Magdalena Abakanowicz University of Arts in Poznan
A video essay on how automation and simplification of communication are making reality increasingly complex, radicalized, and full of disruption.
How does progress toward an automated reality relate to entering the era of post-rationality? How does this new darkness resonate within radicalized belief systems and political ideologies?
According to Bogna Konior, communication is, on the one hand, a fundamental human need, essential for building civilizations capable of survival – yet at the same time, it inevitably generates conflicts, whose brutality and scale increase as connections become denser.
A digitally mediated reality operates under deterministic laws of nature, where all expressions and reactions are dictated by the rules set by our technologies. We are doomed to the fatalistic nature of communication. The Dark Forest Theory, based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, explains the silence of the cosmos by the fact that civilizations sharing a single space of resources are doomed to death, forcing them to remain silent so as not to reveal their coordinates.
Darkness is falling. The growing number of distortions on the surface of reality turns us back toward dogmas. The automation of life would require some explanation, but unfortunately, there will be none. You can become your own spiritual guide – perhaps that will be liberating. With every meaning, every astral projection directed toward stainless steel and fiber optics submerged in the oceans, the network becomes increasingly complex. With each layer of complication, reality becomes less and less clear to us.
Computerization is the implementation of the Enlightenment utopia, but given the prevailing Zeitgeist, perhaps we are no longer invited to participate in its creation. To quote Bifo Berardi: “Darkness is the negation of Enlightenment, but simultaneously it is also its continuation.”
Xtreme Girl is the protagonist of the narrative and the avatar of the artistic duo Lena Peplińska and Laura Radzewicz, founded in 2022. The question of an authentic “self” and the unsettling, uncanny aspects of life—where identity merges with information in an endless cybernetic loop of cause and effect—has become an urgent issue of our time.
Xtreme Girl utilizes the medium of video essay to speculate on cultural and social transformations occurring in the era of computerization. She draws from the terminology and aesthetics of technology-driven environments to challenge their dominance and control.
Sound: Kasia Piątkowska
