Rokolectiv opens ORACOL – an exhibition that speculates on predictions of all sorts, with works that go beyond the fetishising of the future, with no fear of humour or the emotional.
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with: Pinar Yoldas, Alan Butler & Elaine Hoey, Ion Dumitrescu, Nora Al-Badri & Nikolai Nelles, Nona Inescu
and a performance by Jared Marks
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www.rokolectiv.ro/
Pinar Yoldas imagines an artificial intelligence (AI) that has taken over the world. In the video, a 3D-animated cat talks about itself and its work as ruler of a megalopolis in the year 2039. The AI takes on the appearance of an adorable kitten to avoid frightening people. It speaks from the future about the unsolvability of past crises such as the refugee crisis, climate change, and an ominous “p-crisis,” as well as the inability of humankind to manage gigantic infrastructure.
“Prospero AI” is an ongoing collaborative research project by artists Alan Butler and Elaine Hoey that addresses potentials for the creation of a working AI conceptual artist, while currently available technologies do not enable such realities to exist. This work has formed as a speculative fiction, which reimagines the function of labor in a society in which automation has replaced the need for human work. The role of the artist in the age of fully creative technologies is utilized as a solution to the very existential human problems it has caused.
On the opening day, we are honoured to be able to host a live presentation by Cyber Jaya, CEO of Technospirituality Inc. and world leader in today’s spirituality market. In this reflection on the commodification of spirituality in the digital age, Jared Marks uses a popular Silicon Valley discourse, the keynote presentation, as a format to explore spirituality through the eyes of big business. Nothing can escape our market economy, enlightenment included, and the search for a higher power is often used as bait in today’s digital marketing strategies. Through the figure of Cyber Jaya, a contemporary spiritual leader, he explores contradictions proposed by neoliberal spirituality and, more earnestly, what role technology can play in human spiritual evolution.
“Not to know again. There is no “un-learning” in our contemporary prehistory. The conditions are new, we have never before accommodated contradictions of such magnitude, such major inner un-sync. Collisions between pre-critical and critical perimeters of meaning are occurring more often. Sparks become more visible, yet there is also calm. A paradoxical stillness. The irrational has proven its own rationality. Predictions have failed. The ultra-primitive announcing the most advanced. Surface studies, self-randomizing, neo-infantilism, pre-truth strategies.” Ion Dumitrescu about his latest video „Forms of unknown I (natures)”
“The Other Nefertiti” is an artistic intervention by German artists Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles. In August 2015, Al-Badri and Nelles scanned the head of Nefertiti clandestinely in the Neues Museum Berlin without permission of the Museum, by wearing a modified Kinect under a scarf; then they handed the files to an anonymous group of hackers that worked on them and gave them back an high quality .stl file, that they made available as a torrent file under a Creative Commons Licence. “With the data leak as a part of this counter narrative we want to activate the artefact, to inspire a critical re-assessment of today’s conditions and to overcome the colonial notion of possession in Germany”, the two artists said.
Nona Inescu presents “The state of the sea” an installation which consists of several photographs acquired from stock-image websites depicting sea water, from different parts of the world, printed on 9 sheets of satin fabric. The work is a synthetic representation of the sea surface, blending together the shine of the fabric with the light reflections from the digitally enhanced images. A certain flatness is emphasised, as opposed to the depth of the water in nature. “
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In addition, he exhibition can be visited during the festival days as follows:
19.04: 15.00-20.00
20.04: 15.00-21.00
21.04: 15.00-21.00
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Main partener: Red Bull Music
Partners: Jägermeister, Goethe-Institut Bucuresti, Institutul Francez, British Council Romania
Supported by The Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN)
Rokolectiv Festival is part of SHAPE platform, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union
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