Week 102_Care Stranding
19th January 2018 performance with Keiken, George Stone + Khidja as part
of the performances at transmediale Vorspiel Opening night at Acud Macht Neu
30th January 2018 Workshop with Keiken + 700ok 6pm - 9pm
3rd February 2018 RPG event 6pm - 1am featuring Keiken, Suzannah Pettigrew,
George Stone, Alberta Shearing, Nyne Derricott, Haruka Fukao, 700ok,
Jasper Golding + Timothy Crombie.
keiken° mind u @ Voodoo55, 55 Mullerstraße, 10437 Berlin
*Acud Macht Neu, Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin
keiken° mind u presents Care Stranding at Vorspiel, transmediale and CTM festival’s annual pre-festival program. Two events and a performance will explore what the AI revolution and the impending future means for care and recognise Google, an omniscient and omnipresent entity, as a deity, in the form of RPG (role playing game) through performance and a workshop.Inspired by Hideo Kojima’s yet to be released video game, ‘Death Stranding’, an action game in an open world environment where the player is sent to “another world stranded in our world.” Care Stranding will use world building theories to ignite active players and learning through experience. Stranding suggests a place that is neither here nor there, nor in the sea or on land. As we transition through accelerationism and the technological revolution, we face a point where there is infinite data and knowledge, so much so that the world seems to advance faster than it spins. Huge changes will no doubt occur in the near future that may not be so easy to predict or adapt to, potentially leaving many without the means or support to move from this “somewhere”. Stranding allegorizes the place we are in, in space and time but also relates
to networks and connections.
In the RPG three different states will activate the players, AWAKE (the conscious, uninfluenced and questioning mind), DREAMWORK (forgetting as an adaptive strategy for capitalist realism) and SLEEP (our most intimate dreams and nightmares). RPG will be employed in constructed scenarios, hyperlinking the ultimate present moment with the psychological real space of the participant. Live simulations starring the individual self, the largest commodity of today, will create many narratives with forking outcomes. Each participant will become a strand in the network. We will work together to explore the delicacies of care/lack of care in neoliberalist contemporary culture and postulate future care. When your fridge has ordered the milk that you ran out of this morning or when your grandmother is cared for by fellow companion care robot, Pepper, is this where care is heading? Will we be unable to interact
without an interface to facilitate the action? Care Stranding is political action, not just aesthetic gesture.
For the Vorspiel Opening on 19th January (Acud Macht Neu), Keiken performed alongside a live set from music duo Khidja with video design by George Stone, enveloping the club in the dreams of a future home environment. On the 30th January Keiken and music collective 700ok will present an interactive workshop focusing on inequality and the threat to sleep in the demands of our 24/7late capitalist world. Building up to the final event in the series, keiken° mind u invite you to join them for a dinner party, a large scale open world RPG performance and live music with Keiken, Suzannah Pettigrew, George Stone, Alberta Shearing, Nyne Derricott, Haruka Fukao, 700ok, Jasper Golding and Timothy Crombie. The final RPG is the Last Supper, taking place inside the Temple of Google, our omniscient and omnipresent entity, in a microcosm reality comprised of four elements, ice, sand, smoke and plastic. All collaborating under the collective Keiken, strands will form offering alternate dreams, whether you begin training for the new update (Suzannah Pettigrew with soundscape by cktrl), witness gifts for Google being carved from the bodies of obsolete machines (Alberta Shearing with soundscape by Staz Rybin) or encounter the enforced labour of the AI housemaid programmed to clean obsessively (Nyne Derricott with mix by Marcin Przyłęcki). A beguiling atmosphere will be constructed through video design and set design by George Stone. Jasper Golding of 700ok, will form the soundscape through a field of unified impulse and decision making; as well as playing live Golding will present a new series of illustration works, dealing with the impulsive methods of google image search selection.
keiken° mind u was set up by the artist collective Keiken as an organisation and platform
traversing the interstices of art, music and technology promoting collaborative exchanges and
discourse. The idea began after hosting a series of podcasts on Know Wave radio titled ‘mind u’.
Keiken are a progressive collective comprised of artists and musicians who merge latest technologies such as VR with music and interactive contemporary art. Keiken is the Japanese word for experience and their aim is to push the boundaries of what an immersive experience can become. Keiken recently presented a new work, Silicone_Animism | The Birth of Mother Digital, Trimester 1, 2 and 3 at Clinic//2, as part of the London Design Festival, at Disturbed, Hacked, Reassembled, Lewisham Arthouse and at Hervisions, Second Home. Keiken also presented performance, BCNU*, at Tate St Ives last June and their VR, @MotherDigital, was selected for Plymouth Contemporaries 2017 at Peninsula Arts. They have curated and exhibited at Newlyn Art Gallery; Palace of Culture and Drawing a Presence, 2017, 2016.
For further information on participating artists visit keiken-mind-u.com
