Science Fiction is Not Pretend
Slow days, sick days, fog and forgetting. Disobedient bodies, archives, clocks and flows of capital. The fragility of the body is the focus of RA Walden's queer, disabled and transdisciplinary practice.
The video premiere Science Fiction Is Not Pretend shows a barrage of gloomy images of civilisation: The water is burning, the underground is shaking, animals are being turned into mincemeat. Everyday a buffet of horror, a smorgasbord of unearthly delights. Loneliness, promise, desire and fertile ground. Fallible bodies flailing under the weight of the end of the world. Complicit and raging, there is no higher ground. Sometimes there is hope, but sometimes there is only a logbook – a pathetic record keeping.
Alongside their video work, RA Walden presents an accompanying interactive website on HAU4, in collaboration with artist Cooper Lovano. This digital environment welcomes visitors to discover references to Science Fiction Is Not Pretend on their own. Notes, images and sounds created in the moments between waking and sleeping. “Who is living inside you?” asks the voice in the video, with despair in one hand, the remote control in the other.
When? Where?
8 March 2022, 7pm
HAU4 (HAU Hebbel am Ufer's digital stage)