Animal Farm entices the observer on a visual odyssey exalted by pastoral solace, animist minstrelsy and metaphysical riddles – ghosts, ghouls and goblins – offering fleeting glimpses of an alterity existing between techne and poiesis, the human and the non-human, the nocturnal and the diurnal. Through over a dozen new 16 mm film projections we are invited to explore the latest toils in a long-lasting inquiry into analogue means and analogue concepts. A journey towards an eco-friendly estrangement from the extractivist rural landscape.
For this venture, the Portuguese artist suggests a distinctive approach to engaging with his craft, molding the instances of aesthetic contemplation and anchoring them to the circadian cadence of the metropolis. It is solely under the fading rays of the city that never sleeps that the 16 mm projections come alive, revealing the radiant entities that inhabit them. It is, if you will, an exhibition for night owls, creatures of the dark and vespertine folk.
While one might liken Animal Farm to Orwell’s fairy tale, Gusmão concurrently unfurls a structuralist conundrum: the spectral nature of the cinematographic medium, pointing us towards a “weirding” phenomenology; a hauntology of sorts – the study of the nature of what lies between being and non-being among domesticated and wild ranch critters – a vicarious ontology!
Within Animal Farm, Gusmão submerges us into his idiosyncratic world of para-historical, para-scientific and para-philosophical exploits and opinions, intricately interwoven within each celluloid strip.
In the rooms lit by the nocturnal skyline of the financial district, one might notice (or not) the mute crowing of a Rooster at dawn that signals the beginning of yet another day; a Ghost tape that echoes the sounds of its own demise; a squadron of ducks waltzing through a still life titled Landscape with Boat and River; Half horse; a humble estate devoted to the exploitation of the sun, that is, a Solar farm; Fermented Foam, an enigmatic goo reminiscent of a dairy product, flanked by Flat cows make nice Yogurt, a vivid account of genetically modified bovines with spongiform encephalopathy – feral!; a collection of purgatory Bedrooms; yours truly gazing with nostalgia at My Uncle’s Castle, once my grandfather’s and now my cousin’s cottage, immersed in a mise en abyme of resentful inheritance and birthright; Day for night, a motion picture salute to Magritte’s The Empire of Light; a tarragon Mustard piece imbued with scatological overtones; a Sunflower at dusk swept away by a nuclear storm; The wondrous pumpkin farm; Mozart’s piss stone, the menhir once marked by Amadeus himself with the gasoline of a stone-age spacecraft; science is fiction! And, so, the term coined by Derrida whilst delivering a lecture entitled “The Animal that Therefore I Am” reverberates once more: zoopoetics!

"Forward, comrades! Long live the windmill! Long live Animal Farm!"
-George Orwell.

In my imagination, "technology" is a physical apparatus. I think of the images of early computing with large, cumbersome punch cards and operating systems the size of rooms with operators working with them and interacting with their colleagues around these machines. I watched a bunch of goofy, old British-Pathé newsreels of computers and these "new workplaces of the future" and I wondered about the social aspects of repetition, and the unique physical toll on the body.

When thinking of performances to include in this program I thought of Alexa West and her focus of choreographing around the built apparatus, and the physical and social dynamics these objects engender. The three dancers: Jade Manns, Amelia Heintzelman, and Justin Faircloth -three (almost) primary colors-represent distinct archetypes who move in repetitive gestures around this apparatus. I like the inherent humor in “OCCASION OCCASION OCCASION” and West's work in general, which makes me think of memes (which have really defined the visual aesthetic of digital time) and how memes so rely on archetypes to work. These movements are so meme-able and ripe for parody because they are so collectively understood. At its most basic understanding, technology is a tool, an implement used for a specific purpose. When tasked with the theme of "gender and technology" I thought a lot about the ways in which "gender" and "race" are capitalist technologies used to separate, control, and alienate people from one another. Technologies are tools within larger organizing systems that set and often violently enforce standards of legibility. In American Idoll, ms. z tye with Maya Margarita uses the 13 folds of glory—traditionally a ritualistic way of folding the flag to honor fallen soldiers—to memorialize the trans lives lost through violence this year. In this performance, 27 flags are folded. In 2023, so far, 27 trans lives were cut short due to violence. ms z tye uses the flag in her work as a way to interrogate Americanness and the promise of America—the national myth being one of individual liberty, economic opportunity, social mobility, equality, and justice for all. What does it mean that some people are excluded from this promise that has so defined the national character of this country? Yes this is art fair week, but we are still in Florida, a politically and culturally conservative state, a place that harbors Trump, a place with stringent anti trans legislation. In further abstracting and considering "technology", I thought about the nature of systems in general and the shape of gestures to come.

Mayfield Brooks' work explores a metaphysical apparatus whose material is composed of the spirit, folklore, memory, and grief. Of course, it must be stated that the future of technology lies in craft--one can only look to the nomenclature that we use to describe how we digitally interact that imply this truth: for instance, we reply to a thread, we "pin" posts and comments, we stitch videos, etc. The more technology advances, the more things become smaller and more automated, the more we will want to use our hands (I jokingly think that the future of industrial design lies in objects that appear automated, but must actually be manually operated...HaHa!) to connect with each other and the material world around us. But can we take this one step further and consider a future where we will intertwine in a more meaningful way with other species? This performance creates a circular path, rejecting verticality (a visual and physical quality of humanness), questioning nonlinear time, and leaves traces of the natural world in the highly artificial space of the fair.

Like many of Alexa West’s performances which often explore networked systems of labor and human behavior, The Department of Aging relied on the city’s public service departments. In the performance, dancers Jade Manns and Gwendolyn Knapp interacted with three filing cabinets sourced from the city’s “Department of Aging”; Much like this department addresses issues of care for aging citizens, West’s performance considered the threshold of productivity and what we deem a useful body.

For Agnes Questionmark, recent developments in DNA research and gene editing technology trouble an easy understanding of a discrete human body. In Attempt II, the artist imagined an experiment to create a new species and suggested through an iterative title that this performance is part of a series of trials. Twelve performers lay on the floor as experimental subjects in cadaver bags resembling embryonic sacs. Their promise of a rebirth into a new species was foreshadowed by imminent death. The subject’s life depended on their umbilical connection to the bag, a body rooted in technological innovation or collapse.

In Visible_Devices (2023), Tianyi Sun’s voice was intertwined with an AI bot in a feedback loop that, at points, led to conversation and, at other moments, interruption. As Sun traversed the room, Fiel Guhit, an artist and software engineer, managed the AI input, giving an electronic voice to the input data points and the sculptural assemblages around the room. The network of cables and readers provided a body for the AI system, a partner for Sun, and a conduit between her and Guhit that both simulated and inverted how innovation has distanced the human experience.

Whereas Sun’s soliloquy was mirrored by the AI system, in Louis Osmosis “Balconisms: A small filibuster on bursting the fill”; his monologue was met without a partner response. He reported on his surroundings to the audience live from an unknown location. He was only made visible through a walkie-talkie on a pedestal that operated as a stand-in for his body. While this technology connected him with the audience, the signal was fragile. Several times in the performance, the audience approached the pedestal and turned the volume up only to disrupt the signal and make Louis entirely unintelligible.

Heather McCalden’s Easy Listening also explored methods of legibility and communication, though framed through scientific narratives around movement. Formally, riffing on Bruce Nauman’s work Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, McCalden asked: “whether the languages we apply to the physical world can effectively express our embodied, emotional experience.”

Dear Reader,

Allow me, at the outset, to clarify what the title of this exhibition/screening stands for. The Hungarian idiom —annyit ér, mint halottnak a csók— literally translates into: worth as much as a kiss to a dead man. However, the figurative meaning conveys that something is not worth a whoop, not worth the effort, worthless...

The project is, at first glance, no more than a small appetizer addressing the practices of certain figures (artists and non-art artists) of the (so-called) Hungarian Neo Avant-Garde . Yet, just as in the title, the symbiosis or lack thereof between a figurative and a literal interpretation of the pieces, and of the project as a whole, brings forth resources capable of de-constructing dichotomies, building, in turn, nuances.

As a result of such frictions — frictions that can expand the interpretive abilities of a viewer — this project means — once more like the title — not one thing or the other, but both, none, or a number of them.

It is a collection of images and actions against value (worthless). It is an implicit and heartfelt nod to my late father (a kiss if you will). It is not worth the effort. It is an iniciatic rite that invokes the spirit of a bygone time and space. A serious matter. A joke. A collection of pastimes "for killing boredom [...] turning away from active-constructive activity, and, thus, facilitating the politics of subversive decentralization." [1] A bomb targeting the status quo. A journey through time. A Poetic gesture. A game of Kalah. A system of proportions. A conversation.

With love, Marco Bene.

[1] These are some of the words written by an informant of the Hungarian secret police (codename: Mészáros) after witnessing the first happening in Hungary: The Lunch (in memoriam Batu Khan), 1966; organised by Gábor Altorjay and Tamás Szentjóby (codename: Schwitters), with the cooperation of Miklós Jankovics and István Varannai; and the help of Enikő Balla, Miklós Erdély, and Csaba Koncz.

Source: LINK