Digital art is playing an increasingly important role in contemporary art. Rather than focusing on virtual space or the "digital" nature itself, it may be more appropriate to view this work in the context of the social changes that these technologies are bringing about. Regardless of their breadth and diversity, the key issue today is behavioral change—that is, a focus on (non)human agency, behavior, and the data or aesthetics they produce. The point is not to use digital or AI tools (which are today the most important materialization or personification of the data we produce and of human culture and behavior in general), but rather to seek answers to this "becoming of people as data" and, on the other hand, to the "revitalization of data" into functional organisms. The proposed exhibition thus presents artists who respond to specific post-digital transformations of our identities, experiences, orientation, or relationship to the outside world and the non-human; with a particular interest in the infrastructures themselves, or more specifically in the gaming space and cultures that play a symbolic role as environments for the expansion or manipulation of human behavior and its relationship to so-called artificial (or non-human) intelligence.
After a historical focus on objects, images, concepts, meanings, individual media, technologies, or institutions, art is turning to platforms, games, infrastructures, and human behavior as the material and basis of its critical interest. Not only thanks to the accompanying program and catalog, but mainly due to active work with the audience and non-white cube architecture, as well as the context of changing thinking and a monograph in preparation, this project builds on the local tradition and focus of art on environmental, socialization, and educational ambitions. The exhibition thus has both a popularizing and admittedly philosophical character.
In addition to the much-needed critical understanding of contemporary technologies for the general public, it is set in a behavioral shift (an effort not only to deepen our knowledge of contemporary forms of technology, but to understand them as a starting point and central problem of the current situation). It focuses on three key categories of this shift—abstraction (drawing objects into circulation), affectivity (drawing actors into circulation), and agency (the ability to act, the ability of objects to be actors) – which correspond to the three components of contemporary network technologies from the subtitle – infrastructures, games, and agency.
Exhibitors: Forensic Architecture (UK), Li Yi-fan (TW), Total Refusal (AU), András Cséfalway (SK), Mikuláš Rett, Tereza Nováková, Zdeněk Svejkovský, Jiří Philippe Janda, Jakub Polách, Daniel Felstead (UK), Jenn Leung (HK), DIS collective (US), Jon Rafman (CA), Noura Tafeche (IT), Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo (US/ES), Julie Žil Vostalová, Selmeci Kocka Jusko (SK), Joey Holder (UK), Danielle Brathwaite Shirley (UK), Alice Bucknell (US), Morgane Billuart (FR)
Curator
Václav Janoščík
Architectural design:
Pavel Liška, Adam Trbušek
Consultants:
Doris Sisková, Denisa Michalinová, Eva Drexlerová, Štefan Pecko