BBWCXR: Screenings and Installations

2024/25 HYBRID Biennale Installation Film

Screening Program

Alongside the discursive programme of the BBWCXR symposium, some of the participants will also be represented with individual works such as film and video screenings as well as installations.

The screening program during the BBWCXR Symposium showcases the work of four artists who create virtual spaces using 3D scanning, 3D sculpting and AI. These technologies serve as tools to interrogate societal structures and the power dynamics shaping our tangible reality. By blending, hybridizing, and layering physical and virtual worlds, the artists craft new myths and narratives, uncovering meanings that tend to slip through the cracks of regular perception.

So does Andric Spaeth’s video work “Police vs. Society”, which offers a walkthrough of a virtual room critically examining police structures in Western societies. Carrie Chen’s “Myth VR”, an immersive journey inspired by Chinese folklore where participants engage with a court of deities, while “Primavera 春” is a digital simulation reimagining the artist’s life across multiple timelines. Gabriel Massan will debut their brand-new production “Unbonded On A Bonded Domain”, which seeks to explore a virtual ecosystem untethered both from their own identity and the physical and conceptual limitations of the human body. While Andrea Khora video work “Rapture” delves into the intersection of psychedelics and capitalism, blending live-action footage with AI-generated animation.

Screenings
25.10. 19:00-23:00
26.10. 11:00-23:00
Nancy Spero Saal

“Police vs. Society – A critical reflection on policing and its impact on the life of the policed” (2023) 

Duration: ca. 4 min

Andric Spaeth states that we need to rethink the role of police in society and highlight how policing has historically managed inequalities of race, gender, and class, mostly targeting marginalized groups. Drawing from personal experience as a police officer, Spaeth seeks to expose the racial biases and flaws within the system while advocating for transparency and change. Through the video work “Police vs. Society,” Spaeth aims to provoke critical reflection and foster conversations about the urgent need for police reform.  

andricspaeth.com

“Myth VR” (2021)

Duration: ca. 5 min

The video work “Myth VR” is a generative virtual reality experience inspired by Chinese mythologies, where participants, guided by Peking Opera performer Rose Wu, journey through the surreal Court of Hundred Gods and perform rituals to honor speculative deities.  

“Primavera” (2023)  

Duration: ca. 5 min

“Primavera 春” is a digital simulation where Carrie Chen depicts herself at multiple life stages within a blossoming spring landscape. Chen synthesizes AI, archival images, and 3D avatars to create digital selves that embody allegories of childhood, beauty, and renewal, exploring alternate timelines and imagined histories.

carriechen.works

“Unbonded On A Bonded Domain” (2023)

Duration: ca. 15 min

In “Unbonded On A Bonded Domain” Gabriel Massan seeks to align their rendering of emotional experience growing up in Rio de Janeiro, coming of age in São Paulo and relocating to Europe as the raw material for their work. By taking cues from writer and academic Saidiya Hartman’s notion of “Critical Fabulation”, Massan explores a virtual ecosystem untethered both from their own identity and the physical and conceptual limitations of the human body, performing speculative scenarios to investigate how queer club culture, systemic violence, and virtual identities can help us map out the material world and our relationships with it. Trapped in a Beckettian back-and-forth of drug-induced small talk and existential angst, a group of digital entities questions the nature of their environment and their situation within it. By transplanting a familiar scenario into an entirely fictionalised context, Massan, in collaborative development with technical artist Carlos Minozzi and sound artist and producer Agazero, creates space for a complexity of expression without the need to offer up too much of themselves in the process.

 “Rapture” (2024) 

Duration: ca. 24 min

“Rapture” is an experimental short film exploring the budding realm of psychedelic capitalism. The film takes place in a wellness-inspired office where the CEO of a fictional psychedelic startup, TranscendX, is being interviewed by a podcaster. The reality of the film pulls in and out from lucidity to trippy AI hallucinations of real world scenarios occurring in the psychedelic marketplace, questioning many of the ethical and cultural implications of the “psychedelic renaissance”. The film is informed by Andrea Khôra´s experiences within psychedelic therapy as well as on-site research at the world’s largest psychedelic conference, Psychedelic Science 2023. By blending film and AI animation techniques, the work captures a hallucinogenic landscape and its unlikely intersection with corporate agendas.

andreakhora.com 

Installations

0AR (zero AR) is an all-ages interactive multiplayer Augmented Reality (AR) and dance experience inspired by the groundbreaking 2005 production “zero degrees,” a collaboration between Sadler’s Wells Associate Artists Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Akram Khan, Nitin Sawney, and sculptor Antony Gormley. AΦE wanted to bring the liveness and collective aspect of the theatrical experience into AR, reimagining the application of this technology. 0AR is therefore a communal experience where audience members using five connected devices can interact in real time with one another and experience extracts of the original work popping up in 3D.

This innovative experience explores the concept of zero as life’s core and the transformation between different states of matter, focusing on the interplay between digital and physical realms. By fusing technology and movement, 0AR creates a unique platform for audiences to explore the boundaries between virtual and tangible realities, building upon the original production’s themes of transformation and the nature of existence. 

Presentation format:
10-minute experience, max 5 participants, suitable for all ages. 0AR will be presented in 2 hour slots.
No prior registration needed.

In Treppenauge West
25.10.
19:00-21:00 
22:00-23:00 
26.10.
11:00-13:00 
14:00-16:00 
17:00-19:00 
20:00-22:00

Commissioned by Sadler’s Wells, London Co -Produced by Biennale de la danse de Lyon 2018 Supported by Arts Council England, Jasmin Vardimon Company, V&A, South East Dance, The Old Market Brighton, Akram Khan Company, Eastman and Ashford Borough Council.

Чули? Чули (Chuly? Chuly), translating from Ukrainian as “Have you heard? We’ve heard/Have you felt it? We’ve felt it”, merges performative video gameplay with choreography to delve into manipulative narratives and the embodiment of online personas. Leta Shtohryn video gameplay engages with narratives shaped by human-led troll farms and AI, anchored in a speculative story from a woman who once saw giants. Her narrative, twisted by ChatGPT to reflect online misinformation tactics, indirectly guides the player through the environment, yet never reveals the discussed cave and giants. This work looks at today’s giants—enormous, planetary, interconnected, and mostly invisible entities; Artificial General Intelligence (AGIs), pandemics, secret weapons, and disinformation itself; some engineered and run by humans, others self-materialising, shapeshifting.

Presented as an interactive installation, the work reveals only a fragment of the entire narrative through the video gameplay. This selective engagement is designed to reflect the incomplete and fragmented nature of online information, mirroring the partial truths and hidden realities we often encounter. The work won an Honorary Mention Award at Prix Ars Electronica 2024.

nm Ecksalon West
25.10. 19:00-23:00
26.10. 11:00-23:00

Bauhaus as a visitor in Hellerau. The App-Installation “Bauhaus Time Traveler” reimagines the visitors as Bauhaus artists and time travelers. This speculative journey honors the Bauhaus legacy while infusing it with modern inclusivity and humor. The visitor moves in front of a laptop manipulating generative outputs in real time, exploring the aesthetic ideas about the future and while transformed into these speculative characters. The installation features a sound environment crafted with Musicgen. This piece uses an AI LCM Turbo Model powered by Fal.ai for real-time for instant image generation from webcam images guided by text-to-image conversion.

Credits:
Concept, programming, and AI image and sound production by Marlon Barrios Solano

Foyer West 1.OG.
25.10. 19:00-23:00
26.10. 11:00-23:00