Mateusz Kowalczyk
UNDERMINING, 2021
VR performance video recording
live VR performance, HMD, Mozilla Hubs: video, 3D objects, sound
dates: October 26th (Tuesday), October 27th (Wednesday), October 29th (Friday), November 2nd (Tuesday), November 3rd (Wednesday), November 9th (Tuesday)
venues / hours / devices:
Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Adama Mickiewicza 2 (Oculus Quest 2 set available on site), 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
remotely (with the use of personal computer/ headset) 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. and/or 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
The title of the intervention references the mining context as well as human attitudes of sabotage and undermining, the latter term the carrier of a dual meaning: to weaken and destabilise, as is the case when values are challenged in migration, social and climate contexts.
Spaces designed to accommodate shared virtual participation are a set of information policies. They are a mashup of what we receive, a distant shadow of what reaches us. Yet we are hard-pressed to reference it in any way, since everything that does reach us has been digested by social media or public TV propaganda formulae.
I invite everyone visiting the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok in person, and anyone interested in the activity to enter the three-dimensional spaces I have designed at specific times throughout the exhibition period. I will be your tele-present guide reachable on the Mozilla Hubs platform. You will be able to join the experience by using headsets available in Gallery space.
The absence of virtual boundaries notwithstanding, room space becomes claustrophobic once the playing field – the platform we move upon during the experience – has been defined.
Seemingly distant spaces become an area of asking questions and seeking personal responses to the forceful need of control and power, potentially resulting in support for the company responsible for the ever-growing expansion of one of the largest brown coal mines in Europe, for example, at the expense of local village inhabitants.
We will find ourselves sharing one of these spaces as part of one-off experiences, forming a different, variable and temporary group of individuals every time with the use of tools I have prepared on a virtual platform: 3D objects, video and audio files, photographs – interactive components associated with border and mine spaces. I will help users pick them up and move them with controllers or cursors, the skill indispensable to our shared interactive walk. Under my guidance, users will have the opportunity of observing and moving within the area they have found themselves in; having chosen individual avatars, they will be able to impact scenography and the course of action.
