Text by CLOT Magazine
Rampa Lab, a laboratory for hacking science, art and society with programmes that develop the potential within the youth, is run in close collaboration with the lab BioTehna and the Kapelica Gallery. All three are a part of the Kersnikova Institute. Rampa Lab was founded in 2013, and since then, it has served as a platform for the incubation and production of art projects by young creatives and hosts the activities of various communities that endorse and support gender equality. Rampa also develops programmes encouraging the young to research the intersections between art, science and technology.
A number of projects, workshops, initiatives, and exhibitions have taken place at Rampa. One of their exhibitions that are on display until January 10, 2020, is Aljaž Rudolf, Eva Smrekar: TESTER 011. Aljaž Rudolf works in the cross-disciplinary field between art, architecture and science. He is interested in post- and trans-humanism resulting in (mutant) bodies of architecture or non-human agents in architectural space. In collaboration with Eva Smrekar, both present TESTER 011 until January 10, 2020.
According to them, TESTER 011: A Face by Any Other Name would Sell as Sweet is a laboratory formulation of submitted gene sequences that stimulate the growth of political tissue that forms a face and its mask. It gently removes biological cells and exposes ideological components of the facial system. Unique technology of biometric archives, digital identities and new forms of corporative capitalism functions act as a vehicle for slow disintegration of face relief and regeneration of its cosmetic base. It moisturizes and nourishes your sign of identity, your medium of expression and your place of representation. Synthetic essence ensures defacialization after the first treatment. It contains means and rhetorics of digital modernity through which it installs relations between cosmetics and clinic, ethics and aesthetics, science, art and politics.
TESTER 011 is on view until January 10, 2020, at Rampa Lab in Ljubljana, Slovenia.