ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE CELL: A GATA EDITORIAL
CELL is conceived as a visual interrogation of philosophical cross paths and socio-anthropological relevance. It mirrors the layers of surveillance, repression and subjugation that quietly structure daily life.
CELL depicts a space that is fundamentally “other”. It stages the confinement of bodies within a structure echoing historical cycles of subjugation, defiance and collapse. These structures can be extended to modern hierarchies. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of “heterotopia”, the CELL becomes a site where the public reflects and distorts itself, functioning as a mirror of societal concerns.
Public spaces once imagined as sites for freedom and democracy now reveal themselves as arenas of surveillance, control and authoritarian violence. Private spaces are equally under siege. What was once free of prying eyes is now tracked and managed through advanced surveillance technologies that map behavior and neutralise dissent. Privacy and anonymity have become both a privilege and a punishment, confined to the realm of social otherness.
Freedom, in modern circumstances, is never sold to us as liberation from outside observation- What is offered are instead amiable forms of it: freedom of self-expression, freedom from judgement. These modern phantasms of a technological, globalised, secular and interconnected world are unravelling to show systemic faults.
Within surveillance systems, developments in AI open up doors of sublime control over the population. Operating within the frame of past observed and recorded behaviour, information is filtered and channeled into output with the primary goal of increasing engagement through positive feedback loops. It is thus not only a state of surveillance that we exist within, but one where truth is malleable. In visual arts, generative AI often results to perform as the public’s shadow. Within the display, CELL suggests a reversed approach. It appears as a copy of a copy. A resemblance of generative AI in art albeit in fact a project purely conceptualised and executed within physical matters.
This oscillation between the simulated and the real reflects the heterotopia through today’s technological condition, where the concepts of authenticity and authorship are disappearing.
LEAD CREATIVE DIRECTION + PHOTOGRAPHY: REBEKKA ROBERTS
LEAD CREATIVE DIRECTION + SPATIAL DESIGN: GUILLERMINA BURGOS FISCHER + HUGH GLEESON
CONTRIBUTING CREATIVE AND MOVEMENT DIRECTION: DAFNI KRAZOUDI
VIDEO: JOHANNA KIRSCH
STYLIST: KAMAL EMANGA
HAIR AND MAKEUP ARTIST: ANNA BROADFOOT
TALENTS: MELANIE SCHILL + GLORIA VIKTORIA REGOTZ + HANNAH AGMASE
LIGHT TECH AND ASSISTANCE TO PHOTOGRAPHER: KASPER JERNHAG
ASSISTANTS SET AND CONSTRUCTION: JOSHUA KURTHS + LUKE TACKABERRY + TATA ZAKARAIA + TOMAS MARTINEZ
DESIGNS: LAURĪN WERWĪNSKI + MIGUEL + ΛLEX VANOVA + NASTYA&MASHA + LION BUSCH + PAUL K