Future Fictions at Assembly Point

Artists: Pakui Hardware, Joey Holder, Core.Pan, Viktor Timofeev

Exhibition title: Future Fictions

Curated by: Mattia Giussani

Venue: Assembly Point, London, UK

Date: September 8 – October 14, 2017

Photography: Ben Westoby Photography, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Assembly Point, London

Assembly Point is delighted to present Future Fictions an exhibition, curated by Mattia Giussani, exploring the different effects of digital capitalism in everyday life.

The show will present new and recent mixed media works by Pakui Hardware, Joey Holder, Core.Pan and Viktor Timofeev – some of whom will be showing in the UK for the first time.

The artists will investigate and challenge the effect of automation and algorithms on digital lives and existence. They will address the making of objects and production of performances under the rules of digital capitalism, examining how their textures and existences change within new experiences of technological ecology.

Seasons

I had waded through desert landscapes, climbed mountains, faded into lakes, traversing overgrown fields offering nothing but an endless horizon. I detoured via desolate interiors of emptied skyscrapers, hollow shopping malls, former car parks. Harvesting weeds from abandoned gardens and washing myself with water accumulated in ponds resting like uninhabited portals outside of former mega-cities. Presence echoed in absence, just in accordance with the automated cycles.

With my mind in bondage by the occurrence of the present tense, I attempted versions, sculpting fan fictions of alternative Earth histories. In order to retain the future I had to approach the past, bisecting the smell of a sacrificed era.

Seasons returned in patterned sequence. Summer emerging like a dinosaur baby cracking open from its egg. Sun morphing to grey as swarms moved from the southern hemisphere. After all I had witnessed I now omitted my question marks with a simple swipe, an auto-generated cognitive response. In these moments, I depicted myself as a buddha sunbathing in the midst of a volcano. It elevated me and I observed the different layers at stake. Meditating from a bird’s perspective I could perceive some of the levels still being a promise of regrowth, of rituals and lyrics being performed in silence.

I studied the work of grid engineers as I tried to keep myself aligned. Derailed only momentarily, as a concept of speeding up the fiction. Some of the spongy zones offered a perfect exploration of genetic insurgencies, perennial bacteria, and a plethora of mind-morphing drugs. A constant sensation of there being more than the mere things that were taking place.

With a thousand networked braids resting along my spine, I could feel the wind approaching hours ahead, allowing me to seek shelter from the angels’ harps. Tickling my perception, always close to slipping. I held it together even when the algorithms were feeding off my brain. I let them wiggle through my maze. The magnetic fields seeping through me, sound my cells, ask for resonance, I became its instrument.

I uncomfortably embodied the mythos of the lonesome traveler, a contemporary Ovid in neoprene on the run from an elision of language.

By Matilda Tjader

Pakui Hardware is the collaborative artist duo formed by Neringa Černiauskaitė and Ugnius Gelguda. In their work, the duo traces Capital traveling through bodies and materials. Their latest solo shows include venues of MUMOK, Vienna, EXILE Gallery, Berlin, Tenderpixel, London (forthcoming), Podium, Oslo, ExoExo, Paris, kim? Contemporary Art Center, Riga, Jenifer Nails, Frankfurt, Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius, 321 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York. The artists have participated in group shows at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, Kunstverein Brauschweig, Germany, 20th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, Sao Paulo (forthcoming), National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany, MMOMA, Moscow, Valentin, Paris, Zacheta National Gallery Showroom, Warsaw, among others.

Joey Holder graduated from Kingston University in 2001 and completed an MFA at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2010. Working with scientific and technical experts she makes immersive, multi-media installations that explore the limits of the human and how we experience non-human, natural and technological forms. Mixing elements of biology, nanotechnology and natural history against computer programme interfaces, screen savers and measuring devices, she suggests the impermanence and inter-changeability of these apparently contrasting and oppositional worlds: ‘everything is a mutant and a hybrid’. Recent solo/group exhibitions include SELACHIMORPHA, The Photographers Gallery, London (2017); Alien Matter part of Daniel Rourke and Morehshin Allahyari’s project The 3D Additivist Cookbook, Transmediale, Berlin (2017); The Noise OF Being, Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam (2017); Ophiux, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2016).

Core.Pan is an artistic research program developed by Sybil Montet De Doria & Simon Kounovsky initiated in may 2016. The duo’s work is based on an extensive reflexion around symbiotic engineering and global mutations, using augmented materiality and film as a way to approach the relationships between metaphysical cosmology, high-end technology and biomimetic evolutionary process. Recent exhibitions include ‘ys mantic systems’ at Noplace gallery, Oslo; KMS / Aftermath at Galerie A.M.180 Prague; CITIZENFIVE, part of ART ATHINA 2017

Viktor Timofeev currently lives and works in Rotterdam, NL. He is a recent graduate of the Piet Zwart Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include “Sazarus IV” at Two Queens in Leicester (2017), “S.T.A.T.E.” at Drawing Room, London (2016), and “Sazarus I” at Jupiter Woods, Vienna (now Cordova). Recent group exhibitions include “Roy Da Prince” at Futura, Prague (2016), “Piknik Na Obochine” at Exo Exo, Paris (2016) and “Vaporents” at Voidoid Archive, Glasgow (2016). He has recently released a musical collaboration with Kaspars Groševs titled “Zolitude” on the online-based Quantum Natives, and is currently working on a solo release for the label.

Mattia Giussani is an artist and curator based in London. After graduating in BA Photography at Camberwell College of Arts in 2015, he just graduated in MFA Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research has strong interest in the relationship between digital technologies, social changes and the response of art to these challenges. Recently he’s researching within the Posthuman field, and using it as a navigation tool within different theories, especially in relation between art, computational culture, technology and new media. Recent artistic and curatorial projects include Non Standard at T-Space (Milan, June 2017, IT); We are having a great time ? at Rockelmann & (Berlin, 2016, DE); 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering Revisited 1966/2016 at Arts Catalyst (London, UK, 2016); Into The Fold at Camberwell College of Arts (London, UK, 2016); USE/USER/USED at Zabludowicz Collection (London, 2016, UK); ICA Student Forum (London, 2015-2016, UK).