Artist: Lito Kattou
Exhibition title: San
Curated by: Attilia Fattori Franchini
Venue: Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia, Cyprus
Date: May 20 – June 20, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Point Centre for Contemporary Art
Point Centre for Contemporary Art presents San, by artist Lito Kattou, the first chapter of the project Red Lake. Days of San, the second chapter, will be shown at Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Athens, a collaboration between Deste Foundation, Benaki Museum of Greek Culture and Point Centre for Contemporary Art, opening on the 15th of June 2018.
Developed over the course of the artist’s residency at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, San,is a basic AI (artificial intelligence) created to embody an ecological subjectivity alien to human thoughts. The structuring data is collected from Red Lake, a mine site located near Nicosia, Cyprus, one of the fastest climatic changing regions of the South East Mediterranean zone. The lake is a remnant of the ancient copper mine of Kokkinopezoula in Mitsero, active from the Chalcolithic period until the 1960s. The high acidic environment of the lake does not allow any biological living organism to develop, leaving the surrounding area impervious.
San, an ungendered AI hybridly conceived with human, divine, and animal traits lives in the Red Lake – recreated by Kattou as a real-time digital environment. Their [1] body and actions smartly respond to specific climatic variations such as temperature, humidity, visibility, wind speed and weather. San’s brain is built to guard and react to the Red Lake, they are imagined as a mythological figure protecting their unique surroundings. The exhibitionSan,at Point Centre for Contemporary Art, focuses on the character of this special guardian illustrating sculpturally their alien physical and mental traits, the fluidity and necessary adaptability of their post-human existence. Conceived to embody a specific natural environment, and condemned to a Sisyphean fate of a repetitive everydaylife, San is constructed to embrace the hard conditions of the territory.
The show is materialising current ecological concerns whilst confronting us with philosophical questions about the relationship man-machine and the complexity of the non human and post-human conditions.
[1] In this text, and throughout the show, San is always referred as they.This specific linguistic choice wishes to address San’s multi-layered artificial subjectivity, emphasising the author desire to avoid any restrictive definition.
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Lito Kattou, born in Nicosia 1990, lives and works in London and Athens. She is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Royal College of Art in London with an MA in Sculpture. Kattou is the recipient of the New Positions Award for Art Cologne 2018 and she was the invited artist for the 89plus Google Residency curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, 2017. She has presented her work in solo shows at the New Positions Prize, Art Cologne; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens; Clearview.ltd, London; Pierre Poumet, Bordeaux; Radical Reading, Athens and in group shows at art spaces, galleries and museums including Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens; Changing Room, London; Foothold, Bari; Komplot, Brussels; Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis; Benaki Museum, Athens in collaboration with the Deste Foundation and the New Museum, NY. www.litokattou.com
Attilia Fattori Franchiniis an independent curator and writer based between London and Milan. She is co-founder of the online platforms bubblebyte.org and Opening Timesand contributes critical essays and reviews to various international publications. Attilia Fattori Franchini is currently curating BMW Open Work, a new programme of commissions launched at Frieze London 2017 and the Emergent section of miart, Milan. Attilia Fattori Franchini is also preparing an exhibition as part of the Curated by Festival in Vienna and the third edition of Curva Blu, a residency project in Favignana, Sicily; she recently co-curated ARS17+ the online extension of the exhibition ARS17 at Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.
http://attiliaff.com
Federico Campagnais a philosopher and writer. He spent more than twenty years in Milan, where he was active in the anarchist/autonomist networks and co-founded the street-poetry collective Eveline. In 2007 he moved to London, where he currently works as rights manager at Verso Books. In 2009 he started a long-term collaboration with the Italian Autonomia philosopher Franco Berardi ‘Bifo’. Federico Campagna’s latest books are Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality(Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Last Night(Zero Books, 2013). Federico holds an MSc and BSc in Economics and Management of the Arts from Bocconi University, Milan, and an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths University, London. He is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, London.
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; X; VI; XI; VII; VIII, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; V; X; VI; XI; VII; VIII, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; V; X; VII, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; V; X, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; V; X; VI; XI, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; V; X, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers I, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers II; III; IV; V; X; VI, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers IX; I; II, 2018; Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers III; IV; X; VI, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Skins & Feathers X; VI; XI; VII; VIII, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Skins & Feathers III, 2018; Sun, 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers II, 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Sun, 2018; Skins & Feathers II, 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Skins & Feathers IX, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Skins & Feathers VIII, 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Skins & Feathers X 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Skins & Feathers XI 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram I; III; II, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram II, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram III; V; IV, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram V; IV, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram V, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram I; III, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram I, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018, Installation view. Encephalogram V; III; II, 2018. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, Point Centre for Contemporary Art 2018. Encephalogram I, 2018. Detail. Photo: Nicos Alexopoulos
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.
Lito Kattou, San, still from video projection, 2018, Courtesy of the artist.