arebyte Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition of their 2019 programme. Titled Home, the programme attempts to reflect upon notions of home, taking as it's point of departure thoughts of housing and redevelopment of urban spaces and otherworldly sites of discovery; the disconnection of marginalised bodies; new ecologies for future ways of living; and looking beyond locality as a means of integrating change, as well as resisting the homogeneous nature of corporate systems and challenging ideas surrounding labour, leisure and existence.

We can no longer decipher what is real or fake. Simulation has been a topic of concerned conversation for decades, and  in recent years, the contours of a new contemporary art movement have begun to emerge.

The ‘Simulism’ movement has developed in resistance to the ethos of Silicon Valley, the ‘platforming’ and globalisation of culture, and the widespread availability of technologies of power like artificial intelligence, photorealistic CGI, and virtual and augmented reality. ‘Simulism’ simultaneously embraces and subverts technology,  interrogating the slippery world in which we live, and proposing humanist and non-binary futures.

“The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.”

- Niels BOHR, Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real

In a 1977 lecture, Philip K. Dick spoke of counterfeit, deranged, private worlds where alternative experiences branch off and possible futures emerge, revealing the layers of simulation mediating contemporary culture. Simulacra and Simulation, a Jean Baudrillard treatise from the early 1980s, explored how signs, symbols, realities, and societies entwine into shared experiences—and how the saturation of such simulacra was beginning to render all meaning meaningless, long before we immersed ourselves in the overwhelming onslaught of digital stimulation we take for granted today.  In her Cyborg Manifesto (1984) Donna Haraway explains the virtual camera emulates rules of the real world, but in a symbolic manner. The virtual camera symbolically embodies a liminal space, an interface that enhances our physical bodies with a prosthetic extension.

Curated by Kelani Nichole of TRANSFER and featuring works by Morehshin Allahyari, LaTurbo Avedon, Snow Yunxue Fu, Carla Gannis, Claudia Hart, Lorna Mills, Eva Papamargariti, Pussykrew, Sabrina Ratté, Amina Ross, and Alan Warburton RE-FIGURE-GROUND explores myth, identity, and the body. It proposes a softening – opening up an alternative view to the ideologies of Silicon Valley. Virtual space is inhabited with queer bodies; the boundaries of technology and the body are blurred, as are the lines between author, image, and algorithm. The artists unapologetically disrupt normative cultural production, demonstrating what it means to inhabit this infinitely malleable world.

Read Josh Clark's text on Simulation Theory

EVENTS PROGRAMME

Virtually Malleable Workshop: Breaking photorealism with Blender
Sat 9 Mar 2019, 1-5pm
arebyte, free tickets here
Participants are introduced to some basic principles of working in 3D, re-rendering photorealistic objects into grotesque, distorted, or kitsch-looking figures that subvert the smoothness of Hollywood style visual effects.

ARTISTS AND WORKS

Morehshin Allahyari She who Sees the Unknown, Aisha Qandisha (2018) Video Installation
LaTurbo Avedon Afterlife (Beta) (2018) Single-channel with Audio
Snow Yunxue Fu Karst (2018) VR and Single-channel Video
Carla Gannis A Subject Self-Defined (2016) Single-channel Videos
Claudia Hart The Flower Matrix (2017–ongoing) VR Installation
Lorna Mills Yellowwhirlaway (2017) 4-channel Animated GIF installation
Eva Papamargariti But for Now All I can Promise is Things will Become Weirder  (2018) Video with Audio
Pussykrew the bliss of metamorphing collapse (2018) VR and 3-channel Video Installation
Sabrina Ratté Biomes (2016) Single-channel Videos with Audio
Amina Ross by your hands i open/ spill out./ i’m the inside of an egg/ i pour/ we bloom/ magma rushing from a jagged crown of earth/ molten and dangerous and alive/ can’t you feel? (2018) Video Installation
Alan Warburton Homo Economicus (2018) Single-channel Videos with Audio

READ THE EXHIBITION BOOKLET