Qian Ma - 'Desire & Simulacra'

About

Looking at fascination / devotion / aspiration / lust / love
with 
facsimiles / copies / clone / counterfeit 

For a week, we will show a specific video work and open the space by appointment - please email: anne.duffau@rca.ac.uk

The confluence of consciousness and technology has reached a point, where we are able to perceive and create our world simultaneously, and thus making it possible to for us to participate in the creation of the reality that we live in. It has become increasingly crucial to question the authenticity of reality, as well as our perception and description of it. The notion that reality, and to a greater extent, truth, is debatable and can be manipulated and altered, has become an imminent threat to democracy and our very existence. 

"May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way" is set against mankind’s current commitment to a technological revolution and a speculative future that we are unprepared and have no total control of. The work consists of two different, out of sync video projections, and instead of a single double-sided screen, the two narratives meet in the middle on layers of floating, translucent surfaces, where the light and imagery from the other side colludes with the one in front of the viewer. The “screen” is thus expanded and now possesses a volume, where boundaries between the past and the future, the real and the artificial, all become blurred. We are now on an irreversible path to the most profound existential crisis we’ve ever faced. It is just as dark ahead as it is in the distance behind. Let’s hope something will point us in the right direction.