Uncanny Valleys of a Possible Future // CTM 2018 Exhibition

Artists: Frédérick A. Belzile, Guy Ben-Ary, Jessica Ekomane, Peter Flemming, Lawrence Lek, Teun Vonk, Anne de Vries, Zorka Wollny & Andrzej Wasilewski, ZULI
Curated by: Oliver Baurhenn

The CTM 2018 Exhibition presents diverse artistic approaches – often playful, always political – that respond to CTM 2018’s Turmoil theme. Tension/explosion, apathy/engagement, regression/progress, peril/hope – these artists propose different ways by which to navigate the ongoing strain and unease of being torn between polarities.
Music’s role in fostering and releasing collective emotions is explored by Anne de Vries, who, through a hardstyle stadium show setting (complete with extreme VJ/light effects, high-power DJ sets, and screaming promotional posters) explores the relationship between technology and mass experience. A very different, quiet form of release is to be experienced in Teun Vonk’s “The Physical Mind”, which hugs visitors between two giant air pillows, guiding them out of a stressed “fight or flight” mode into a feeling of security and physical well-being.
Voices of protest and unrest are electrified into a storm by Zorka Wollny and Andrzej Wasilewski. Recordings from two disputing vocalists will be diffused in the installation space and electrified by a Tesla coil, exploring the explosive potential of political inequality and unease. CTM 2018 Radio Lab commission winner ZULI similarly explores unrest via a series of 360 audiovisual vignettes of the bustling metropolis of Cairo. Blending street interactions and conversations and his own original compositions, he will create an immersive sound collage with the tension and latent explosiveness of his native city’s environment.
Three artists provide various access points to turmoil around technology. Peter Flemming speculates on systems, which can de-orchestrate our rational daily lives with a room-scale kinetic installation of ordinary objects (ladders, chairs, tables…) that are suspended as if trapped in an invisible web. The eerie polyphony of undulating objects create pulses of shadow and sounds, with the aim of engulfing viewers in a system that we can enjoy even if we don’t fully understand it. In Frédérick A. Belzile’s “Eyes in the Sky”, a Dakota Access Pipeline protester’s drone seems to take such de-orchestration to heart – by flying away. Meanwhile, Geomancer, a newly-awakened and escaped satellite AI, comes down to earth with dreams of becoming the first AI artist in Lawrence Lek’s namesake film. Rendered in HD with Unreal Engine video game software, and featuring a neural network-generated dream sequence and synthesised vocaloid soundtrack, Geomancer explores the implications of post-human consciousness.
The CTM 2018 Exhibition is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe and the German Federal Cultural Commission. Supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands, the Embassy of Canada, and the Québec Government Office Berlin. The CTM Radio Lab is produced with Deutschlandfunk Kultur Hörspiel / Klangkunst, ORF Ö1 Kunstradio, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, and supported by media partner The Wire.

General information on CTM Festival: www.ctm-festival.de