EVA (Evil Vibrant Astute) 2.0
The biblical story of “the Fall” mirrors the lore of Pandora’s Box. In Greek mythology, Pandora, the first woman, was entrusted with a box she was forbidden to open. However, her curiosity compelled her to do so, unleashing all the world’s evils—sorrow, disease, and death—into existence. Only Hope remained inside, offering some comfort to humanity amid the suffering.
A common experience among femme and queer subjects in our society is a cycle of brutal disenchantment of reality and the journey—often involving multiple identity crises—to the reenchantment of life. For these subjects, to acquire knowledge means deconstructing centuries of oppressive systems, only to end up with a dark void. This void, often portrayed as a dark trance, is captured in many memes like those at #girlcore, where knowledge and the act of knowing is usually akin to an act of violence, a loss of innocence.
In their multimedia exhibition EVA (Evil Vibrant Astute) 2.0, Socrates Stamatatos and Joanna Bacas invite you to a playdate. The large-scale installation is both a city–similar to the playsets of our childhood–and something that resembles the inner structure of a machine–like a motherboard. Within this peculiar city, visitors can interact with a network built specifically for the project. Using it, they can exchange theory and media on topics like girlhood, feminism, re-enchantment and technology, to name just a few.
The artists invite visitors to crouch down and play as they did when they were children. Recalling memories of endless games and countless imaginary worlds, they can understand how fantasy and magic played an integral part in their early enchantment with life and the world.
EVA 2.0 is the closing exhibition of tactics&practice #16. Aligning with its themes, it aims at expanding on the idea of action in order to counteract oppressive systems. How can re-enchantment foster environments for collective action? How can fantasy and escapism act as tools for synergy and for visualizing more equitable and bright futures?