Photo: Lelde Gūtmane
The artists developed the Technospiritual Visionary artwork at the EMAP residency, presented at the RIXC Art Science Festival 2024: Symbiotic Sense(s).
Agata Konarska was born in 1995 in Poland. Her artistic activities are based on the use of various media, such as video, sound and performance, with the help of which she creates interactive situations and creates virtual realities. In my activities, I touch the subject of religiosity, oscillating between the sacred and the profane. She explores the phenomenon of woman iconicity, looking for the anthropological origins of matriarchy and its references in the Anthropocene era. He often uses political, geological and animal motifs. She is fascinated by modern myths and rituals, as well as the coming apocalypse. He notoriously dreams about animal hybrids and the spaciousness of architecture.
Jakub Kosecki is a visual artist, musician and curator, born in Szczecin in 1996, living and working in Poznań since 2016. In 2019, he earned his bachelor’s degree in Intermedia, and in 2022, he earned his master’s degree in Curating and Theories of Art, both at the University of the Arts in Poznań. As a visual artist he creates installations and objects, using found objects, assemblage, sculptural techniques and drawing. As part of his musical activities, he creates electronic compositions and experimental site-specific music installations. From 2017 to 2021, he co-managed the Luka Gallery. In 2020, together with the curator Julianna Kulczynska and the Luka collective, he founded Luka 5G, a virtual space for art. Since 2021 part of collective Domie.
Technospiritual Visionary, 2023
Technospiritual visionary is a project created by Agata Konarska and Jakub Kosecki, within which two artistic people create both material and virtual experiences, based on the reinterpretation and recycling of archaic cultural contexts, searching for new applications for them. The sources of inspiration for the activities of this duo are the activities of the C.C.R.U collective, theory fiction and archaeology, and mythologies of ancient cultures.
The Book of the Dead: Virtual Gates – This is a debut project created on the basis of a theoretical/autotheoretical method, which involves the implementation of concepts invented in the distant past and their implementation in the present context. In this activity, based on Egyptological and archaeological sources, we look in particular at the concept of identity in ancient Egypt and try to compare it with today’s state of affairs. The ancient Egyptian multi-layered soul is associated with the modern stratification of the posthuman person on the bureaucratic, personal, psychological and legal levels. We do not simply exist in society, but our existence takes place through a number of different documents, accounts, avatars, profiles. Similarly, in ancient Egypt, at the ontological level, we consist of nine parts, each of which has a different role, the name itself was also something that embodied social existence in Egypt at that time.
The installation features two main components: an animatronic priest acting as a projector, displaying a 360° video of the viewer’s death and funeral, and a large-scale wall display for a gaming experience inspired by ‘blind gates.’ This cybernetic ritual, drawing from ancient Egyptian mythology, guides the player on an interactive journey to the afterlife. The immersive world combines modern technology metaphors with the Book of the Dead’s symbolism, reflecting on our current social reality. Player data collection at the start shapes the narrative and gameplay. The project aims to fulfill the ancient dream of a social reality and embodies the prophetic vision of the ‘Western land’ in ancient civilizations.
More information:
https://emare.eu/works/technospiritual-visionary-2024
