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2008 2024
Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

by Fabienne Watzke

As a child, people assumed I liked pink and not blue. In today's imagination, pink is feminine, but it was once a masculine color. Lately I've been dreaming in pink and blue shows how our stereotypical thought patterns and visual representations of gender push women into predefined roles and project certain expectations onto them that manifest inequality. In my work, I take these traditional gender norms and challenge and break them by appropriating something extremely masculine like the knight ‘s armor and deconstructing it with different gender symbols and codes. The knights armor symbolizes the patriarchy in which we live. It is a shell designed for a specific type of body. Through symbolic bridges I highlight how deep rooted the modern "knight" mentality is still existing today.

Amélie Tricaud – Elle rêvait des loups

PHOTOGRAPHY

Amélie Tricaud – Elle rêvait des loups

by Amélie Tricaud

This work illustrates an attraction to the masculine, a deep desire to be embodied in a different body, assumed to be my opposite. This obsession, built through the accumulation of male images, shows what I covet, what I wish to carry within myself, without being able to access it. Throughout the 250 pages of the book, I question my gaze and my notion of beauty by idealizing these bodies, objectifying them, or reducing them to abstraction, attempting to subvert gendered and stereotypical ideals of femininity and masculinity. It is a reflection on the idea of the muse, reversing the power dynamics between the female muse and the male artist, and a mirror on the vast existing corpus representing female figures, on how their bodies are always depicted, scrutinized, fragmented, and contorted.

Tianyu Wang – Hiding and Seeking

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Tianyu Wang – Hiding and Seeking

by Tianyu Wang

I focused on the invisible violence and oppression against women within the family environment. I deconstruct the postures women should take in their daily life to resist patriarchal culture. From personal experiences, I reconsider the scenes of family violence, the immediate feelings, the "body memory". I create scenes that blend reality and imagination, symbolically representing the self that is imprisoned, oppressed, and resisting within the family environment. My work responds to the everyday, breaking traditional discipline imposed on women within the family, and deconstructing the facade of daily life. This fundamentally critiques and resists the power dynamics of the traditional binary gender structure represented by "home", as well as the discipline and oppression of individuals.

Bor Cvetko – TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!

PHOTOGRAPHY

Bor Cvetko – TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!

by Bor Cvetko

The project explores existential dread from passive digital media spectatorship. We’re bombarded with distressing news, funny videos, happy moments, images of death, and posts by friends and celebrities. This endless stream causes disconnection, numbness, and exhaustion. A recurring element in my project is the white plastic chair, symbolising relaxation. These chairs now represent lost support and balance. I include archaeological elements to reflect on the decaying present and uncertain future. Pictures are mounted on metal plates, forming a grid of 24 squares. These industrial products, meant to support weight, now support assembled and torn photo transfers. The project uses the same title as a TMZ article describing the impact of the Internet on an isolated Amazonian tribe.

Tanguy Morvan – We All Walk On Empty Staircases

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Tanguy Morvan – We All Walk On Empty Staircases

by Tanguy Morvan

We All Walk On Empty Staircases reflects the deep scars of the artist's childhood traumas. Growing up in a violent and tormented environment left permanent marks on his mind. At the age of seven, he found refuge in the game World of Warcraft, where he immersed himself for sixteen years, creating an idealized version of himself. In recent years, his grandfather introduced him to the Masonic world, which deepened his fascination with rituals. For the past six months, he has been transforming his body through tattooing, a process that has allowed him to regain control over both his mind and body while staying connected to past memories. His project invites reflection on the impact of domestic violence and the healing power of rituals.

Isabella Madrid – Buena, Bonita, y Barata

PHOTOGRAPHY

Isabella Madrid – Buena, Bonita, y Barata

by Isabella Madrid

As a Latin American woman, I have grown up with very specific expectations of the kind of woman I should be. In my project, I am reversing the codes that have been forced onto me and immersing myself in the different symbols of how Colombian women exist and have been represented through photographic self portraits. I am taking these symbols and subverting them, enacting them, letting them hold a weight on me, holding my own weight on them, playing with them, letting them define me and simultaneously redefining their power and meaning. I am showcasing not only the everlasting colonial violence Colombian female bodies have always been subjected to but simultaneously reappropriating the narrative around them, playing the muse, model, photographer, stylist, makeup artist, and art director.

Florian Hilt – BSoD

PHOTOGRAPHY

Florian Hilt – BSoD

by Florian Hilt

BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) is a series of stagnant views of a workstation emerging from the duality between fascination and fear of office spaces. Between boredom and anxiety, the desire for fantasy is transformed into a metaphorical quest for a moment's rest during a noisy, repetitive day. Time rushes by outside and stagnates inside, the mind wandering, piercing the corporate identity. Intrusive thoughts invade the workspace in the event of burnout. Attention is lost in a fantastic monotony. Press the alarm button, break the glass and let your senses drift away before returning to the chore. Silence and noise dissociate, reflecting the paradox of digital work where artist and tool must remain invisible to claim perfection.

Riccardo Fasana – Cozy Threshold

PHOTOGRAPHY

Riccardo Fasana – Cozy Threshold

by Riccardo Fasana

Cozy Threshold is a collection of digital photo collages which takes into exam spaces of transience within the domestic environment. In order to question the gaze which usually inhabits these interior spaces in the course of one’s everyday routine, the images included in the project present visible distortions which reveal the collage technique employed in their creation. As the layered nature of these digital reconstruction of actual spaces gradually unfolds in front of the viewer’s eyes, the gap between what is being observed and what might have been initially recognized becomes clearer. Through this work, viewers are therefore invited to reflect on the space in which these images exist by engaging in a detailed observation of the stage of everyday life.

Nina Pacherová – We Won't Tell Daddy!

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Nina Pacherová – We Won't Tell Daddy!

by Nina Pacherová

We Won't Tell Daddy! takes a speculative look at the impact of sharenting - the phenomenon whereby parents excessively share their children's lives on social networks. In the form of a video installation, it explores the future consequences of the digital footprint that parents create for their children. It focuses on the TikTok #bathroomchallenge, where children are recorded cursing, and unaware of the future implications, their video is shared online. The project uses AI and deepfake technology to protect children's identities by replacing their faces with that of the author and highlights the abuse of content. At the same time, it encourages us to redefine the role of technology in our lives by using deepfake as a protective tool.

Sunny Attias – Rotten Reverie

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Sunny Attias – Rotten Reverie

by Sunny Attias

Rotten Reverie is a series that wrestles with the seemingly random appearance of images and subjects in social media recommended content feeds through the use of personalised algorithms. As someone who often engages with recommended content and finds it both fascinating and sometimes worryingly accurate, I chose to closely analyse the recurring visual patterns and clusters of subjects, forms, and imagery that appear in my recommended content feed. These images serve as testimonies to a certain pattern of content, ephemeral in nature, that once floated in an ocean of visual recommendations. This project attempts to apply a human approach to a machinic logic, specifically addressing a phenomenon that appears to understand some of our thought processes better than we do.

Aniket Godbole – A Place I Call Home

PHOTOGRAPHY

Aniket Godbole – A Place I Call Home

by Aniket Godbole

Growing up as an immigrant, my notion of “otherness” was profoundly connected with my idea of self – never fully Nigerian in Nigeria or Indian in India. This series explores my understanding of home as a third culture child, collating a narrative of my life that revisits memories of my youth through reimagined constructions of my everyday life. Settling in a new city never felt strange but with time a feeling of uncertainty lingered when I considered what I could actually call home. Featuring layered journal entries and subtracted and multiplied images from my archives, these collages tell a delicate story of a life in transit. I link up with a past that I have never fully experienced. Traditions, thoughts and realities guide a reflection on my childhood and how I experienced growing up in a strange new world that I now call home.

Benjamin Freedman – Positive Illusions

PHOTOGRAPHY

Benjamin Freedman – Positive Illusions

by Benjamin Freedman

Positive Illusions is a photobook that depicts a series of childhood memories constructed using CGI. The resulting uncanny still lives, imagined from the perspective of a child, evoke a strange family presence in photo-realistic environments. Inspired by the nature of memory and simulation, I have based my scenes on what I could remember and used a phenomenological approach to fill in the blanks. Revisiting the past using CGI technology to re-stage events creates a unique flattening of the past and present – a process of pseudo visual archaeology. Some images in the series are repeated but with slight alterations, revealing the surrealist process of fabricating them and underscoring the phenomenon of distortion that is inherent to memory.

Fumi Omori – Girl Talk

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fumi Omori – Girl Talk

by Fumi Omori

Girl Talk is an immersive virtual reality installation that explores the concept of multicultural identities and the idea of home. The project presents a curated collection of self-portraits featuring cyber avatars from Japanese, Korean and Korean-American backgrounds. Through my exploration of diversity, I have come to realise that embracing different cultural expressions is not merely a question of adaptation; it is a nuanced and intricate process of discovering the intrinsic values within each culture. With Girl Talk, I aim to share my own experiences and convey the journey of navigating between feelings of confusion and the power of inclusivity, while simultaneously grappling with the challenges of trilingual identities in this interconnected world.

Luísa Tormenta – Supra-Memento

PHOTOGRAPHY

Luísa Tormenta – Supra-Memento

by Luísa Tormenta

Supra-Memento speculates on the preservation of human life within digital spaces and how bodies can morph into dematerialised reflections, thereby resisting the inevitable decay that faces our tangible realities. The work takes the form of a video installation, creating a meditative environment that physically engages the viewers. Using photogrammetry scans, I have preserved my body and those of loved ones, immortalising the ephemerality of human memories and relationships into a liminal space. Steeped in Vanitas symbolism, the sacredness of these bodies intertwines with the insignificance of decaying organic matter. While this photo-technique conveys an illusion of volume, it also exposes the fragmentation of the data, revealing how these too are temporal shells, vulnerable to disintegration.

Mattia Dagani Rio – METAMORPHOSIS

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Mattia Dagani Rio – METAMORPHOSIS

by Mattia Dagani Rio

METAMORPHOSIS is a photobook that delves into the complex tapestry of bodybuilding, examining its inherent interplay with torture, hedonism and eroticism. Bodybuilders subject themselves to gruelling training regimens, pushing their bodies to the absolute limits in the pursuit of self-expression. Using a combination of CGI with traditional methods of photography, this project explores moments of agony, highlighting the struggle and dedication required to reshape the body into an extraordinary form. However, it also shows how this practice is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance which consists of introspective moments, vulnerability and a profound intimacy with themselves, where viewers witness a process of transformation that extends far beyond the physical body.

Moritz Jekat – Wetlands of Pharmacology

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Moritz Jekat – Wetlands of Pharmacology

by Moritz Jekat

Exterior virtual organs that enter our bodies and transform our brains surround us. These pharmaca multiply in wetlands between online and real life. In a desire for healing and reconnecting, a group of humanoid aliens inhabit this space and come together in a caring pile of thoughts, emotions and dreams. They share with you, thanks to subconscious writing and wetland tools. A waterbed in space invites you to relax. In the concept of adoption of pharmacology, in contrast to adaptation to the super-fast, consumption-based virtual spheres that are transforming social habits, Wetlands of Pharmacology experiments with a slow coming together and exchange of emotional and physical knowledge of five artists in a computer game engine.

Amandine Kuhlmann – Cash Me Online

PHOTOGRAPHY

Amandine Kuhlmann – Cash Me Online

by Amandine Kuhlmann

Cash Me Online is a video project where I stage myself, combining performance with found footage. With the goal of achieving viral fame, I embrace delusion and despair in this exploration, which delves into the impact of cameras in the era of social media. Through a hyper-feminine digital alter ego based on my own algorithm, I perform in virtual and physical realms, fulfilling desires and aspirations. The project questions self-representation and the female gaze in the presence of empowered women on screen. The project examines tensions between toxic feminine tropes and how women reclaim them for empowerment. Found footage combined with a deepfake of my own face serves as a visual album, revealing content diversity and standardisation, introducing ambiguity in notions of dysmorphia.

Mykolas Valantinas – Lullaby’s Fault

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Mykolas Valantinas – Lullaby’s Fault

by Mykolas Valantinas

Lullaby’s Fault is a surreal docufictional short film that tells the story of twin brothers with wild and ferocious imaginations, the consequences of which lead them towards violence and ultimately, tragedy. Alternating between first person POV and a more stylised third person perspective, the film has a destabilising effect where the supposed validity of one comes into conflict with the surreal nature of the other. The narrative follows a metamorphic fairy-tale template where the protagonists undergo internal and/or external transformations. The naive, overwhelming nature of fantasy as a dangerous and explosive energy is expressed through two complementary perspectives: the eyes of a child and his older, lunatic self.

Gabriela Marciniak – Early Retirement

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Gabriela Marciniak – Early Retirement

by Gabriela Marciniak

“When you’re young and slow down, you’re lazy, but when you’re retired and you slow down, you’re happy to slow down”. As soon as we enter the word of adulthood, we realise that our everyday lives revolve around completing one task after another, checking off items from our to-do lists. Days pass in this manner, with the constant pressure of doing and working more. Driven by research, the artist explored early retirement in health resorts, places where we can relinquish control and devote our time to treatment, healing, pleasure and the process itself. There is no rush, no time. Video performance as a form of expression juxtaposes the body with architecture, creating a retirement wonderland. A one-channel movie, video performance, 4k, 16:9 frame

Yuji Wang – 1.0.0.1 Days

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Yuji Wang – 1.0.0.1 Days

by Yuji Wang

1.0.0.1 Days is a CG animation that revolves around the realm of data manipulation, delving into the inexorable rise of artificial intelligence in the era of big data. The video aims to speculate on the consequences of humanity’s increasing reliance on and trust in artificial intelligence, pondering the possibility of data manipulation and subsequent transformation into mere marionettes of information and electronic captives. From reality to virtual reality, is it possible to establish data as a new form of religion? As the narrative unfolds, a cyborg butterfly draws nearer to the humans confined to a glasshouse, with its tenderness, its curiosity, its ambition…

Gina Bolle – Instanz

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Gina Bolle – Instanz

by Gina Bolle

Instanz is an interactive installation consisting of a steel cell with a five-channel video, three infrared cameras and two surveillance cameras. Within a dark and insulated space, viewers are confronted with live feeds, humiliating or disturbing found footage and sound. Reflecting on Foucault’s “apparatus” theory, Instanz refers to a system that exerts power and control over society. It indicates how a camera can serve as a tool to harm its subjects. Similar to the panopticon, viewers have no control over whether they are being observed. By linking live streams with found footage, the work exposes the possibility of exploitation in the realm of photography and demonstrates the inherent power imbalances in visual consumption through a deprived experience.

Yumo Wu – The Room and the Photographs

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Yumo Wu – The Room and the Photographs

by Yumo Wu

The Room and the Photographs investigates the intertwined relationship between perception, space and photography. Initially, observers were placed inside a room to witness the raw essence of photography in the camera obscura. The digital evolution has reshaped the ontology of the medium and provided an entirely metamorphosed experience – observing photography with a detachment from reality. As in painting, I assemble a meticulous collection of physical photographs and computer-generated imagery. These domestic spaces lose their inherent perspective. They are familiar yet strange, fractured yet imbalanced. My photographic constructions, part memories, part materiality, attempt to reveal the complexity of perception in the realm of photography.

Carla Rossi – Bellissima

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Carla Rossi – Bellissima

by Carla Rossi

Bellissima follows the story of Rebecca, whom the photographer met on the stages of a popular Italian beauty pageant. ‘‘I was looking for a young girl who wasn’t necessarily a professional model, but who hoped to become one”. The project reflects on the photographic medium as a dream factory. The photographer shifts perspectives to highlight the construction of images and the model. The symbiosis between model, photographer and viewer reveals how images influence the dreams and aspirations of young girls. The work aims to criticise photography as a stage for the representation of beauty and to challenge the idea of the latter as a cult achieved through the attention of the camera. Would beauty still have meaning if no one could look at it?

Augustin Lignier – Container

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Augustin Lignier – Container

by Augustin Lignier

Container is a project about alienation. From the camera, the machine, space, images, the medium, and from an idea. Through the medium of photography and performance, I build rules to experience the relationship with the apparatus. By seeking to push my body to the limits, I experiment on the camera and the body like a black box in a white cube. The rules are inputs and the images the output. Attempting to understand the reaction of a repetitive action on the videos. Focusing on the obsession of pressing the shutter button on the images. Using this action as a solution. To see the pictures, the viewer has to perform the same action as the performer. The experiments give the power to the machine. Producing images, performing, recording and exhibiting are one thing.

Hikaru Hori – Slowpoke

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Hikaru Hori – Slowpoke

by Hikaru Hori

Slowpoke is a series of sculptural collages. Taken from my surroundings, the images of everyday objects are accumulated and layered to transform multi-sensory experiences. For the series, I worked in particular on the idea of a “combination of physical and digital perceptions” for the upcoming degree presentation. In response to this contemporary setting where the representation and the represented simultaneously affect our cognition, Slowpoke invites viewers to experience the hidden construction of image-making through sculptural collages.

Sophie Schreurs – Fed Underbelly of Silicon Valley

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Sophie Schreurs – Fed Underbelly of Silicon Valley

by Sophie Schreurs

Fed Underbelly of Silicon Valley is an immersive installation that makes the hidden social and political tensions of social media platforms physical and tangible. The power of social media platforms is not only apparent because they possess the archive of our culture, but mostly because they decide on the visibility of content. While seemingly democratic, it is clear that nowadays some voices are amplified while others are silenced by content moderation. I draw a parallel between the mechanisms behind social media platforms and the workings of the human body. I imagine the body as a carrier of memories and emotions that seep through and cling to the walls of our insides. Just like our organs filter and circulate – so do the platforms.

Alisa Strub – My Grind Bears Fruit

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Alisa Strub – My Grind Bears Fruit

by Alisa Strub

My Grind Bears Fruit is an installation of projected self-portraits combined with manually painted text which chart territory in my engagement with identity, self-revelation and contemporary media culture. It explores the tension between public and private life, the need to talk about ourselves and our thoughts while creating a blurry line between intimate documentation and a constructed point of view. The seemingly still but slightly moving images are situations where I perform for the camera, influenced by the perception of what I consume online daily. They combine and collide with an intuitive, free, yet deliberately scripted use of words culled from net culture and create a rhythmic counterpoint that challenges viewers to confront their own experiential thresholds.

Emma Bedos – Linger

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Emma Bedos – Linger

by Emma Bedos

How can we continue to exist in the places we have left, through the memories of those who remain? In this project, I wanted to grasp the feeling of distance and the way technology tries to compensate for it. I asked my relatives on my home island to capture images of shared memories. Transcribed in photogrammetry to materialise them, the combination of communication and memory work creates a new shared environment. The result highlights the omnipresence of the void. The installation materialises this remote contact, as the negative of itself, via cuts in fluttering and elusive silk. The imagination completes the memory and projects fantasised images of a distant ideal, where presence/absence resonates and lingers.

Yang Su – Cloud and Beyond the Infinite

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Yang Su – Cloud and Beyond the Infinite

by Yang Su

Clouds and Beyond the Infinite is a video installation with real-time simulation. Thanks to enhanced rendering engines and higher definition visual representations, the era of the metaverse, an immersive digital virtual environment, is fast emerging. Yet behind the dazzling and realistic visuals of the metaverse lie continuously expanding data centres, more GPU processing and power consumption, and the ensuing heat and carbon emissions. As the metaverse becomes better and more liveable, our physical environment is gradually deteriorating. The artist chose the “Cloud” element to depict an immersive virtual world, showing the flow of an infinity of clouds in various contexts.

Mahalia Taje Giotto – Existential Boner

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Mahalia Taje Giotto – Existential Boner

by Mahalia Taje Giotto

existential boner is a book about obsessions. Obsessions linked to the body, gender identity, sexuality and desire. Mahalia Taje Giotto, born in 1992, was assigned female at birth. Going through several phases of physical transformation - from writing on their skin as a child to tattoos as an adult and eating disorders as an adolescent - Taje began their transition in 2020. This identity journey is at the heart of their work, which expresses the incessant thoughts that drive them through a play of superimpositions. The daily observation of physical changes is transcribed in images and texts, somewhere between abstract and concrete. The result is an articulated chaos that reflects the way in which taje is experiencing their transformation, with a sculptural approach to the book as a reflection of the changes in her body. The artist explores their desires and fluid identity, while giving visibility to the transgender community from which they come.

Alexey Chernikov – Above Everything

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Alexey Chernikov – Above Everything

by Alexey Chernikov

Developed during the war in Ukraine, this project focuses on the fragility of our peaceful existence, the power of surveillance and uncertainty about the future. The project uses the visual vocabulary of military drones. A thermal camera is mounted on a drone that provides recognisable black and white imagery. The medium itself has a vital role as it conveys the aesthetic appearance of the work. A huge amount of images from battlefields are shot from the sky. This footage most often ends with a bomb strike. In Above Everything, a parallel reality is created where the ending of each video is unpredictable. The video sequences, together with distorted propeller sounds, create a feeling of constant threat, depicting the tension caused by the war that is happening thousands of kilometres away.

Clemens Fischer – Sticks and Wires

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Clemens Fischer – Sticks and Wires

by Clemens Fischer

Designed as a laboratory, this work consists of camera installations that speculate on a future where imagery is created and consumed without us being present. The camera becomes an independent actor that will have to learn to work, fail and interpret by itself. Equipped with minimal gear and tasks, the machines created are thrown into existence to find out their purpose and connection to the world around them. Clumsy, naive but at the same time heavily charged with our nostalgic heritage, these installations invite us to reflect on a temporary, improvised state of photography and our own importance as its creators.

Nikolai Frerichs – Carrie Ann

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Nikolai Frerichs – Carrie Ann

by Nikolai Frerichs

The movie Carrie Ann questions the concept of standardisation. Individuality and losing control seem impossible to achieve in digital environments. Nevertheless software developers are constantly trying to build new tools and possibilities to simulate our world as realistically as possible. However, when we take a closer look, we recognise that these tools and representations are full of stereotypes. Is it possible to speak about love in a controlled and unnatural synthetic world? Is our Idea of love just another readymade asset in our mind, formed by the ideals and clichés of the society we live in, or can love resist it? Is it truly something bigger or just a projection of our imagination? Does it have the power to save us from the standardisation of everything?

Manqin Zhang – I'm not a Loner

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Manqin Zhang – I'm not a Loner

by Manqin Zhang

I’m not a Loner is a photo-based installation in which Manqin acts as an archaeologist digging into the forgotten and insignificant part of life. The work consists of three resin spinning tops, four concrete blocks, five T-shirts, twelve lighters and two plates. By treating them as historical artifacts – displayed on plinths of different heights, evoking a forest-like environment – the work intends to construct a narrative of individual history through memories, relations and objects. While individual history describes fear, anger and guilt (personal, family-related, societal and historical), Manqin wishes to increase the role of the individual in history to evoke the importance of being oneself and to confront modern alienation.

Natalie Maximova – There Is No Spoon

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Natalie Maximova – There Is No Spoon

by Natalie Maximova

Mention Bien This artwork is an interpretation of the possibility that we are living in a computer-generated reality, similar to a video game, inspired by the ideas of simulation theory. The world is built as an assemblage of soulless structures with no indication of time or place. The rapid change of architectural styles throughout the journey explains the ambiguity of simulation theory and the impossibility of proving it. There are multitudes of architectures and imaginations, thus there are multitudes of mysteries. It is a journey halfway between dream and nightmare. In the absence of a total understanding, what else can we do but plough ahead? Video installation: CGI animation created in the game engine, surround sound.

Sara Bastai – RAM_1.0

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Sara Bastai – RAM_1.0

by Sara Bastai

RAM 1.0 is a collaborative project between myself and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is a fictional account of my life, based on my personal visual archive, but constructed and mediated by AI. The project explores the concept of memories and the importance of the construction of an archive in the digital realm.  Focused on the interaction between images and text, I let AI analyse my memories and then reinterpret the captions to create new images. New memories are created in the form of five different books and five slide shows on a modular installation. Floating between human and non-human, the dialogue between myself and the machine comes into being and enables you to immerse yourself in a new data set of my memories through the gaze of technology.

Olivia Wünsche – New State of Equilibrium

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Olivia Wünsche – New State of Equilibrium

by Olivia Wünsche

New State of Equilibrium is a visual interpretation of my years-long spiritual quest and psychedelic adventures. Inner peace, a sense of deep connectedness, unbounded love for the natural world and longing for transcendence are central themes I tried to visualise throughout this project. Both the book and the installation attempt to question and investigate the mechanisms and limitations of our cognitive and sensory perception. By emphasising the simultaneous presence of the visible and the invisible, I seek to challenge the secular, materialistic worldview that still seems to prevail in our Western culture.

Maeva Bosko – Step into the unknown

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Maeva Bosko – Step into the unknown

by Maeva Bosko

Entering the Unknown is an immersive experience that tends to alter the consciousness during an introspective journey. Because of its wild and authentic side, the forest has always bewitched the collective mind. A nature of peace but also a kingdom of mysteries, the forest gives off an almost supernatural force. To cross the threshold of the forest, because of its deep roots, is to open the door of the unconscious and to trigger the awakening of panic fears, terrors or even phobias. According to Jung, these terrors translate the fear of seeing the contents of the unconscious revealed, the fear of meeting oneself.Starting from the conscious world you gonna dive to reach the world of the unconscious. A fall into the realms of the unknown.

Joanna Wierzbicka – Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something

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Joanna Wierzbicka – Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something

by Joanna Wierzbicka

What is a body, where does it start, where does it end? How do we experience having a body and being a body, especially among other bodies? How can we resituate ourselves within earth others, and rethink relations on a wider level between human and nonhuman actants to account for a more ethical living? The project aims to interrogate the notion of bodily matter, recapture our corporeality and challenge the assumption that our bodies end at the skin. Instead, they are redefined as radically open systems, human and non-human assemblages, corporeal chimeras, microbiotic multi-species in the constant process of becoming. Matter, when recognised as an active agent, helps to acknowledge infinite interactions within complex networks of agency between various porous corporealities and entities. Trans-corporeality disrupts divisions between a body and the world. Bodies leave traces everywhere, ascribing themselves into various corporeal, technological, political narratives, but also traces are ascribed onto bodies - mediating and altering their flesh. As captured by Haraway in the figuration of compost - we are always becoming with others, together creating a lively matter of compost, composing and decomposing each other. “Nothing is connected to everything, everything is connected to something” takes a form of an installation, a speculative self-portrait as compost, built out of images of my own body (made with different apparatuses including Scanning Electron Microscope, digital microscopes) mixed with still lifes of food and different materials representing the transformation and movement, as in compost. Additionally, sculptures are accompanied by the video that expands on the idea of corporeal companionship and brings in the notion of uncanny-like lump of flesh covered with skin. It is a performative act, a result of wondering how to become a microorganism, a bacteria and if I am already enough of one. All the parts of installation, exploring the line between oppositions such as human/nonhuman, internal/external, self/the other, refer to the definition of an abject and are meant to translate that moment, or a sensation - how a breakdown in meaning, something expelled from “I” eventually comes to define “I”.

Emidio Battipaglia – Build38, Patch Release 13

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Emidio Battipaglia – Build38, Patch Release 13

with Simone Niquille, François Zajega

Mention Bien The work addresses genetic determinism, representation, network infrastructure and privacy using a range of digital techniques to reflect on technology. Current technological approaches are characterised by an aspiration to map the world in order to achieve a full quantification of reality, reducing the subject to mere data or a collection of commodified objects. The installation uses a range of technological tools (VR, DNA analysis, AI, photography) and aims to present the outcomes of my theoretical research through a personal journey.

Robin Bervini – Until I Stop Trying to Get Out of My Skin

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Robin Bervini – Until I Stop Trying to Get Out of My Skin

by Robin Bervini

Mention Excellent Prix Elinchrom “Until I Stop Trying to Get Out of My Skin” is a spatial and virtual reality installation that depicts the artist’s personal struggle in seeking his identity as a mixed-race man in Southern Switzerland. Surrounded by white family and friends and knowing only local culture, the artist identified as white, but the continuous questioning of his origins and prejudices made him doubt his belonging. The installation puts the viewer in the artist’s shoes: by embodying his avatars, the viewer meets the artist’s alter-egos which are the embodiment of his ideal selves at various stages of his life.

Philipp Klak – wasserturm()

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Philipp Klak – wasserturm()

by Philipp Klak

Mention Bien Randomness is a crucial quality in artistic practice. This project addresses the issue of the extent to which machines can help further enhance and overcome the human aspect by programming an image and randomly generating unlimited variations of the same scene and the same type of object. During my time at ECAL I developed an interest in studying hidden processes and structures. For this project, and in reference to the history of photography and in particular to the Bechers’ typologies, I randomly generated images with the help of a fully automated system.

Jelena Luise – tip-toeing on blades of glory

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Jelena Luise – tip-toeing on blades of glory

by Jelena Luise

It is inevitable that after a shared crisis, time will be described as having a before and after. Seeing everything burned to the ground may be disturbing at first but profound transformations are at work. This provides an opportunity to build something new - but what? Expanding on a moment of overwhelming climax, the scope of our imagination is put to the test. The old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters.

Doruk Kumkumoglu – Gates

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Doruk Kumkumoglu – Gates

with Simone Niquille, François Zajega

Digging a hole and excavating the land can be seen as the most primitive and elementary human activity. However, it is also something to which all human activity can be reduced to. This project mainly investigates our relationship with the land by depicting a strange reality in which a two-dimensional ground plan opens up to reveal tunnels of different shapes and sizes. The work is meant to create a sort of religious journey, enabling the viewer to contemplate life, cyclical reality and perpetual motion through unending paths and tunnels.

Johanna Hullar – If I Could Only Be Sure

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Johanna Hullar – If I Could Only Be Sure

with Charles Negre

Inspired by the human capacity for emotional transformation and the examination of the still life genre, the project merges a series of still life videos of characterised everyday objects and organic material, creating a collage of different recurring moments and processes in time. The emphasis is on exploring the concept of entropy, making time tangible and capturing the transformation of a moment into its material representation. The project is presented on a 12x2m half-circular projection screen, thus surrounding the viewer with the imagery and allowing for a more visceral experience.

Jung-Ting Hu – Shuǐhuò

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Jung-Ting Hu – Shuǐhuò

with Charles Negre

“Shuǐhuò” is a Mandarin term that refers to the trade of a commodity through distribution channels that are not authorised by the original manufacturer or trademark proprietor. 水 (“Shuǐ”) in Mandarin means “water”, while 貨 (“huò”) means “goods”. However, since the commodity is not authorised, the quality is usually poor. Therefore, when we see poor quality products, we use the word “Shuǐ” to describe them.

Alessia Gunawan – Counter Faith

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Alessia Gunawan – Counter Faith

with Simone Niquille, François Zajega

“Counter Faith” addresses a personal narrative with the aim of understanding the driver behind the construction of gated communities in Indonesia, while the violent events of 1998 remain unresolved in the nation’s damaged belief system. Single-channel video, 10'34"

Gedvile Tamosiunaite – We are not so far away, it’s just water

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Gedvile Tamosiunaite – We are not so far away, it’s just water

with Bruno Ceschel

The two-channel video installation aims to transfer contemporary human emotions into visual digital culture and non-verbal codes. Our desire to connect with other species (AI, nature) is explored through the premise that it is rooted in deep existential fear. This emotional experience requires dominance, seen here as a form of captivity: by investigating artificial environments we create for this purpose, I question whether we can still see ourselves as a part of nature. Lastly, a tactile experience is sought by visually conveying limiting and unpleasant sensations.

Igor Pjörrt – Apartamento

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Igor Pjörrt – Apartamento

with Bruno Ceschel

Growing up between apartments in the same complex, a familiar feeling would remain in the empty homes, encouraging transformation. Such is the experience of inhabiting a body, fluctuating from one state into another. In “Apartamento”, this oscillation takes place in potential constellations around gender binarity. The male/female dichotomy is replaced by a dichotomy between gender and its negation. This renunciation however, is a perpetual shift, a gathering of questions rather than answers, a set of daily contemplations in the face of psychic constructs.

Chris Harker – Entangled Life

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Chris Harker – Entangled Life

with Bruno Ceschel

Throughout the enterprise of human civilisation, it has been deemed important to be able to control the natural environment for the benefit of progress, which in turn has led to a tendency to divide the natural and the cultural sphere. In an attempt to rejuvenate an understanding of the biosphere as one of constant cross-contamination, “Entangled Life” emphasises the notion of fungal networks as an encouraging force in decentralising humanity, thus transgressing anthropocentric notions of perceiving the world.

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