Simulacra: sex | Aga / Sebastian Migdałek

Artist

Aga / Sebastian Migdałek

ABOUT EXHIBITION

According to J. Baudrillard, simulacs simulate – create, generate – a reality that lacks support in reality.
Issues such as life, sex, time, entertainment, computers, war corporations … and our imagination about them, are an inspiration for us to explore the forms of existence in the area in which phenomena occur until the end unknown to us. We see in this way the discovery of a new, strange world. The world of our reality – the simulacrum, where nothing is as it seems.

We think about what we can feel, smell, try, see, it’s impulses interpreted by the brain. We live on the real and virtual world as in the novels of J. Dukaj. A new gender is born, a new race. New forms of entertainment are created, new corporations. Life and time are turned into bits. We are addicted to machines. We can not live without them. It is a world of illusions, computer generated. It is a representation of our vision of the future. The world of simulators is a world in which nobody of us would like to be found, but at the same time we are fast to it.
What is real? And what is illusion? The virtual world slowly becomes the real world. What we see, hear and feel is only a slice of reality. Just change your perspective and move to another world.

Welcome to the reality simulation project.

SEX
The construction of the first individual who has the ability to self-replicate gave birth to the whole new species. Similar living forms were created. The differences between a woman and a man have become blurred until they reach a degree of complete non-differentiation. Walking down the street we can not tell if we are passing a woman or a man. Sexual customs have greatly simplified. Sexual roles of both sexes were displaced, and so the typically male and female attitudes in this field were eliminated. A hybrid was created – a genetic engineering product.

What arrogance might seem like designing substitute species when we are unable to cope with ourselves and understand ourselves.

WOMAN
… the egg becomes unnecessary …

MAN
… the secret of sperm is always unnecessary …

SEX
Reproduced desired, planned and controlled.

HYBRID
The third sex, or a voluntary hybrid, completely sexually sufficient.

more information:
http://symulakry.ovh.org
POST-androgyne
Monika Ruszało
artPapier 15 marca 6 (102) / 2008 I art

The first part of the title of the current exhibition of Aga and Sebastian – or rather – Aga / Sebastian Migdalki in Galeria Nova: “Simulacres: Gender” is already a canonical term for characters that refer to emptiness, such as “regain full rights after the death of all references”. In combination with the second part of the exhibition title, the Baudrillardian concept refers us to the problems of contemporary gender transformation and consequences of this phenomenon. The exhibition of works by the artists’ duet, coherent and concise, addresses the issue in a very suggestive way.

The first attempt of cooperation between these artists was Agnieszka’s diploma – “Man-computer-network” from 2005. Agnieszka Migdałek, who participated in numerous poster competitions (Krakow, Chaumont), also has several individual and collective exhibitions.

In Galeria Nova, we first find installations on opposite walls – the outline of a woman and a man, marked by a thick black line on white boards. These figures, filled with lines that resemble spirit levels on the map, seem to be barely a reflection of human bodies. Isolines combining equally valued points are closed curves. Uninterrupted, smoothly defined, they delineate the geography of the human body with its less and more important points. They also evoke associations with the bloodstream or the nerve network that entangles the human body. At the same time, the characters bring to mind the spatial computer-generated models, cyber-mannequins, condensing in themselves those features that constitute humanity, while also depriving and deprived of individual features: physiognomy, hair. The boards on which the contours are marked are interrupted – at the height of the man’s head and the womb of the woman – to place the monitors there. The images that are displayed on them must be considered in the context of such an important detail as the visible fragment of the child’s extended handle, which is captured by each individual. The man’s thoughts revolve around physical love. In his mind, images that we have the ability to peep are moving: naked, entwined lovers’ bodies, presented in a black and white color gamut. Projection of memories or fantasy? On the screen, women display photos of the human fetus, undefined shapes, views of the earth sphere – works of computer graphics. The installations are accompanied by music that we can hear by putting on the earphones.

A specific assignment of roles, defining individuals, is questioned by the second work of Aga / Sebastian Migdalki: a photographic diptych, showing a man and a woman, this time with “deprived” faces. He bows his head, crouches over the toilet bowl and proves that he is just experiencing menstruation. She – in a dress, stockings and high heels, depicted from the back in her legs, uses a urinal. Which of them is He and which is She? And what decides about it: nature or culture? Manuel Castells writes in “Network society”:
“New reproductive technologies and new cultural models largely make it possible to separate age and biological conditions from reproduction and parenthood. In strictly technical terms it is now possible to differentiate the legal parent (s) of the child: whose sperm is whose egg, where and how the fertilization takes place, in real time or postponed, even after the death of the father, and whose uterus is from which a child will be born. All combinations are possible and socially settled. ”
Combinatorics, this postmodern “DIY” transferred to this plane – is worrying. The exchange of roles is not tantamount to hybridity per se – in the mythical sense, i.e. one that draws towards the border, facilitates transgression. So here we have to do with the simulation of hybridity, the elements remain in their essence – separated. It is impossible to resurrect Androgyny, it must be remembered that Frankenstein can be created in this attempt.

In the third installment, the viewer is encouraged to interact: on the board there are photos of body parts stuck to the plastic, limbs and bodies belonging to a woman and a man, which can be arranged in any configuration on the board next to it. The bodies deprived of their heads once again turn us back to modality, depersonalization. No head is a face deprivation – sense strictly. The face is a metonymy of the Person, according to the concept of Emmanuel Levinas. On the other hand, disorganization of the body, and later its merging, is the only chance to gain a new existential status. Most myths and their stagings – rituals – talk about it. The considerations of Jacques Lacan are all about this matter – disintegration and unification. However, it should not be forgotten that the margin of error is very narrow in this sphere. Fun in God? – Here you are. Coming soon to everyone! Only that it is rather a game of Para-God, artists seem to be saying. Although the prospect is tempting, out of fragmented non-human members, we will not create a human being.

Aga / Sebastian Migdałek “Simulacry: Gender”, Nova Gallery, Krakow, March 14 – April 14, 2008.