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Laura Splan ’s kaleidoscopic protein folding animation Hypertelic (2025) takes over RYAN LEE gallery’s RLWindow , overlooking New York’s High Line. Part of the American artist’s Unraveling (2020–) series she co-created with biotechnologist using molecular visualization systems and SARS spike protein models, the mesmerizing patterns reveal “posthuman entanglements of natural and built systems.” They also gesture towards healing, as unraveling viral proteins digitally renders them defunct.
“To be honest, I cry, because there’s no walking this back. These particles don’t break down at a time scale that would be relevant. So yeah, we’re not escaping that.”
– Utah State University biogeochemist
Janice Brahney , on forever chemicals (
PFAS ) and microplastics now permeating Earth systems, even the water cycles in remote regions. “It’s much worse than the acid rain problem,” says Brahney, who lead a
2020 Science study on plastic rain. “With acid rain, we could stop emitting acid precursors. But we can’t stop the microplastic cycle anymore. It’s there and it’s not going away.”
Fusing Cypherphunk ideals with declarations of bodily autonomy, Rhea Myers foregrounds “The Fractionalized Phallus” at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin. In her solo show, the blockchain art pioneer presents conceptual works asserting identity and articulating contractual relations. Notably, in the titular series of 30 NFTs (image right), Myers encodes 3D scans of her former body “into a fragmented relic of a past self,” asserting agency and “collapsing the patriarchal master signifier.”
A cast of international artists explore “Freeing the Voices” at Kunsthaus Graz (AT). Deriving its title from Marina Abramović ‘s 1975 performance , the show presents the Serbian’s scream alongside works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan , VALIE EXPORT , Nora Turato , Mladen Stilinović , and others, that use voice as “the power to become flesh, to act in this world.” Antoni Rayzhekov ’s The Evasive Choir (2021, image), for example, transforms audio of key Bulgarian public figures into “a chorus of the muffled.”
“Some of the most disorienting artworks I’ve seen lately have been home-brewed video games—digital artworks that resemble ungentrified cyberspace or emulate apocalyptic raves.”
–
Spike columnist
Travis Diehl , on the multiplayer works of
Theo Triantafyllidis ,
Tale of Tales , and
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley at the 2024 Onassis ONX show “
Group Hug ” (Water Street Projects, New York). The games, Diehl argues, defy the “psychic gentrification” that is the cruel MAGA offensive against transgender people. Instead, they celebrate “a culture that reflects the irreducible ambivalence of life on this planet, and decides not to pacify, sanitize, gentrify it.”
Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld presents a new experimental photo series in her solo exhibition “Labor Lab” at Schering Stiftung’s Project Space in Berlin. By dropping solvents of drugs and hormones—endogenous substances such as breast milk, pharmacological substances such as the contraceptive pill—on pre-exposed negatives, the German artist creates forms that “cast an aesthetic spell,” highlighting the complexi issues surrounding the control mechanisms of female reproduction.
“Scent has maybe been a precursor to art … Scent is described as mysterious, inscrutable because it’s invisible. You can’t see the molecules.”
– Korean-American artist
Anicka Yi , on the fragrance that is part of her multisensory artwork
Walking on Two Paths at Once . Created in collaboration with French perfumer
Barnabé Fillion , it provides a sensory awakening that prepares visitors for a deeper exploration of the connections between biology and power, writes critic Kwon Mee-yoo. The piece is currently on view at Yi’s
solo exhibition at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul (KR).
Cornell researchers harnessed fungal mycelia’s innate electrical signals as a new way of controlling “biohybrid” robots. “By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment,” says Rob Shepherd of Cornell’s Organic Robotics Lab . Using light as an input, the spider bot walked in response to natural spikes in the mycelia’s signal. “It’s about creating a true connection with the living system,” explains lead researcher Anand Mishra .
An excerpt from the “Medicine and the Body” issue, LOGIC(S) publishes a brain-computer interface (BCI) and neural implant explainer by Andrea Stocco . The neuroscientist outlines (invasive and non-invasive) ways to stimulate neurons—and how machine learning is crucical to the field. While optimistic about implants like Neuralink , Stocco flags maintenance and security as issues, and warns that potentially ‘curing’ disabilities with implants does not excuse society from accommodating differently-abled individuals.
“Being in the Garden of Forking Paths” opens at Berlin’s Office Impart, hosting “encounters between bodies and machines” with artists Salomé Chatriot , CROSSLUCID , and Pola Sieverding . Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ 1941 hypertext precursor , the show explores “touch” and “hybrid gestures” through photography, AI portraiture, and CGI. Chatriot’s video diptych Breathing Patterns and aluminium sculpture Waistgate (Sparks) (both 2023), for example, constitute “pre-fossils” that invoke “techno-mythologies and speculative futures.”
“I’m a maximalist to the highest degree. When it comes to exhibitions, I don’t ease people in. Instead, I drop them straight into the deep end.”
– Digital artist
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley , on the intensity of her current survey exhibition, “
THE SOUL STATION ,” at Berlin’s Halle am Berghain. Commissioned by
LAS Art Foundation and curated by
Mawena Yehouessi , the show presents experimental videogames that confront audiences with Black Trans issues through CGI overload. “I expect people to feel overwhelmed,” Brathwaite-Shirley admits. “In my work, you get as much as you give. The harder you play, the more you’ll see.”
“Can farmed animals be conceptualized as biotechnologies, workers, factories, or products?”
– Architectural historian
Sofia Nannini , on diagrams for
Cedric Price ’s unrealized livestock corral
Westpen (1977, image), the subject of her forthcoming Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) publication
Swiss artist collective Fragmentin ’s new installation, HIVE Index Apian , Aladin Borioli’s Ministry of Bees, the work critiques how big agriculture exploits bees with the help of technology. A skeletal, hand-like sculpture, LED stock market signifiers at its tips, tightens its grip on a bee colony, while two short films show modern ways of beekeeping—ethical, unethical—and speculate on their stock market value.
“I think a world run by 200-year-old white men would be an appalling place.”
– Computer scientist
Geoffrey Hinton , expressing disgust at the most likely outcome of life extension. Commenting on how septuagenarian inventor and futurist
Ray Kurzweil hopes to live to 2030 and cheat death by ‘merging’ with AI, Hinton acknowledges Kurzweil’s predictions of a
technological singularity seem more plausible post-AI acceleration than they were at the turn of the century.
“One of the key attributes of dreams is that they feel real in the moment. When I looked at my hands and saw the mutant flippers of a Midjourney hallucination, I felt the walls drop. My whole body flushed. Nothing was real here—least of all me .”
– Writer and musician
Claire L. Evans , describing a moment of self-realization when she knew she was dreaming. In her essay on lucid dreaming, Evans shares her nocturnal travelogue and takes stock of related cognitive science research.
“Through braces, belts, straps, and medical tubing, the support and treatment of the body is made visible as a jarring domain of restraint and domination.”
– Critic Louis Scherfig, on the materials used by Canadian artist
Panteha Abareshi in their O—Overgaden show “
Impaired Erotics ” (image: Abareshi’s
OBJECT DESIRE , 2024)
“Information age technology, globalization, and income inequality are causing an exponential rise in the percentage of men who cannot find success in the traditional sexual marketplace.”
– Art critic
Ben Davis , citing the bleak white paper of
Lush AI to illustrate the corrosive business model of AI companionship. Rather than addressing the “soul-sucking” economic stagnation identified as a driver of loneliness and disconnection, it presents “‘incel’ culture as a lucrative business opportunity.”
Two exhibitions, “Outer/Body” and “Neighbouring Frequencies,” open as part of Amsterdam’s FIBER Festival. The former expands on the eponymous festival theme with multi-disciplinary works by, for example, Marco Donnarumma , Sissel Marie Tonn , Dani Ploeger , and Hedwich Rooks that probe the boundaries of embodiment. The latter presents sound sculptures and installations by Oussama Tabti , Floris Vanhoof , Els Viaene , and others to celebrate contemporary sound art from Belgium and the Netherlands.
Foregrounding how sick bodies are controlled and fetishized, Panteha Abareshi ’s “Impaired Erotics” opens at O—Overgaden in Copenhagen. Through a series of provocative sculptures made using braces, straps, and tubing—medical equipment—the Los Angeles-based artist underscores the violence and indifference implicit in treatment. In MAKING USEFUL (OF DECAY) (2024, image), for example, a pair of thermoplastic legs are rigidly restrained—illustrating how society “surveils, cages, or disciplines the sick or disabled body.”
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