Nest in Laak presents the third edition of AM.PM.AM. a series of interdisciplinary weekender programmes that merges art, performance and music throughout the day and night. The third edition of AM.PM.AM. is a collaboration with artist, composer and writer Ariadne Randall. At Nest in Laak, she pairs her solo opera Our Mouths Are Spring with an immersive video installation made in collaboration with artist Matthew D. Gantt, an exhibition text and reading by McKenzie Wark, ceramics by Jacob Bartmann and a club night.
The installation brings together a brand new generative 3D video work, sculptural works and drawings around the question: can we do with sound and image what algorithms do with minds and experiences? Randall developed her solo opera Our Mouths Are Spring together with artist Matthew D. Gantt and based it on her poem What To Do With It When It Comes. The poem is about promises and intimacy, and how they are intertwined with technology and consumption. Ever since Instagram introduced the modern algorithmic feed in 2015, our screens, eyes and minds have been continuously flooded with addictive images and data tailored to our suspected desires. Dating profiles, Amazon shopping carts, social media videos, (fake) video games and news feeds come to us in an endless loop of non-repetition. Parallel to these data streams, an abundance of products and materials is shipped in containers all around the world and delivered to our doorsteps.
With Our Mouths Are Spring, Ariadne Randall investigates how internet infrastructure, commodity flows, subjects, bodies, and emotions such as love and pleasure are tangled in the present. The hour-long video installation presented during AM.PM.AM. will be different each time. It mimics and mirrors our various algorithmic feeds, whilst trying to steer towards an alternative aesthetic experience that encourages greater awareness of this entanglement.
On Friday night, the installation will be activated with a live performance of the opera by Randall, with an opening audio-visual performance by Matthew D. Gantt. On Saturday evening, an artist talk with Randall and frequent collaborator McKenzie Wark will take place. Wark will then give a performative reading soundtracked by Randall as her dance music persona Artemis, followed by a club night in collaboration with Club Laak.
AM.PM.AM. was curated by Orpheu de Jong and produced by Sanne Huismans. Additional credits and thanks: Celestial Excursions, Vienna, Austria, Mike Nigro for Oxtail Recordings, Peter Gaugy, Nis Fee Brender, Nyx Ferrand, Theo Krausz, Maureen Chiquet, Phillipe Rierá, Martina Menegon, Nyx Ferrand, Abdulkareem Aladhami, Rupert Clerveaux, Stu Watson/Prelude Magazine, Francesca Centonze, Neko Squigglywormies, Felice Gotthardt, Elja Zenzius, Leo Kuraite, Benjamin Podoba, Jay Dallen, Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant, Jenna Pfefferle, Josef Brauman.
