ESC
with wasdswag & Jira DougidMultimedia interactive installation
Commissioned by V-A-C Foundation
Sun 12 Dec 2021, 15:00
Wed 5 Jan 2022, 20:00
Sun 27 Feb 2022, 15:00
In her project, the artist invites viewers to take part in the recreation of a performance – a collective run. Such was the artistic gesture used by the Russian art group Escape in their project Disappearance (2000), originally conceived by the Czech performance artist Jiri Kovanda in 1978. These artists had a presentiment of changes-to-come in the connections and interactions that occur in society, and used escapism in the literal sense of the word, taking to their heels whenever anyone tried to make contact with them.
In order to recreate the performances the artist uses virtual reality technologies (their relative availability makes them increasingly popular in a context of closed borders in the physical world, due to the pandemic). One such free-of-charge social platform is VRchat – a multiplayer computer game for virtual reality devices. The user can create his/her own worlds and avatars, follow game plots or simply communicate with others.
The hopes of the late 1990s (when the first big steps of the communications revolution were taken) for a digital island of freedom, a separate world without censorship, prohibitions and offering anonymity, have not come to fruition. The collective flight into virtual worlds, instead of solving the problems of modern society, only transferred them to the digital realm.
Participation is by prior registration and requires access to a computer running Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 with a video card; or by presence in the exhibition space.