Drugo more Association presents the group exhibition A world without us, that will open on 7 September at 8 PM in the Mali Salon gallery (Korzo 24, Rijeka) as part of the international programme State Machines and supported by Rijeka 2020.
Researching a future no longer dominated by humans, the exhibition displays new media works by acclaimed international artists Tim Arnall, Ignas Krunglevičius, Nicolas Maigret, Maria Roszkwoska, Yuri Pattison, Sascha Pohflepp, Suzanne Treister, Addie Wagenknecht and Pinar Yoldas.
The idea for the exhibition does not lie in some post-apocalyptic scenario, but on a world of technological advancements that we are already living in. The tools for creating a world without us are already present – the first self-driving cars are on the streets, automated algorithms write news, machines are translating texts. Algorithms have begun to trade a third of all ongoing stock exchange in the US and EU back in 2009, and we can only guess how far it has gone by today.
The growing influence of non-human agents in our everyday lives is not just the subject of recent film and television productions such as One (2013), Black Mirror (2011) and Äkta människor (2012), but also a subject of contemporary (media-based) art. Artists participating in the exhibition contemplate on the possibility of an ecology without people, imagining a post-anthropocene world where different “life forms” are in control, such as algorithms, artificial intelligence, artificial nanoparticles and genetically modified microorganisms.
Visitors can expect to hear stories of a monolithic black refrigerator contemplating its own existence, artificial intelligence in the shape of a 3D animated cat ruling over a megalopolis, and an algorithm that creates art based on ideas never even considered by people.
The exhibition’s curator is Inke Arns, artistic director of the Hartware MedienKunstVerein association from Dortmund. She has worked since 1993 as an independent curator and theoretician in the fields of media art, Internet culture and Eastern Europe. She got her PhD at Humboldt University in Berlin and has organised exhibitions in many European museums and galleries. She penned numerous articles on media art and internet culture, and some of her acclaimed books include Neue Slowenische Kunst – an analysis of their artistic strategies in the context of the 1920s in Yugoslavia (2002), Net Cultures (2002) and Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear! The Avant-Garde in the Rear-View Mirror (2004).
The exhibition can be visited for free until 22 September, from Tuesday to Saturday between 11:00 and 20:00, and on Sundays from 11:00 to 13:00 and 17:00 to 20:00.
