collaborative sci-fi fable and multi-media worldbuilding venture, 2024
Goethe-Institut New York
(c) Marc Tatti
Set in a near-future dystopian world overrun by corrupt techno-totalitarianism, CRIPTO SIRENAS features a new cycle of works by Anna Ehrenstein, Sunny Pfalzer, Lucy Tomasino, and Alexa Evangelista. Utilizing somatic writing sessions and free-body movement workshops, the artists leverage the politics of collaboration to project a world not-too-far from our own, which has been ravaged by an unfettered and rapacious technology industry. Simultaneously a satirization and cautionary tale, the works in this exhibition use the narrative of an antagonistic "crypto ballerina" who acts as a savior in a fictional technofascist society, offering artistic strategies of resistance and perseverance in the face of real-world technofascism. Drag, dance, and a fluid and moist dreamscape function as the blades cutting through the oppressive block chain. The exhibition displays the artists’ joint vision of the near future, unveiling the imaginary country El Liberador, ruled by an authoritarian tech-solutionist president who is also the CEO of the country’s biggest tech firm, BETA.
In recent years, the world has borne witness to an alarming rise in far-right politics and the pandering of the tech industry to appease them. The class of billionaire elites today have an outsized role in global governance, which threatens digital security, bodily autonomy, and freedom of speech, all the while further devastating the environment with massive energy usage. Based on research conducted during Ehrenstein's and Pfalzer's 2024 residency in El Salvador, the works evoke fictionalizations and speculations of real contemporary trends. The narrative that blockchain technology can “bank the unbanked” or provide decentralized financial solutions often mask underlying motives of neocolonial economic extraction and control from western exchanges in the Global South.
Städtische Galerie Nordhorn
(c) Helmut Claus