authored by Janita Chen. The multibody perspectives that appear in the video are selected field note testimonies by amateur ethnographers collected during Performative Ethnographies that took place at Erasmus Medical Center (November 2021), University Hospital Bonn (February 2023), and University Medical Center Groningen (May 2023).
Credits:
Concept: Špela Petrič | Performer: Ira Brand | Assistance: Reon Cordova | Video and editing: Rob van Pelt | Design: Miha Turšič | Additional footage: Carla Zamora | Map of the Genetics Use Case centered on the AI application CAPICE used in genetic newborn screening for metabolic diseases (within ELSA-NN): Janita Chen | Audio map of Synthetic Data Use Case (within ELSA-NN): Reon Cordova | Host institutions and partners: ELSA AI lab Northern Netherlands; Bonn Sustainable AI Lab, Institute for Science and Ethics, University of Bonn; University Hospital Bonn; University Medical Center Groningen; Kepler University Hospital Linz; Elisabethinen Hospital Linz; V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media | Produced by: Ars Electronica, 2023 | Supported by: Deutsche Telekom and Creative Industries Fund NL.
This project was developed in the framework of the ArtScience Residency enabled by the Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Ars Electronica and the support of Sustainable AI Lab of the University Bonn.
This project is also part of the project ELSA AI lab Northern Netherlands (ELSA‐NN) (with project number NWA.1332.20.006) of the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) AI Synergy programme ‘Artificial Intelligence: Human-centred AI for an inclusive society – towards an ecosystem of trust’ which is partly financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Guided tours
with the curator Brandon Rosenbluth
10 August at 12.00
17 August at 12.00
24 August at 12.00
Colophon
Curated by: Brandon Rosenbluth
Exhibiting artists: Cécile B. Evans, Tom K. Kemp, Doireann O’Malley, Špela Petrič
Graphic design by: Marijn Degenaar
Produced by: Projekt Atol
Technical help: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana (Department for Culture)
Bios
Cécile B. Evans is an American-Belgian artist living and working in La Plaine Saint Denis. Evans’ work examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological, physical, and technological structures. They have previously realized new commissions at Centre Pompidou (FR), Museo d’Arte Moderne di Bologna (IT), Tate Liverpool (UK), Lafayette Anticipations (FR), Tramway (UK), Serpentine Galleries (UK), Castello di Rivoli (IT), Museum Abteiberg (DE), and and exhibited work at Whitechapel Gallery (UK), Haus der Kunst (DE), Renaissance Society Chicago (US), Singapore Art Museum, Mito Art Tower (JP) amongst others. Evans’ films have been screened in festivals such as the New York Film Festival and Rotterdam International. Evans’ work is held in public collections such as MoMA NY (US), the Whitney Museum (US), Centre Pompidou (FR), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK), and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul (Sk).
Cécile B. EvansTom K Kemp employs roleplaying game design, animation and filmmaking to tell collaborative ghost stories about complexity and the humans who constitute it. Working through the roleplaying game form to combine political simulation, fan-fiction and divination into semi-improvised group storytelling, participants are invited to parse systems, complicate common narratives, and synthesise an array of knowledges into plot, dialogue, diagram and performance. By conflating global systems, political metaphor and organisational infrastructure with genre fiction, players’ personal experience and ludic tangents, his works attempt an evocation of the emancipatory weirdness of group agency and the unintended consequences of making models of the world. He has exhibited at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Quad, Derby and the MKG Hamburg. Residencies include the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, DOGO, Lichtensteig, and Rupert, Vilnius.
Tom K KempDoireann O’Malley, is an trans-disciplinary artist based between Berlin and Ireland. Their research-led practice experiments with collaborative methodologies, meditative and visualization practices, writing, auto-theory, formalized through technological emphasis on Film, Virtual Reality, AI, 3D and Video installation. Doireann won the Berlin Art Prize in 2018 and has been the recipient of grants and awards including The Berlin Artistic Research Programme from the Berliner Senat in 2020/2021, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Edith Russ Haus for Media Award and several grants from The Irish Arts Council. Exhibitions, talks and screenings have been presented at The Granary Theatre/National Sculpture Factory, IE; IMMA, Dublin, IE; Art Institute, Basel, CH; Biennale Zielona Góra, PL; Goethe-Institut Montreal, CA; Goethe-Institut, NY, USA; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, DE; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, SE; Rencontres Internationales, Forum des Archives, Paris, FR & HKW, Berlin, DE; Mumok Kino, Vienna, AT; Dublin City Gallery, Dublin, IE; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE
Doireann O’MalleyŠpela Petrič is a Slovenian new media artist with a background in the natural sciences. Her artistic practice combines biomedia and performativity to enact strange relations between bodies that reveal the underpinnings of our technological societies and propose alternatives. Petrič has received several awards, such as the White Aphroid for outstanding artistic achievement (Slovenia), the Bioart and Design Award (Netherlands), and an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria).
Špela Petrič