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Dragon Hunt

Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Dragon Hunt

Curated by
Domen Ograjenšek

Exhibition
15 January–14 February 2025
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Opening
WED, 15 January at 7 PM

Acid-burned visions of landscapes like falling in and out of sleep in an airconditionless ride in August midday heat. A journey can take many forms. Some happen to reorient a person’s mind, offer inspiration in moments when inspiration is hard to come by; others reveal themselves as allies with the mundane and obsequious, draining those already burdened by the ins and outs of life’s small tedious obligations. Few take the route of challenging the foundations we tend to rely on.

Inspired by the tradition of Dragon Hunting described in Samuel Delany’s novel Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Dragon Hunt by Marko Gutić Mižimakov, combines machine learning, dance, and travel as tools of unencumbered ideation. The experimental short film takes on the genre of a road trip movie, inscribing it with abstract and fantastic elements that weirden and complicate the depicted landscapes of the Dalmatian Hinterland – developing them as scenes of queer exploration of mimicry, media translation and friendship. Amid these algorithmic visions, a language of shapeshifting, areal and land becoming, and dedication to the subtlest rhythms of one’s (self-)asserted jouissance.

THE AUTHOR

Marko Gutić Mižimakov (1992) is a visual, performance and text based artist living between Brussels and Zagreb. They are interested in shaping sensory materials through intimate, collaborative and social processes. In their work bodies, as well as digital and palpable objects, are animated, choreographed and sung into non-orientable forms via different media and processes of translation. Often borrowing from queer science fiction they see their work as a speculative technology of mutual transformation. They have an MA in Animated Film and New Media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2022/2023 they were an artistic researcher at a.pass. Currently they are an adjunct faculty member at Paris College of Art in the department of Transdisciplinary New Media.

THE CURATOR

Domen Pal / Aksioma

Domen Ograjenšek is a writer, critic and curator of contemporary visual art. She is a former member of the ŠUM Journal editorial board and its research collective, and she has given lectures and seminars at art institutions such as the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC Ljubljana), the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM), Škuc Gallery, PhaseBook Prague, Nova Pošta and the International Festival of Computer Art (IFCA). Her reviews and essays have been published in magazines and online platforms such as PASSE-AVANT, Artalk, Blok Magazine, Fotograf Magazine, all-over Magazine, ETC. Magazine, Maska Magazine, ŠUM Journal, Borec Journal, Tribuna and Radio Študent. She has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Madness Trate, SCCA-Ljubljana, Aksioma Project Space, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (as a member of the Neteorit collective), Center for Contemporary Arts Celje (Likovni salon) and Škuc Gallery. She is based in Vienna.

CREDITS

Author: Marko Gutić Mižimakov
Curator and author of the text: Domen Ograjenšek

Production of the exhibition: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2025

Financial support: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana

Cute Accelerationism in Ljubljana

Maya B. Kronic, Amy Ireland
Maya B. Kronic, Amy Ireland
Cute Accelerationism in Ljubljana

Performance lecture
5 December 2024 at 6 PM
Cukrarna, Ljubljana

Why is cuteness so powerful, and what is it doing to us? In this A/V performance based around the book Cute Accelerationism Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic will explore the symptomatology, aetiology, epidemiology, history, biology, etymology, topology, and even embryology of Cute, burrowing down into its natural, cultural, sensory, sexual, subjective, erotic, and semiotic dimensions in order to sound out the latent spaces of this Thing that has an irresistible hold on contemporary culture.

THE AUTHORS

Maya B. Kronic is the agent, patient, and product of an ongoing research project on hyperstition, gender accelerationism, and cuteness. They are head of R&D at the UK publisher Urbanomic, co-author, with Amy Ireland, of Cute Accelerationism, and author of numerous texts on philosophy, music, and contemporary art as well as a prolific translator of philosophical works.

Amy Ireland  is a key member of technomaterialist transfeminist collective Laboria Cuboniks (best known for their 2015 text ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’). She is an editor and translator at Urbanomic. Before Cute Accelerationism, Ireland penned the foreword to Gruppo di Nun’s ‘anthology of occult resistance’ Revolutionary Demonology.

CREDITS

Authors: Maya B. Kronic, Amy Ireland

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, Urbanomic, Sophia, Konferenca Dediščine antihumanizma (FF & FDV)

The Stones Only Appear To Be Non-Living

Swamp_Matter
Swamp_Matter
The Stones Only Appear To Be Non-Living

Curated by
Maja Burja

Exhibition
27 November–20 December 2024
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists

Domen Pal / Aksioma | MORE

Countless drops carve underground cavities into a mass of limestone – rituals, graves, shelters at the gates to the underground – an explorer’s descent into the dark mouth of a cave – smooth wet surfaces wind into the unknown depth – the flash of a magnesium strip – sediments, speleothems, draperies, columns, rimstone pools – pitons, carbide lamps, electricity, concrete – ultrasonic bat screeches – floods, alluvium, blowholes – the Reka River disappears into the underworld with deafening noise.

In the project The Stones Only Appear To Be Non-Living, the duo Swamp_Matter explores the karstic system of water caves as a temporally and materially manifold depository of climate history. The immersive installation has been created based on a situated and embodied research of the Škocjan Caves and builds a speculative and multilayered setting of transformations and dimensions beyond the human, which actively produces new modes of openness to the world.

In the framework of deep geological time, the seemingly eternal, atmospherically stable and petrified cave is an environment of flux. As a primordial heterotopy that combines the opposites of the living and the non-living, the known and the unknown, permanence and transitions, the ancient past and a distant future, it represents a glitch in the history of appropriating natural environments – an unrecognisable, uneven and changeable area that resists clear boundaries and dividing lines, even to the surface.  

A zone of constant percolation into the depths, opening up ever new inaccessible areas, and a simultaneous constant accumulation of sediments and overground material is formed by the Reka River, which, in the installation, becomes a vessel for the heterochronic narrative of the underground. The passage between various dimensions of the river – from droplets to the ponor – is channelled by sound, which dissolves bodies and guides them underground.

The researchers attempt to build an interface for interacting with the underground world beyond observation or reading using multiple – insufficient, partial, failed and contradictory – means of mediation. They thus articulate a new site that accepts the glitch in its entirety and establishes a channel for expressing the multitude of possible dimensions of an environment that actively opposes visibility, clarity, productivity and meaning.  

In the development of new procedures of localisation, they combine organic, soil and technological elements – discrete series of data points, surface captures with photogrammetry, procedural (human and automated) reconstructions of deep-time sediments, casts of once stolen cave formations, models between the physical and the digital and projections of growth algorithms. 

Hyperlocalised and fragmented artefacts erode the image of a non-living and permanent landscape, outlining a new, unknown and onto-epistemologically open terrain. They open a new area of sensitivity that emphasises the instability of our own ground in the wake of the depths of the Earth’s crust, from which the horror of the Planet as an indifferent, unrepresentable and uncontrollable world-without-us leaks. 

THE AUTHOR

Domen Pal / Aksioma

Swamp_Matter consists of Eva Garibaldi and Ana Laura Richter. They are interested in ecological topics and the impact of the Anthropocene on ecosystems. Their practice examines the relationship between humans and nature in the context of geological time through marginal and capitalistically unproductive landscapes like swamps and caves. They create spatial installations interwoven with digital media, and interlaced with speculative fiction. Eva Garibaldi holds a Master of Interior Architecture: Research + Design (Cum Laude, 2021) from the Piet Zwart Institute (NL) and a BA in Industrial Design from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Ljubljana (2018). Her work has been presented in Soapbox Journal, Art Rotterdam and BIO27, among others. Ana Laura Richter completed her MA in Ecology Futures (2022) at St. Joost School of Art & Design (NL) and holds a BA in Dramaturgy from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film, and Television (2019). Her work has been presented at The New Current 2023 (Art Rotterdam).

THE CURATOR

Domen Pal / Aksioma

Maja Burja is a curator and producer of new media art. Her work is characterised by a critical engagement with emerging and obsolete technology and an interest in cybernetics, metafiction and emergent gameplay. She has curated and produced several art exhibitions and projects, artist residencies, lectures, workshops, meetups and festivals. She has been collaborating regularly with Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory since 2018 and Aksioma since 2022.

CREDITS

Authors: Swamp_Matter (Eva Garibaldi, Ana Laura Richter)
Curator and author of the text: Maja Burja

Sound: Ida Hiršenfelder (beepblip)
Narration: Lucy Rose Albert, Ana Laura Richter, Eva Garibaldi
Ceramics: Ana Ščuka
Programming: Jernej Koprivnikar

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2024
Part of the U30+ production programme for supporting young artists.

Financial support: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana, Stimulerings Fonds Creative Industrie NL and Škocjan Caves Public Service Agency, Slovenia

The use of research equipment for 3D capture of the cave was made possible by ZRC SAZU as part of the project “Development of research infrastructure for the international competitiveness of the Slovenian RRI space – RI-SI-EPOS”, supported by the Republic of Slovenia, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, and the European Regional Development Fund.

Thanks to: Škocjan Caves Public Service Agency, Slovenia (Borut Peric, Polona Kovačič, Borut Lozej, Tomaž Smerdelj, dr. Rosana Cerkvenik, Marko Požar), Karst Research Institute, ZRC SAZU (Matej Blatnik), Center Rog (Tomo Per, Keramičarski lab in FabLab), Snježana Premuš, Blaž Pavlica (Ljudmila), Urška Savič, Damjan Ristić (Cerkev Sv. Jožefa), Maruša Mazej.

Domen Pal / Aksioma
BOOK PREVIEW
ORDER
METALABEL

Price: 20€
Language: English

(un)real data ☁️ – (🧊)real effects explores the inherent ambiguity of data as an opportunity to not only describe the world but strategically intervene in it. Is it possible to create specific real-world outcomes by modifying our data streams? Can we intentionally produce data to interact with an algorithmic environment that is opaque, elusive and at the same time all-encompassing? In this book, the authors and artists explore the production of unreal data as acts of resistance and opposition, and as attempts to carve out small and often temporary spaces of agency and autonomy when faced with systems that seem to leave little room for imagination and choice. 

With texts by Régine Debatty, Xiaowei R. Wang, Günseli Yalçınkaya, Milia Xin Bi and Thomas Spies, artworks by Simon Weckert and Total Refusal, and a collaborative project by Selena Savić, Gordan Savičić and !Mediengruppe Bitnik.

EN | 10.5 x 16.7 cm | 192 pp | B/W and 1/32 colour | soft cover | 2024
ISBN 978-961-7173-57-4

Colophon

(un)real data ☁️ – (🧊)real effects

Contributors: Régine Debatty, Thomas Spies, Xiaowei Wang, Milia Xin Bi, Günseli Yalçınkaya

Editors: !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Janez Fakin Janša
Editorial assistants: Noemi Garay, Rok Kranjc
Copyediting: Miha Šuštar
Design and layout: Federico Antonini, Simone Cavallin

Special thanks to Felix Stalder for his valuable editorial input.

Print: Collegium Graphicum
No. of copies: 600

Published by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Represented by: Marcela Okretič

Ljubljana, November 2024
© Aksioma, the authors

As part of Tactics&Practics#15: (un)real data ☁️ – (🧊)real effects curated by !Mediengruppe Bitnik (Carmen Weisskopf and Domagoj Smoljo) in collaboration with Janez Fakin Janša.

The research was conducted within the framework of the SNF-funded project Latent Spaces: Performing Ambiguous Data (#100016_200971) at the Zürich University of the Arts.

Promotion and distribution: Sonja Grdina

Related event: Tactics & Practice #15: (Un)real Data – Real Effects

Chora

Gaia Radić
Gaia Radić
Chora

Curated by
Maja Burja

Exhibition
2–24 October 2024
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists

Domen Pal | MORE

With her immersive video installation Chora, artist Gaia Radić introduces a new chapter in the body of virtual worlds that perform as perceptual narratives and transform the spaces they inhabit into autopoietic worlding systems.

In Chora, the space waits in stillness for a visitor. Upon their arrival, a split point of view emerges within the expansive virtuality. Through two opposing apertures, a geological terrain, seemingly unbound by any specific site, begins to unfold. The world, comprised of interconnected lagoons, appears to overflow with an ethereal primordial liquid, keeping the space in constant flux.

This steady stream guides the visitor’s eye along the creased topology that is, in turn, slowly winding its way through the viewer as well. In this encounter, the viewer’s perceptual organs become channels through which the space reflects upon itself. Chora both shapes and is shaped by its material host and realises its generative potential when the physical and virtual realms meet through the viewer’s perception.

The heterotopic space functions as a sieve where one world is reflected and refracted into another, producing a self-referential reality that continually reforms itself. For as soon as self-formulation begins, dissipation follows. When the viewer leaves, the landscape settles, and Chora returns to its dormant state until the arrival of a new body.

THE AUTHOR

Aleksandar Selak

Gaia Radić is a new media artist working with computer graphics and spatial installation. She holds a BA in Sculpture from the Academy in Rijeka. Currently, she is pursuing her master’s studies in Video, Animation and New Media as well as studying architecture at the University of Ljubljana. She has exhibited in many solo exhibitions and over thirty group shows across Croatia and Slovenia and was the recipient of the ERSTE Award at the 36th Youth Salon in Zagreb.

THE CURATOR

Domen Pal / Aksioma

Maja Burja is a curator and producer of new media art. Her work is characterised by a critical engagement with emerging and obsolete technology and an interest in cybernetics, metafiction and emergent gameplay. She has curated and produced several art exhibitions and projects, artist residencies, lectures, workshops, meetups and festivals. She has been collaborating regularly with Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory since 2018 and Aksioma since 2022.

CREDITS

Author: Gaia Radić
Curator and author of the text: Maja Burja
Music and sound: Gašper Torkar
Technical assistance: Oskar Kandare

Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2024
Part of the U30+ production programme for supporting young artists

Financial support: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana and The Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia

Thanks: Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, Projekt Atol Institute, Andrej Škufca

The final projection was rendered in cooperation with the Czech National Supercomputing Center IT4Innovations, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava.

    Tactics&Practice [podcast]: The Future Behind Us

    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #10: What Are the Limits of Interspecies Communication? [w/ Maja Smrekar]

    We have lived alongside dogs for thousands of years. How close have we grown to each other since we first domesticated them? In one of her performances, artist Maja Smrekar biologically manipulated her body so that she could use her own breast milk to feed an Icelandic Spitz puppy. Behind its spectacular and, for some, controversial guises, Smrekar’s exploration of transpecies motherhood probed uncomfortable issues such as the instrumentalisation of female bodies, the problematic position of the human species at the top and centre of ecosystems, the ambiguities of biotechnological promises and the prospect of a post-human world.

    Spotify Soundcloud Apple podcast YouTube Music RSS
    Additional content

    Maja Smrekar
    https://www.majasmrekar.org

    Hybrid Family
    https://www.majasmrekar.org/k-9topology-hybrid-family

    Miha Godec
    https://godec.art

    Gjino Šutić
    https://mtflabs.net/gjino-sutic

    Thomas Feuerstein
    https://www.thomasfeuerstein.net

    Richard Pell
    https://postnatural.org/rich-pell

    Paul Vanouse
    https://www.paulvanouse.com

    Adam Zaretsky
    https://inarts.eu/en/lab/staff/zaretsky

    Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts
    https://tcaproject.net

    Yann Marussich
    https://www.yannmarussich.ch/home.php

    Eduardo Kac
    https://www.ekac.org

    Steve Kurtz
    http://critical-art.net

    The documentary My Octopus Teacher (2020) by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Maja Smrekar

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #9: When an AI Governs Your City [w/ Pinar Yoldas]

    Smart cities across the world are pioneering chatbots, autonomous vehicles and AI technologies to help streamline bureaucratic services, facilitate police recruitment, fill in potholes or locate resources at the library. Could algorithmic systems of control and governance be applied to all public services? Could an ultra-efficient AI kitten centralise and impersonate all the services, authorities and regulations that make a large city function? Artist, designer and academic Pinar Yoldas believes this is a plausible and perhaps desirable scenario. Why wouldn’t a loving and cute robot be better at running the lives of citizens than human high-ranking officials?

    Spotify Soundcloud Apple podcast YouTube Music RSS
    Additional content

    Pinar Yoldas
    https://www.pinaryoldas.info

    Speculative Biologies
    https://www.pinaryoldas.info/WORK/Speculative-Biologies-2008

    Kitty AI: Artificial Intelligence for Governance
    https://www.pinaryoldas.info/The-Kitty-AI-Artificial-Intelligence-for-Governance-2016

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Pinar Yoldas

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #8: Taming AI, Playing AI [w/ Sanela Jahić]

    Can everything – including vision, flexibility, imagination and other skills often associated with creative practices – be turned into data? Should artists feel threatened by AIs that compose music, make animation movies or write novels? Or is there something intrinsically uncomputable in the artistic mind? Are predictive algorithms creators’ friends or foes? Can you automate artistic processes and gestures?

    Artist Sanela Jahić collaborates with engineers, lecturers in creative and social computing as well as experts in health informatics to investigate workers’ subordination to machinery, the possible automation of artistic practices and the role of algorithms in the transition towards authoritarianism.

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    Additional content

    Sanela Jahic
    https://sanelajahic.com

    NO TO AI, YES TO A NON-FASCIST APPARATUS
    https://sanelajahic.com/works/no-to-ai-yes-to-a-non-fascist-apparatus

    Books and authors mentioned in the conversation:

    Matko Meštrović
    https://monoskop.org/Matko_Me%C5%A1trovi%C4%87

    Douglas R. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop, 2007 (Basic Books)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

    Dan McQuillan, Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence, 2022 (Bristol University Press)
    https://danmcquillan.org/pages/book.html

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Sanela Jahić

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #7: Solidarity, Perils and Ethics on Darknet Markets [w/ !Mediengruppe Bitnik]

    Darknet markets, identity shielding, bots and cryptocurrencies have revolutionised commerce and society, each in its own way. What happens when you bring all these disrupting ingredients together? Doma Smoljo and Carmen Weisskopf from !Mediengruppe Bitnik created a piece of software that randomly buys goods and services on the darknet and then gets them shipped to an art gallery. Alongside the passport scan and the odd pair of fake designer sneakers, the artists gained insights into who or what is legally responsible when a bot buys illicit goods, the emergence of new grey zones and the quality of the services provided by sellers on darkmarkets.

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    Additional content

    !Mediengruppe Bitnik
    https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org

    Random Darknet Shopper
    https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r

    What Happens When a Software Bot Goes on a Darknet Shopping Spree?
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/05/software-bot-darknet-shopping-spree-random-shopper

    ISSA – Island School of Social Autonomy
    https://issa-school.org

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: !Mediengruppe Bitnik 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #6: Chasing the Physicality of the Internet [w/ Evan Roth]

    Internet has obliterated borders, distances and other hallmarks of geography, making us forget its material reality: its data centres, wires, routers, processors and a vast network of intercontinental cables. Artist Evan Roth has travelled the globe to make infrared videos of coastal landscapes where fiberoptic submarine cables emerge from the sea to enable communication across oceans.
    Contemplating the infrastructure that makes and shapes the internet helps us see through the digital noise, find new ways to share space with people we’ve never met and delineate a more complex picture of the vulnerabilities and complexities that shape the dynamics and geopolitics of 21st-century communication systems.

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    Additional content

    Evan Roth
    https://www.evan-roth.com

    Red Lines
    https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/red-lines

    Books mentioned in the conversation:

    Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, 2012 (Ecco)
    https://www.andrewblum.net/tubes-2

    Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, 2014 (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company)
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062598/thepeoplesplatform

    Arden Reed, Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell, 2019 (University of California Press)
    https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300583/slow-art

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Evan Roth 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #5: Social Justice, Satire and Video Games [w/ Paolo Pedercini from MOLLEINDUSTRIA]

    Can you make video games about environmental justice or labour? How about religion, the military, gun violence, mass incarceration, immigration or the Anthropocene? Can you entertain players with such hard-hitting matters? Can you use games to make players reflect on ethics, politics and the economy? Since 2003, MOLLEINDUSTRIA has been devising “artisanal remedies to the idiocy of mainstream entertainment in the form of short experimental games”. What started as a project to create mordant parodies soon became one of the most iconic pioneering works of critical video games

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    Additional content

    MOLLEINDUSTRIA
    https://www.molleindustria.org

    LIKELIKE Gallery
    https://likelike.org

    Phone Story
    http://www.phonestory.org

    The New York Times Simulator
    https://molleindustria.itch.io/the-new-york-times-simulator

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Paolo Pedercini from MOLLEINDUSTRIA 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #4: Up-Close and Personal with Impersonal Power Structures [w/ Jill Magid]

    What does it feel to infiltrate or work alongside structures of power that most of us find impersonal and intimidating? How do you capitalise on the systemic loopholes and quirks inherent to institutions of authority such as intelligence agencies, corporations, bureaucracies and law enforcement agencies? Artist, author and filmmaker Jill Magid makes use of small institutional quirks to establish an intimate connection with people “on the inside” and probe the emotional, philosophical and legal tensions between the individual and the institutions that govern our lives.

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    Additional content

    Jill Magid
    https://www.jillmagid.co

    Authority to Remove
    https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/level-2-gallery-jill-magid

    The Proposal
    https://www.jillmagid.com/film

    Watch on Apple TV
    https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-proposal/umc.cmc.6lwx7utr6f31iwher2e57d631

    Amazon Prime
    https://www.amazon.com/Proposal-Jill-Magid/dp/B07RXP8377

    Collecteurs
    https://www.collecteurs.com/article/jill-magid-the-proposal

    And Oscilloscope
    https://theproposal.oscilloscope.net/

    Jerzy Kosinski, Cockpit, 1975
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockpit_(novel)

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Jill Magid 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #3: How Much is Your Democracy Worth? [w/ UBERMORGEN]

    In 2000, during the presidential race between George Bush and Al Gore, a group of “Maverick Austrian Business People” launched a platform that gave US voters the possibility to auction off their votes to bidders on the internet. Thirteen US states attempted to shut down the project with temporary restraining orders and injunctions. The media circus around the project was mind-boggling. As for the maverick business people behind the scandalous proposal, they were not entrepreneurs, they were artists: Liz Haas and Lúzius Bernhard from UBERMORGEN. Their artistic intervention went viral long before “becoming viral” was part of our vocabulary. What does this say about the enduring confusion between fact and fiction, the opacity of democratic institutions under capitalism and the ease with which a duo of provocateurs can manipulate the attention of the mass media?

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    Additional content

    UBERMORGEN
    https://www.ubermorgen.com/UM/index.html

    [V]ote-auction
    https://www.vote-auction.net

    PMC Wagner Arts
    https://www.pmcwagner.art

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: UBERMORGEN

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #2: Decolonising Museum Collections [w/ Nora Al-Badri]

    The discussion about the growing list of looted and illicitly acquired museum treasures is one that most Westerners would rather not think about. Unless a scandal, a protest, a movie or a contemporary artwork forces ex-colonising countries to confront the firm grip that their institutions maintain on access to knowledge, cultural materials and the global narratives of history. Since 2016, Nora Al-Badri has been developing artworks that use AI, deepfake technology and 3D scanning to spark debates about power imbalances and ethical museum practices.

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    Additional content

    Nora Al-Badri
    https://www.nora-al-badri.de

    The Other Nefertiti
    https://aksioma.org/the.other.nefertiti

    The Last Museum
    https://www.kw-berlin.de/thelastmuseum/nora-1

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Nora Al-Badri 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Future Behind Us | Ep. #1: PsyOps and Other Secret Military Programmes [w/Trevor Paglen]

    Over the years, Trevor Paglen has documented operations, locations and activities that were meant to remain hidden from the public. He has tracked and photographed the world of secret satellites, flew in a helicopter over the NSA headquarters with the express purpose of taking aerial photographs of it and, in the early 2000s, investigated the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” programme which consisted of kidnapping, disappearing and torturing people that the agency accused of terrorism.

    The artist, author and geographer discusses suspicious activities in the night sky, classified programmes and the weaponisation of human perception in the context of military and civilian influence operations.

    Spotify Soundcloud Apple podcast YouTube Music RSS
    Additional content

    Trevor Paglen
    https://paglen.studio

    Doty
    https://paglen.studio/2023/05/10/doty

    Trevor Paglen, I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World, 2008 (Melville House)
    https://paglen.studio/2020/04/22/symbology-patches

    COLOPHON

    Host: Régine Debatty
    Guest: Trevor Paglen 

    Recording: Régine Debatty
    Music, editing and audio mix: Gašper Torkar

    The Future Behind Us podcast series

    Curated by: Régine Debatty
    Coordinated by: Janez Fakin Janša

    Produced by: Marcela Okretič

    Production:
    Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana, 2024

    Part of:
    PXXP•XXV: Speculation and Decay

    Conceived and co-organised by:
    Aksioma

    For:
    Pixxelpoint – 25th International Festival of Contemporary Art Practices

    Produced and co-organised by:
    Nova Gorica Arts Centre

    In the framework of:
    GO! 2025 – European Capital of Culture, Nova Gorica 2025

    Supported by:
    the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Nova Gorica

    The Kawayoku Tales: Aestheticisation of Violence in Military, Gaming, Social Media Cultures and Other Stories

    Noura Tafeche
    PREVIEW
    ORDER
    METALABEL

    Kawayoku, a hybrid research area, explores the intersections of cuteness culture, digital warfare and the aestheticisation of violence in an era of semiotic ambiguity and post-truth. From the fetishisation of Weapons Grade Waifus and anthropomorphic warships in games like Azur Lane to the “Israeli” Defense Forces’ TikTok strategies, the essay reveals how cuteness and entertainment serve as tools of domestication, converging state-nationalism with the impish, and the uniform with the algorithm.

    Noura Tafeche is a visual artist and independent researcher with a focus on net.art and radical entertainment. Her research delves into phenomena related to online visual cultures, aestheticisation of violence on digital platforms, linguistic experimentation and visual representation
    of speculative imaginaries.

    Colophon

    Noura Tafeche
    The Kawayoku Tales: Aestheticisation of Violence in Military, Gaming, Social Media Cultures and Other Stories

    PostScriptUM #51
    Series edited by Janez Fakin Janša

    Publisher: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
    Represented by: Marcela Okretič

    Editorial assistant: Rok Kranjc
    Proofreading: Miha Šuštar
    Design: Federico Antonini
    Layout: Sonja Grdina

    Cover image: Noura Tafeche’s 2024 collage based on images from Azur Lane, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA: Dace, illustrated by 梦咲枫; Monarch, illustrated by Liduke; Juno, illustrated by 梦咲枫; screenshot of a “fleet build” by Reddit user niteshumo57

    © Aksioma | All text and image rights reserved by their respective authors
    Ljubljana, August 2024

    Published in the frame of the project .expub funded by the European Union.
    https://networkcultures.org/expub

    Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not
    necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education
    and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor
    EACEA can be held responsible for them.

    Additionally supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.

    This publication expands on the video essay published by the Institute of Network Cultures in THE VOID on 26 September 2023. https://networkcultures.org/void/2023/09/26/kawayoku-inception/

    The PostScriptUM Anthology (2010–2023)

    Essays on Art, Technology, Society and the Environment
    Domen Pal / Aksioma

    PREVIEW
    ORDER
    METALABEL

    Price: 25€
    Language: English

    … AI, airports, algorithm, anthropocene, asset-based protocols, authorship, belonging, big data, bio art, blockchain, bot, calligraphy, capitalism, carbon footprint, CCTV, citizenship, classes, climate change, collaboration, computing infrastructure, cookies, criticism, crypto, cryptography, custumisation, DAOs, data mining, death of the author, debris, deep state, deep web, delegation society, digital capitalism, ecology, encryption, entreprecariat, fake/prank, finance, gender, gig economy, growth, hacking, hacktivism, hidden landscapes, human/nature, humor, hyperobjects, identity, images, incorporation, indie game, infrastructures, institutions, intelligence agencies, internet, labour, language, Luther Blissett, media culture, media event, memes, microplastics, military, names, nature, net art, new extractivism, NFTs, obfuscation, observing, offshoring, overidentification, ownership, peer-to-peer, performance, piracy, platform economy, politics, poor image, portrait, post-capitalism, post-growth, post-human, power, precarity, predictive algorithm, privacy, production, pseudoevent, radical geography, readymade, recycling, re-enactment, repurposing technologies, scale, secret operations, security, seduction, seeing, self-exploitation, software, speed, stateless machines, steganography, story/narrative, storytelling, surveillance, tax havens, temporality, theatre, utopia, visibility, waste, world building …

    What can an anthology on art, technology, society and the environment tell us about the future? In a period of a prolonged generalised crisis, to what extent can critical texts and culture at large offer tools for thinking and acting? Overwhelmed with the feeling that we have no agency to affect what happens in the world nowadays, the only way to step forward might be to look back without losing our desire and urge to affect the present and shape the future.

    EN | 10.5 x 16.7 cm | 418 pp | B/W | soft cover | 2024
    ISBN 978-961-7173-51-2

    Colophon

    The PostScriptUM Anthology (2010–2023)
    Essays on Art, Technology, Society and the Environment

    Contributors: Aude Launay, Bojana Kunst, Clémence Seurat, Daniela Silvestrin, Dušan Kažić, Eva & Franco Mattes, Felix Stalder, Florian Cramer, Geoff Cox, Ida Hiršenfelder, Inke Arns, James Bridle, Jaya Klara Brekke, Jon Lackman, Lev Kreft, Marc Garrett, Martin Zeilinger, Matthew Fuller, Mojca Kumerdej, monochrom, Nika Mahnič, Paolo Ruffino, Primož Krašovec, Régine Debatty, RYBN, Silvio Lorusso, Steve Rushton, Tomislav Medak, Trevor Paglen, Valentina Tanni, Vuk Ćosić

    Editors: Daphne Dragona, Domenico Quaranta
    Editor in chief: Janez Fakin Janša
    Editorial assistant: Rok Kranjc

    Language editor: Miha Šuštar
    Design and layout: Federico Antonini, Simone Cavallin
    Print: Collegium Graphicum
    No. of copies: 350

    Published by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
    Represented by: Marcela Okretič

    Ljubljana, April 2024
    © Aksioma, the authors

    Promotion and distribution: Sonja Grdina

    Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, the Municipality of Ljubljana

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