Blaž Miklavčič
Sprawl
Curated by
Maja Burja
Exhibition
28 August–27 September 2024
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Part of U30+ production programme for supporting young artists
Morphogenesis has begun. The system, temporarily halted at an indistinct point between growth and decay, is occupying its surroundings with a totipotent force of transformation. The latter opens up an unpredictable area, with individual vortices in the structure that subside and then, transformed, seep at another, distant point in this anomalous complex …
Sprawl is a spatial organisation of forms that establishes an asemic taxonomic practice as a radical departure from the linear and hierarchical understanding of evolution. In the setup, classification is recursively embedded into the formation process to activate the performative productivity of the diagram as an organism. The system, which is both a taxonomic model and an organism, operates horizontally and in dynamic interdependence of its parts. These occupy states in between the processes of growth, folding, differentiation and decay, which emerge from different directions simultaneously and materialise at the nodes as strange remnants.
If the system is observed as a process where technology mutates into a body – the physical material of an organism – the artefacts are the sediments of specific temporalities and dimensionalities of the processes of procedural generation, which, much like taxonomic practices have historically done, hallucinate entirely new (and non-existent) evolutionary branches and organisms. As a process where the body mutates into technology, however, it is permeated by an uncanny tension between the structure and its non-transparent operation. The system resists dispersal through self-interpretative feedback loops, producing new forms of organisation of its material, which in turn restructure the parameters of the emergent self-cognitive logic.
The affect of ambient horror, usually neutralised by a taxonomic or diegetic operation that links the unclear to the tangible, is thus never resolved, as the system continues to develop new states, relentlessly resisting entropy and further expanding its productive orbit.
THE AUTHOR
Blaž Miklavčič studied fine arts and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana. He currently lives in Amsterdam (NL), where he works in the field of visual effects and digital media. The primary focus of his artistic research are simulation of organic and biomorphic systems and the aesthetics of horror and science fiction. His work has been presented in various exhibitions and festivals, including Simbiome, Plaza Protocol, 2020; IFCA – International Festival of Computer Art, Maribor, 2019; CTM Vorspiel, Lighthouse of Digital Art, Berlin, 2023.
THE CURATOR
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: Blaž Miklavčič
Curator and author of the text: Maja Burja
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 and the Municipality of Ljubljana
Thanks: Andrej Škufca