The mimetic in the post-digital predicament
March 26, 2019, 7:30pm
Curated by Most Mechanics Are Crooks
The weasel dance is a hypnotizing choreography that paralyzes the weasel’s prey. This is, perhaps, a successful depiction of the post-digital predicament: we remain dazzled by the plurality of our on-line identities, digital extensions, “memetic” truisms and mimetic selves while imagining the perpetuation of self-mastery. We, thereby, perform the post-digital trauma: the scars our online masks leave on our faces.
This event brings together a variety of artists working with the schizophrenic economy of the internet and digital mediation. In the decade of “Greek crisis,” these artists witnessed the implosion of social and political sphere, the rise of social media and the sudden gamification of life after Reality TV. They experimented with the vast options of identity molding via the use of avatars, alter egos, masquerade, semblance, mimicry, parafiction and the practice of crafty underhanded ingenuity. Yet, rather than feeding a fantasy of heroic subversiveness, they acknowledge the impact of avatarization and thematize the discomforting effects of their mended self-image.
The Weasel Dance event transforms Goethe-Institut Athen into a lair of alluring post-digital monstrosities. It is the inaugural curatorial project of Most Mechanics Are Crooks, a newly formed artistic and curatorial band that aims to reclaim insincerity as a tool of progressive discourse, challenging the new belief in the existence of ontological truths, unconditional empathy, disarming sincerity and artistic humanism.
Participants:
Sam Albatros, ASFA Lab 12/Poka-Yio, Ayşenur Babuna, Flower Girls (Eleftheria Kotzaki, Christina Spanou, Dimitra Stamatopoulou), Hypercomf, It’s me! (performed by Thanos Ghikas, Helen Karakou, Markella Ksilogiannopoulou), Klassenfahrt (Nikos Arvanitis, Anamarija Batista, Alexios Dallas, Jakob Dietrich, Christine Eder, Kyriaki Goni, Dejan Kaludjerović, Vana Kostayola, Kai Maier-Rothe, Panos Sklavenitis, Kostis Stafylakis, Axel Stockburger), Dimitra Kondylatou, Apostolos Lampropoulos, Most Mechanics Are Crooks (Eva Giannakopoulou, Alexis Fidetzis, Panos Sklavenitis, Kostis Stafylakis), Eva Papamargariti, Lykourgos Porfyris, Theo Triantafyllidis, Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou, Michailangelos Vlassis-Ziakas, Vassilis Vlastaras & Maria Glyka.
