Awake with a stranger´s shoes on Event

duo show of Dasha Ilina & Ulrich Formann
Vernissage

The exhibition Awake with a stranger´s shoes on invites us to confront and navigate through the intricate web of technology and humans with selected works by techno-critical artists Dasha Ilina and Ulrich Formann based in Paris and Vienna. In our rapidly evolving digital landscape, technology has outpaced our understanding, thrusting us into a world of vast, seemingly unknowable systems.

In his work Formann uses different kinds of publicly available data sources, collected from institutions, corporations, apps and websites. Incorporated in different settings, his installations might appear to serve public interest. However, upon closer inspection, his work reveals a darker phenomenon: social media content offers the comfort of highlighting societal grievances without encouraging to take action or prevent them.

Ilina’s work, Do Humans Dream of Online Connection? critiques our intimate relationship with digital devices, making us acutely aware of the foreign nature of our digital dependencies. By combining the rigid surfaces of smartphones with the delicate art of hand embroidery, Ilina exposes the hidden labor and emotional investment behind our sleek digital interactions. Her work Center for Technological Pain further highlights our struggle for agency, offering absurd yet poignant DIY solutions to tech-induced ailments.

Awake with a stranger´s shoes on challenges us to confront the complexities of modern technology, not with the aim of mastering or simplifying, but to live with them more consciously and sustainably. By doing so, we can resist the lure of simplistic, deterministic narratives and instead foster a more nuanced understanding of our digital landscape, acknowledging that complexity is an inherent and inescapable part of our reality.