“Infinite Lives” exhibition in Tallinn

Yesterday, 22 September 2016, at 6pm, was the official opening of the “Infinite lives” exhibition, at Tallinn City Gallery.

It is open to the public until 16 October 2016.

This collective exhibition is curated by Nicolas Audureau and Camille Laurelli. They have brought together a wide variety of artists such as :

Brody Condon (US), Clôde Coulpier (FR), Fabrice Croux (FR), Nadia Granados (CO), Ivars Gravlejs (LV), Marco Laimre (ET), Camille Laurelli (FR), Aleksandra Galkina (RU), David Ter-Oganyan (RU), Olga Zhitlina (RU).

What lies within… 

A human mind, flexible and ductile, has an extraordinary capacity to assimilate and to adapt itself to the most improbable changes in its surrounding. Dystopias from 20th century science fiction, from Asimov to Zamyatin, have become our everyday banalities. We are now able to move from one reality to another with stunning flexibility. We no longer talk about virtuality, not even about virtual worlds; we talk about “environments”, or about augmented reality, which supposes that our old tangible and perishable world has no hope for perfectibility but through the machine.

The most innocent activities – like games or creativity – are subject to a peculiar and voyeuristic economy. Our bodies have changed in status from mobile consumers to consumed-and-consuming elements who no longer need to actually be physically present. This would imply that we have already surpassed the level of passivity in the technological singularity. We would now be equivalent to synapses – simple elements that redistribute the energy of a superior system, which doesn’t expect us to move unnecessarily. We are the consumed bodies of a hungry and insatiable capitalism.

But what about the body, exactly? Can it be content with simply the lure of an artificial environment? Does the phenomenology of perceiving an augmented reality lead to a crisis of the real or that of its copy? If we even come to distinguish the truth and the false, then which of them is more frustrating?

The exhibition “Infinite Lives” induces a state of extreme stress that leads to an awakening of the body and the mind. The artists’ reversible and joyful proposals question the inconsistency of truthfulness and experience through the images, and, finally, examine the inconsistency of materialism in art itself. From speculation to disappointing reality, the works focus on the insight, shrewdness and practical knowledge of a keen observer.

With the support of Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Ministry of Culture, Tallinn City Office of Culture, Veinisõber, Kännukas