4K video, tulle, NFC chips, AR face filter, sound, performance
This multimedia work builds on Stefan Hurtig’s engagement with questions of self-optimisation and posthuman utopia. Working with artist and fashion designer Alexandra Börner, he developed items of clothing that can be understood as wearable artworks that transform the wearer into a hybrid being. Chips for near-field communication sewn into these outfits expand them into virtual space and can be read by smartphones, giving access to videos of the “Rheinauer Theses on the Rights of Plants” (2008) and allowing selfies with lichen patterns to be shared on Instagram. The artist playfully explores how fundamentally humans are changing the fabric of life.
The video shows performer Jan Jedenak wearing the garment sculptures in Berlin. At a former animal testing laboratory, aka “the mouse bunker,” Jedenak attempts to establish contact with lichens and mosses that grow on the brutalist architecture. Are these the beings that will transform landscapes scarred by open-cast mining back into living biospheres? At the opening of the exhibition, Jedenak presented the textile sculptures in action, transforming himself into a hybrid of human, animal, and plant.
Performance by
Alexandra Börner and Stefan Hurtig
Performer: Jan Jedenak
Videos and face filter on the NFC chips:
Ilonka Blaumann
Video
Camera: Ray Peter Maletzki
Performer: Jan Jedenak
Directed, edited, and graded by:
Stefan Hurtig
Camera assistant, set photographer:
Louis Volkmann
Thanks to:
Helmut Schmidt, Margit Passow
Sound composer:
Ludovico Failla
Made possible by a grant from Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.
Featured in the exhibitions:
