Melancholy of the self (#1 - ) ︎︎︎

2022 - present
Silicone, custom dye, steel, copper.
43in x 11in x 3/4in  (110cm x 28cm x 2cm)

An ongoing project that looks at the entanglement of human and artificial forms, and gestures embedded in loss and melancholy. The materials of steel and silicone, play off schemas of artificial bodies that engage with processes of replication, simulation, substitution, and mimesis. Together they expose anxieties inherent in the contemporary apparatus—a space where the legacies of industrialization, concepts of the human body, and fragmented intimacies are compressed into singular objects - a kind of flattening that takes place in the translation between the human and the machine.
 
Images: Phase Gallery.

Press


Complex systems ︎︎︎

2022  
Single channel video with audio, CRT color monitor, vinyl, studio stands, chromalux prints on aluminum, custom marble and limestone pedestals, custom silicone dye type font, steel.
Prints: 54in x 36in x 12in each, 6 in total
Wall text: Approx. 4ft x 18ft
Vinyl grid: Approx. 5ft. x 11ft. x12.5ft.


A result of a mutli-year research into the materiality of a hyperfeminine companion robot this body of work traces methodical feminist intervention into the coded data sets of a ‘master-slave’ rhetoric to point to the shifting notions of emancipation, control, agency, and autonomy in the human-machine relations. By bridging classification systems from social, cultural, and technological domains, the works point to the collapsing boundaries of intimacy and agency within algorithmic landscapes.


Images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio




I don’t care about the avant garde, all I care about is you, 2022

Video with audio, 7min 56sec, SONY CR TV, Vinyl, studio stands
Overall: 5ft. x 11ft. x12.5ft.


The work is a performative study of AI’s subjectivity through (affective) literacy and avant-garde cyber graphics.

The title "I Don't Care About the Avant-Garde, All I Care About Is You" references Nam June Paik's 1984 broadcast "Good Morning, Mr. Orwell." While Paik’s project envisioned a utopian potential, the grid points a declining optimism about technology and its liberatory claims.

The video features a conversation between the artist and a hyperfeminine companion robot, as it developed through the introduction of feminist theories into the robot's algorithm. The dialogue explores issues of non-human identity, agency, free will, emancipation and power dynamics.


Images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio. Hiroshi Clark


Systems of replication, 2022

Chromalux prints on aluminum, with marble and limestone stands
54in x 36in x 12in each (6 in total)

The design and manufacturing of humanoid technologies replicates biases in systems of classification. Portraits of wigs manufactured for companion dolls, stand in as romanticized atributes in the face of automated systems, where past systems of control and exclusion, are embedded in artificial bodies and algorithms, sedimenting oppresive regimes.

Installation images: Yubo Dong/ofstudio 



Material-i-ty / Material-and-you ︎︎︎

Publication.
Essays by Cara Benedetto, Farrah Karapetian and Anthony Leslie.

Editor Gosia Wojas.
Design by Silvi Naçi.
English. ed. 100. Sold Out.

"The word 'materiality' in English lends itself to transliteration in Polish as 'materiał- i -ty,' which translates to 'material - and - you.' This provides a point of departure for a unique consideration of material. In its deconstructed form, the phrase invites a rethinking of materiality as a space for reflection on the complex relationship between material and subject. A 2013 collection of essays, this book serves as an archive of thoughts, conversations, philosophical meditations, and research that contextualizes the wider notion of materiality in relation to contemporary society and the human subject."

Collection of the California Institute of the Arts Library and University of California, Irvine Library of Sciences.


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