As part of the International festival Mladi levi
Slomškova 18
Ljubljana
Slovenia
AcDcWc
Vrhovčeva 1a, Novo mesto, Slovenia
Signature
Library Ravne na Koroškem
Slovenia
H220
Experimental New Media Performance
Free entrance
Kersnikova 4, Ljubljana, Slovenia
The Kandinsky Collective
Amy Suo Wu
The Kandinsky Collective
SOLO EXHIBITION
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
18 January – 17 February 2017
In 2013, the CIA declassified WWI invisible ink recipes from 100 years ago. The disclosure was based on the belief that these methods no longer pose a threat to national security due to advancing digital encryption technology rendering invisible ink obsolete. But are such old techniques as innocuous as they’re considered? In light of the fact that a majority of people conduct their communications digitally, making most of their online activities trackable, recordable and commodifiable, perhaps resorting to analog paper and invisible ink may be indeed safer. The ‘dumb’ medium of paper does not inadvertently leak your information behind the scenes, and for the very fact that it’s considered unthreatening makes it an interesting alternative. After all, in the last scene of Citizenfour (2014), Laura Poitras’ documentary on Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn Greenwald resorts to paper and pen to communicate privately.
Invisible ink is a form of secret writing also known as steganography, it is the art and science of being hidden in plain sight, which has been the subject of Amy Suo Wu’s research Tactics and Poetics of Invisibility for the last two years. In her research she has been working on resuscitating analogue steganography as a tactic to evade digital surveillance because it is potentially more effective over digital cryptography due to its subversive offline simplicity, and possibility a more democratic and accessible solution for those who are less technically privileged. Her research project also aims to revive obsolete, low-tech and forgotten media, encouraging alternative and experimental modes of communication and (co)creating tactical and poetic ways of communicating as a way to protect ourselves from surveillance while still being visible to our peers. As a part of her ongoing research, for the upcoming exhibition The Kandinsky Collective, Amy Suo Wu will use speculative fiction as a strategy to shed light on the discourse that surrounds her analogue steganography research; privacy, surveillance and the instrumentalisation of art and graphic design in media activism. Departing from the rumour that during WWII the artist Wassily Kandinksy was recruited by the British Intelligence to smuggle secret communication by encoding it into his abstract, systematic and symbolic artworks, The Kandinsky Collectiveexhibition will explore the subversive potential of using the formal language of art as a means to embed hidden messages. Set in the near future when privacy has become a crime, the exhibition is in fact a staged exhibition of privacy activists posing as a contemporary art collective, where they co-opt abstract art as a cover to form an underground communication channel.
ARTIST TALK
Amy Suo Wu
Tactics and Poetics of Invisibility
ALUO uho
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana, 2017
PUBLICATION
Florian Cramer
Hiding in Plain Sight. Amy Suo Wu’s The Kandinsky Collective
PostScriptUM #28
The 15th century Voynich Manuscript, Kandinsky’s abstract painting with a secret encoded message, militant jihadists using porn images for hidden communication and most recently computer malware embedding virus code into images on infected computers (and perhaps this text too) are examples of steganography, which can be also found in Amy Suo Wu’s works…
AUTHOR
Born in China, raised in Sydney and based in Rotterdam, Amy Suo Wu is an artist, designer and educator researching how technology, language and media shape people and vice versa. Her research based hybrid practice is an exploration into how to activate and intervene in critical and playful ways. Since 2013 she has been working at the Willem de Kooning Academy (Dutch Academy of art and design based in Rotterdam) teaching Design Research, Concept and Image in the Graphic Design department and the Hacking minor to students across all disciplines. In the same year, she co-founded Eyesberg, a (graphic) design studio motivated by conceptual and experimental approaches. She has also facilitated and organized zine making workshops and festivals in the Netherlands.
Her work has been shown at ISEA Istanbul, Mine Yours Ours festival Croatia, Gallery 12 New Media Hub Belgrade, 55th Venice Biennale, Gogbot Enschede, SIGN Groningen, TENT Rotterdam, Showroom MAMA Rotterdam, Art Rotterdam, WORM Rotterdam and V2_ Rotterdam.
CREDITS
Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2017
Artistic Director: Janez Janša
Producer: Marcela Okretič
Executive Producer: Sonja Grdina
Assistant: Tim Alexander Braakman
Public Relations: Urša Purkart
Technician: Valter Udovičić
Documentation: Jure Goršič
Artist talk organised in collaboration with The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
Supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and theMunicipality of Ljubljana
The More of Us There Are, the Faster We Will Reach Our Goal (SLOVENE PREMIERE)
V okviru mednarodnega filmskega festivala LIFFE
Ljubljana, Slovenia
The More of Us There Are, the Faster We Will Reach Our Goal
Malmö, Sweden
The More of Us There Are, the Faster We Will Reach Our Goal
Vienna, Austria
The Abstraction of Nature
WED, 19 February 2020
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
The Labour of Making Labour Disappear
Presentation in the framework of the round table Art Making in the Age of Automation.
Moderator: Domenico Quaranta
WED, 15 January 2020
Moderna galerija Ljubljana
How does the increasing automation of labour affect artistic practice, on all the levels of content, process and form? How is it affecting the present society and our vision of the future? What can art do to deal with the increasing fragmentation of human labour and its disappearance from visibility, and give it back its presence and dignity? Taking off from their own work and from the statements of other participants in the symposium, the artists involved in the round table will attempt to offer an answer to these and other questions.
Entreprecariat
Book presentation
WED, 15 January 2020
Moderna galerija Ljubljana
Entreprecariat (Krisis Publishing, 2018; Onomatopee, 2019) explores and maps out the current entrepreneurial ideology from a precarious perspective. The Entreprecariat indicates a reality where change is natural and healthy, whatever it may bring. A reality populated by motivational posters, productivity tools, mobile offices and self-help techniques. A reality in which a mix of entrepreneurial ideology and widespread precarity is what regulates professional social media, online marketplaces for self-employment and crowdfunding platforms for personal needs. The result? A life in permanent beta, with sometimes tragic implications.
Notes on Post-Work
WED, 15 January 2020
Moderna galerija Ljubljana
Most of the academic and political discourse on post-work has focused on the relationship between automation and free time. That is, it has posited that automation has the emancipatory potential to free us all from work: to reduce necessary working hours or at least to devote ourselves to more intellectually rewarding jobs (immaterial labour). What is not fully convincing about this approach is that it is grounded in a hierarchical separation between machines and humans. What is missing is the acknowledgment of the human infrastructure that sustains automation and artificial intelligence. The invisible, precarious, alienated, low-paid and offshored workforce that automation requires in order to function properly. These workers and their tasks are the focus of this talk.
We live in a world where technological advances and their effects are becoming more and more an issue involving of all of us, whether we live in the western or eastern hemisphere, in the global north or south. Rapid aging of the population, strategic functioning of the economic superpowers, ground-breaking technological applications, marginalization and exclusion of social groups, tensions between governments and non-governmental organizations, local and international conflicts, climate change, environmental problems and new healthcare challenges pose civilization challenges for mankind which require thorough consideration and active participation. New technologies, with their emancipatory neutrality, offer on the one hand the possibility of empowering civil society, and on the other increased control and concentration of power and capital.
We all face challenges which determine our future and the future of our children, so active participation in the konS project means promoting visionary, unexpected, different ideas allowing us to see beyond the determinism of rationalist western science and economics. Through our activity, we can encourage, inspire and empower decision-makers, scientists, engineers and economists in their actions that are inclusive, socially responsible and sustainable.
The konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art project aims to promote breakthrough artistic creations and establish a production environment where art ideation can be translated into recommendations for the innovation of better, safer, more sustainable and ethical products and services. By promoting excellence in artwork, we want to create an inspiring environment for creators of the future among children and young people, and for decision-makers and professional stakeholders involved in the creation of new technological applications and social innovations. The project aims to grow an active network of producers of contemporary investigative art, which through its transdisciplinary activities enables communities and the economy access to more sustainable, safer and more ethical societal and technological innovations.
Partners in the konS project consortium are Kersnikova Institute, Projekt Atol Institute, Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljudmila Association, CONA Institute for Contemporary Art Procesing (all Ljubljana), University of Nova Gorica – School of Arts, Velenje Youth Center, LokalPatriot (Novo mesto), Youth Centre for Cultural Activities Maribor.
konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art is a project chosen on the public call for the selection of the operations “Network of Investigative Art and Culture Centres”. The investment is co-financed by the Republic of Slovenia and by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union.
Portraying the Invisible Crowd
WED, 14 January 2020
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
Throughout history, portraying workers has often been a step into recognising their existence, allowing them the dignity to be considered as a subject, as well as the representatives of a “class”. Digging into the research for the show, Hyperemployment’s curator Domenico Quaranta will offer a tour through various artistic efforts to portray online workers, from Chinese Gold Farmers to scan-ops, from gig workers to online content moderators.
Oblomo
Presentation in the framework of the round table Art Making in the Age of Automation.
Moderator: Domenico Quaranta
WED, 15 January 2020
Moderna galerija, Ljubljana
How does the increasing automation of labour affect artistic practice, on all the levels of content, process and form? How is it affecting the present society and our vision of the future? What can art do to deal with the increasing fragmentation of human labour and its disappearance from visibility, and give it back its presence and dignity? Taking off from their own work and from the statements of other participants in the symposium, the artists involved in the round table will attempt to offer an answer to these and other questions.
Hyperemployment
Hyperemployment
Exhibition
7 November 2019–19 January 2020
MGLC – International Centre for Graphic Art, Ljubljana
Curated by
Domenico Quaranta
Artists
Danilo Correale, Elisa Giardina Papa, Sanela Jahić, Silvio Lorusso, Jonas Lund, Michael Mandiberg, Sebastian Schmieg, Guido Segni
Part of the programme:
Hyperemployment – Post-work, Online Labour and Automation
Labour – one of the defining aspects of our capitalistic societies – is also one of the sides of contemporary life that has been more affected by technological innovations and by the advent of post-Fordism. Although increasing automation has actually caused many forms of human labour to disappear, it has not – as many thinkers have predicted – brought an end to labour. Instead, it has led to – together with other innovations, such as the rise of device culture and social networks – its fragmentation into plenty of micro labours and its infiltration into every moment of life. In other words, today, no matter if we are unemployed, self-employed or working at a regular full-time job, as “technology users” we are always working. Hyperemployment is a group show meant to explore these and other dimensions of what labour has become through the works of eight international artists who have focused their research on the topics of automation and gig economy, the end of free time and self-improvement apps, social media fatigue and quantification, among others.
EXHIBITED WORKS
Danilo Correale
Reverie, On the Liberation from Work, 2017
At the end of an era that has largely been based on work as a practice and as an ethical value, thinking about a post-work society can be more difficult than realising it. In Reverie, On the Liberation from Work, Danilo Correale collaborates with a New York-based hypnotherapist in drafting two guided hypnosis scripts aimed at relaxing the body and mind in preparation for a post-work society. The work is presented as an installation that isolates the audience from the surrounding environment, facilitating full immersion. The work is not intended as a means of escape from pragmatic discussions on self-organisation and civil rights, but it is rather an attempt to establish a different narrative interaction with time and subjecthood in order to generate a deeper connection with our own selves, our roles as citizens and allies, and the role of art in our time.
Elisa Giardina Papa
Labor of Sleep, 2017
“Labor of Sleep […] consists of a series of short video clips humorously referencing self-improvement apps. The work examines the idea that sleep has become the newest frontier for gathering behavioral and biological data in order to optimize sleeping patterns, thereby turning the time that our bodies use to rest and replenish into a form of labor devoted to data extraction. In this way, digital devices function as both a poison and its remedy, providing relief for the time they take away. The daily exercises and assessments suggested by Labor of Sleep […] rely on a range of motifs that reveal the absurdities of technologically supported self-optimisation. The video clips illustrate how we use technologies to regulate human sleeping habits within the rhythms of a wider system – one that includes humans and non-humans, extending from organic matter to digital devices themselves.” (Christiane Paul)
Sanela Jahić
The Labour of Making Labour Disappear, 2018–2019
The automation of labour has been an ongoing process in Western societies since the advent of the first machines, but developments in artificial intelligence are promising to bring it to completion. Will artistic activity be immune to these developments? Slovenian artist Sanela Jahić presents an ambitious ongoing research based on the programming of a predictive algorithm meant to conceive artworks in her place – the exhibition being the public presentation of these new, machine suggested works. Situating itself in a long tradition of the automation of artistic labour in the field of media art, the project raises uncomfortable questions: can the process of artistic creation be fully automatised? What if the artist fundamentally disagrees with what the machine has produced? If she works alongside the algorithm with both of them creating artworks for the exhibition, would the audience be able to distinguish between the two outputs?
Silvio Lorusso
Shouldn’t You Be Working?, 2016
“Printed on transparent background, in a no-frills, operational typeface, Shouldn’t You Be Working? (2016) is a series of stickers to be placed in any leisurely or semi-leisurely environment – from a laptop to a toilet – to act as a perpetual memento of the labourious duties ahead. Named after the text that StayFocusd, a browser plugin with more than 600,000 users, prompts when your allotted time on social media and other procrastination-friendly sites is over, SYBW allows any surface to remind remote workers that they are still tethered to the machine.” (Nicola Bozzi) The work, which will be presented in a new iteration developed specifically for Hyperemployment, iconically represents the new category of workers that Lorusso defined as “entreprecariat”, and ironically summarises the schizophrenic attitude towards work and leisure of the “technology user”.
Jonas Lund
Talk To Me, 2017–2019
Launched in 2017 as an online project, Talk To Me was presented as a conversational chatbot, trained and modelled on all previous instant message conversations (Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger) as typed by the artist himself to create a smart, machine-learned, automatically talking version of the artist. Up to October 2019, the chatbot replied to people engaging in a conversation speaking with a voice that was a text-to-speech synthesised version of the artist’s voice. Developed in collaboration with artist and designer Federico Antonini, the book version set to premiere at Hyperemployment not only collects all the project’s conversations since 2017, but also reveals a twist that makes the project even more meaningful: the artist was actually chatting for most of the time, playing the bot, enslaved by the software he created.
Michael Mandiberg
Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance), 2016–2017
Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance) is a three-channel video installation documenting a one-year performance in which Michael Mandiberg was involved between 2016 and 2017. Mandiberg used the self-tracking technology of the Quantified Self movement, a trend in the wellness industry that aspires to self-knowledge through tracking one’s personal data. The artist programmed their computer and iPhone to capture screenshots and images every fifteen minutes for one year – a technique used to monitor freelance labour – and tracked their mental, physical and emotional states with a Fitbit and journal. Instead of pursuing wellness and perfection, Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance) reveals the artist’s position as a microcosm of a pathologically overworked and increasingly quantified society.
Sebastian Schmieg
Hopes and Deliveries (Survival Creativity), 2017–2018
Fiverr is a global online marketplace for gig work, each task and service beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed. Exploiting the gig platform’s missing security precautions, the artist downloaded thousands of videos that were produced by gig workers for their clients. From this archive, a selection is shown on two smartphones that are strapped to an empty sweatshirt, using cellphone armbands. In the videos, mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation become visible as a performance of survival creativity: coming up with whatever idea it takes to survive in a competitive field. At the same time, Hopes and Deliveries addresses voyeurism on two levels: on the one hand, it makes visible the people ordering such videos on Fiverr, while on the other hand, offering a glimpse into the more intimate corners of the gig economy.
Guido Segni
Demand Full Laziness, 2018–2023
In the times of the obsession for work, the fear of robots and a strong technological acceleration, a new hype is haunting the collective imagination: the hype of dull automation and full laziness. Demand Full Laziness is a five-year plan and a durational performance about art, labour, self-sustenance and laziness. For the next five years (2018–2023), Italian artist Guido Segni will delegate and automate part of the making of his artistic production by the use of a bunch of deep-learning algorithms in order to increase production, to overcome labour in art and to increasingly get abandoned to laziness. During the first year (2018), the machine was trained on deep learning and how to make unique portraits of the artist while lying in bed. The project can be supported on Patreon, a crowdfunding platform specifically conceived for artistic patronage, thus exploring a model of artistic economy that better fits to a post-work society.
THE CURATOR
Domenico Quaranta is a contemporary art critic and curator. His work focuses on the impact of the current means of production and dissemination of the arts, and on the way they respond – syntactically and semantically – to the technological shift. The author of In My Computer (2011), Beyond New Media Art (2013) and AFK. Texts on Artists 2011–2016 (2016), he has contributed to, edited or co-edited a number of books and catalogues including GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (2006) and THE F.A.T. MANUAL (2013). Since 2005, he has curated and co-curated many exhibitions, including: Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age (2008); RE:akt! (2009–10); Playlist (2009–10); Collect the WWWorld (2011–12); Unoriginal Genius (2014); Cyphoria (2016), Janez Janša® (2017–18) and Escaping the Digital Unease (2017–18). He lectures internationally and is a faculty member at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara. He is a co-founder of the Link Art Center, Brescia (2011–19).
THE ARTISTS
Danilo Correale (Italy) is an artist and researcher who lives and works in New York. In his work he analyses aspects of human life such as labour-leisure and sleep, under the lenses of time and body. His work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions, including: 5th Ural Biennial, Yekaterinburg (2019); Broken Nature, Triennale Milano (2019); Istanbul Design Biennial (2018); Riga Biennial (2018); Somatechnic, Museion, Bolzano (2018); Work It Feel It!, Vienna Biennale (2017). Recent solo shows include: TheyWillSayIKilledThem, MAC, Belfast (2017); At Work’s End, Art in General, NYC (2017); Tales of Exhaustion. La Loge, Brussels (2016); The Missing Hour. Rhythms and Algorithms, Raucci/Santamaria, Naples (2015). Correale recently published The Game – A three sided football match, FeC (2014); No More Sleep No More, Archive Books (2015); and Reverie. On the Liberation from Work, Decelerationist Reader (2017). He’s the winner of the 2017 New York Prize for Italian Young Art, the recipient of an Art In General 2017 New Commissions and an Italian Council Grant as well as a 2017 associate research fellow at Columbia University, New York City.
Elisa Giardina Papa is an Italian artist whose work investigates gender, sexuality and labour in relation to neoliberal capitalism and the Global South. Her work has been exhibited and screened at MoMA, New York City, Whitney Museum [Sunrise/Sunset Commission], Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, Unofficial Internet Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale, XVI Quadriennale di Roma, rhizome.org [Download Commission], The Flaherty NYC, among others. Giardina Papa received an MFA from RISD, and a BA from Politecnico of Milan, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in media and gender studies at the University of California Berkeley. She lives and works in New York and Sant’Ignazio (Sicily).
Sanela Jahić graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana in 2008, and received her master’s degree in 2010 in public art and new artistic strategies from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Jahić is an intermedia artist who constructs visual and technologically supported kinetic objects and installations. Her artistic practice often involves collaboration with specialists for mechanical engineering, automation, software and electronics. She lives and works in Škofja Loka. Jahić has exhibited her work in numerous shows in Slovenia and abroad.
Silvio Lorusso’s work focuses on the cultures and rhetorical regimes embedded in techno-social systems. He deals with the narratives and counternarratives that define platforms, devices and interfaces. By doing so, he engages with the tensions surrounding notions of labour, productivity, autonomy, self-design, entrepreneurialism, precarity and failure. Lorusso’s practice combines various media such as video, websites, artist’s books, installations, lectures. An affiliated researcher at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, a tutor at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and a researcher at Willem De Kooning Academy, his work has been presented internationally, in venues including Re:Publica, Berlin; MAXXI, Rome; Transmediale, Berlin; Drugo more, Rijeka; Kunsthalle Wien; MoneyLab, Amsterdam; IMPAKT, Utrecht; Sight & Sound, Montreal; Adhocracy, Athens. His work has been featured in, among others, the Guardian, Financial Times and Wired. He lives in Rotterdam and lectures internationally. His book Entreprecariat was published in Italian by Krisis (Brescia, 2018) and in English by Onomatopee (Eindhoven, 2019).
Jonas Lund is a Swedish artist who creates paintings, sculpture, photography, websites and performances that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems and the power structures of control. He earned an MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2009). He has had solo exhibitions at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2016); Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2016, 2015, 2014); Växjö Konsthall Sweden (2016); Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam (2013); New Museum, New York City (2012); and has had work included in numerous group exhibitions including at Carrol/Fletcher, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Witte De With, Rotterdam; De Hallen, Haarlem; and the Moving Museum, Istanbul. His work has been written about in Artforum, Kunstforum, Metropolis M, Artslant, Rhizome, Huffington Post, Furtherfield, Wired and more.
Michael Mandiberg is an interdisciplinary artist whose work crosses multiple forms and disciplines in order to trace the lines of political and symbolic power as it takes shape online. Mandiberg received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA from Brown University. Mandiberg’s projects have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); the New Museum, New York City; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Denny Dimin Gallery, Art-in-Buildings Financial District Project Space, New York City; Arizona State University Museum & Library, Tempe; and Transmediale, Berlin, amongst others. Mandiberg’s work has been written about widely, including in Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal.
Sebastian Schmieg is an artist living and working in Berlin. His work engages with the algorithmic circulation of images, texts and bodies within contexts that blur the boundaries between human and software, individual and crowd, or labour and leisure. At the centre of his practice are playful interventions into found systems that explore hidden – and often absurd – aspects behind the glossy interfaces of our networked society. Schmieg works in a wide range of media such as video, website, installation, artist book, custom software and lecture performance. Schmieg’s works have been shown at, among others, The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Rhizome, New York; Transmediale, Berlin; NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf; Panke Gallery, Berlin. He lives and works in Berlin and Dresden.
Guido Segni, aka Clemente Pestelli, lives and works somewhere at the intersections between art, pop internet culture and data hallucination. Mainly focused on the daily (ab)use of the internet, his work is characterised by minimal gestures on technology which combine conceptual approaches with a traditional hacker attitude in making things odd, useless and dysfunctional. Co-founder of Les Liens Invisibles, with a background in hacktivism, net art and video art, he has exhibited in galleries, museums (MAXXI, Rome; New School, New York City; KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn) and art & media-art international festivals (Venice Biennale; Transmediale, Berlin). He teaches at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara and directs the imaginary REFRAMED lab and the online greencube.gallery.
CREDITS
Curator: Domenico Quaranta
Artists: Danilo Correale, Elisa Giardina Papa, Sanela Jahić, Silvio Lorusso, Jonas Lund, Michael Mandiberg, Sebastian Schmieg, Guido Segni
Production:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2019
Coproduction:
MGLC – International Centre of Graphic Arts
Partner:
the Italian Cultural Institute, Ljubljana
Media partner:
Neural – Critical digital culture and media arts, DPG, TAM-TAM
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
Aksioma’s programme is additionally supported by the Ministry of Public Administration as part of the public call for co-financing projects for the development and professionalisation of NGOs and volunteerism.
RELATED EVENT
Automate all the Things!
Symposium
14–15 January 2020
The Academy of Fine Arts and Design of the University of Ljubljana
Moderna galerija
Om for Coin
Sašo Sedlaček
Om for Coin
Performance
WED, 6 November 2019 at 7 pm
Exhibition
12–29 November 2019
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Part of the programme
Hyperemployment – Post-work, Online Labour and Automation
With the rise of artificial intelligence and the automation of labour, the value of human non-work is about to radically change. The performance Om for Coin marks the launch of the blockchain platform Oblomo, which aims at turning non-work into a value with the help of blockchain technology. Users on the platform will mine the Oblomo cryptocurrency by being still, sitting, meditating or lying down in front of their devices, while observed by a machine learning software rig (the AI rig).In the performance Om for Coin, three individuals – the “miners” – will be sitting still while performing the meditation mantra “Om” in front of a live audience. All the while, the AI rig will be surveilling them and recording their meditation into the blockchain. This procedure will create the first record of blocks in a long chain of blocks that will follow in the continuation of the project. The central part of the performance is the realisation of the protocol in which certain conditions must be met: the surveillance of idle miners by the AI rig in a process that is verified by the audience. This protocol is used to control the quantity of Om blocks from which it will be possible to continue mining the cryptocurrency. As a result, it controls the amount of raw material in the system: each time it runs out, the above procedure must be repeated. In contrast to other crypto mining systems, Oblomo requires hardly any electricity and represents an innovative ecological alternative to the otherwise endlessly wasteful process of crypto mining.
The exhibition documented the performance and the protocols put in place for the extraction of the raw materials that will be used, in a subsequent phase of the project, to coin the Oblomo cryptocurrency.
The OBLOMO website
ACCOMPANYING PROGRAMME
A billboard campaign with the slogan “Busy being Lazy” will be launched the day before the performance at the TAM-TAM Street Gallery and on locations throughout Ljubljana: an urban intervention that sits in-between mere advertisement and an invitation to rethink idleness as the ultimate form of labour.
AUTHOR
Sašo Sedlaček holds a BA in sculpture and video from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Ljubljana (UL ALUO). Since 2015, he works as an associate professor in UL ALUO’s Video and New Media programme. His work has been awarded various grants, including the Trend Award for exceptional achievements in visual culture (Ljubljana 2012) and the VIDA 11 (Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, 2008), and is featured in various private and public collections, including the Museum & Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML). Since 2001, his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at various venues, most recently: City Art Gallery of Ljubljana (2019), Espace Apolloniain Strasbourg (2018), Contemporary Art Palazzo Torriani, Gradisca d’Isonzo (2018), Autostrada Biennale Prizren (2017), Handel Street Projects, London (2017); UGM, Maribor (2017); +MSUM, Ljubljana (2016); AND Festival, Grizedale Forest (2015); Wro Art Center, Wrocław (2015); Ars Electronica, Linz (2014); Transmediale, Berlin (2014).
CREDITS
Author: Sašo Sedlaček
Performers: Dominik Hudoklin, Florijan Germovšek, Matjaž Duh
Programmer: Sunčica Hermansson
Thanks: Uroš Hercog, Nebojša Živković, Ruth Catlow, Max Dovey, Franc Solina, Borut Batagelj
Production: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2019
Co-production: Drugo more
Partner: TAM-TAM
This project is a co-production in the framework of the Dopolavoro flagship of the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture project, with support from the City of Rijeka – Department of Culture, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
Aksioma’s programme is additionally supported by the Ministry of Public Administration as part of the public call for co-financing projects for the development and professionalisation of NGOs and volunteerism as well as by JSKD.
Encounters With the Other Mind
Introduction by curator Daphne Dragona and artist talk by Kyriaki Goni.
WED, 2 October 2019
Aksioma Project Space, Ljubljana
In this talk, Kyriaki Goni discusses her artistic and research practice, which explores the synergies and interactions between the human and the algorithm. Datafication, memory, oblivion and prediction are the core elements of this exploration. In which ways does the algorithm affect the ways we perceive not only the world but also ourselves? How can we create new metaphors in order to grasp these processes and cope with them?
Celebrating the success of State Machines!
Modern Solutions Require Modern Problems
WED, 15 May 2019
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
In the talk Modern Solutions Require Modern Problems, Lund explores his artistic practice and body of work through the vantage point of the “solution vs problem” binary division. Very often the technological solutions offered by the Silicon Valley elite quickly turn into societal problems. Conversely, the works that Lund produces can act as problems to the presented solutions. The artist talk explores Lund’s body of work in relation to this dichotomy and present an alternative narrative to the current dogma.