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Virtual Worlds Now

After several months of online events, KIBLIX 2020–2021 has shifted to the physical space of the largest independent exhibition space of contemporary art in Slovenia, KIBLA PORTAL in Maribor in July. For this year’s festival edition, the curatorial team consisting of Živa Kleindienst, Tadej Vindiš, Peter Tomaž Dobrila, and Aleksandra Kostič, is asking what are the virtual worlds now? The international group exhibition presents a critical overview of contemporary virtual spaces through a series of innovative art research projects in the field of the latest virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies.

Marco Donnarumma is presenting Amygdala (artificially intelligent robot, 2015–2018) and Calyx (sculptural installation, 2019). Calyx is composed of skin garments, each bearing unique traces and scars caused by the operations of an AI robot named Amygdala. During every exhibition, Amygdala uses a steel metal knife to carefully cut and sculpt the skin, without any particular goal other than learning to cut. The skins are, thus, bodily relics testifying to the computational agency of the machine and to its oblivious brutality. The skins are the result of combined activity by the human artist and the autonomous robot. The initial, intact skin garment is first created by Donnarumma by hand, using a particular compound of organic materials designed by the artist to resemble human skin as closely as possible. The artist’s bodily hairs are also embedded in the skins. When ready, the skin is attached to the body of Amygdala, which then begins its inexorable skin-cutting performance.

Amygdala and Calyx are part of the 7 Configurations cycle (2014–2019), a series on the conflicts surrounding the human body in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

When? Where?
1 October - 30 November 2021
KIBLA PORTAL
Valvasorjeva 40, 2nd floor
Maribor, Slovenia

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