| K-9_TOPOLOGY: ARTE_MIS Hybrid art work, 2016/17 K-9_topology is dwelling on the phenomenology of fear accompanied with various versions of bio fascination and bio phobia. The work uses co-evolution between a human and a dog as a matrix to establish the empathic distance towards the Other. The confrontation of the cultural Other, as something foreign is much often being mystified by society because it demands an effort to be understood. K-9_topology (presented as a series of four projects) examines the society's ability in enduring this kind of an effort. At the same time it poses the following question: What defines humans as a superior species in the ecologically ruined, over populated and economically compromised world?In ARTE_mis, her final project, the artist is wondering about who manages our reproductive freedom and who establishes the rules of ethics in general? Smrekar's attempt was questioning the current biotechnological possibilities, from which the impossibility of the mythological man-wolf figure emerges in all its poetics. The man-wolf figure can be found in all human cultures as the ultimate Other. Since the establishment of humanism, it has been a symbol of the human exclusion out of nature into the culture opposition. With humanism Nature became the Other, and humans stepped on top of the pyramid to dominate all living organisms. As her final statement Smrekar claims that yet in a post-human future the main question to ask ourselves will be: What (still) makes us human? Her conclusion is suggesting our own animality. (Maja Smrekar) K-9_topology: |
MAJA SMREKAR SI She is the winner of the Prix Ars Electronica 2017 in Hybrid Art - Golden Nica. Maja Smrekar lives and works between Ljubljana, Slovenia and Berlin, Germany.
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