Text by CLOT Magazine
TRANSGENESIS is a new series of experiments by Agnes? Curated by Arturo Passacantando, Tommaso de Benedictis, and Charlie Mills is on view at The Orange Garden (London) until May 23, 2021.
TRANSGENESIS is a site-specific installation that infiltrates the canals of this great aquatic mainframe. It asserts that humanity—far from the climax of our evolutionary tale—is nothing but another precipitation of watery and molecular exchange, an abstract machine for continuous transformation.
Installed in an abandoned leisure and swimming facility, the site’s architecture now assumes the form of a submerged and experimental laboratory, a reverse-periscope into the engineering of a posthuman amphibian species. TRANSGENESIS represents the evolutionary process of perpetual self-transformation, which is ultimately embodied in Agnes?’s long-durational performance, 184 hours of performance in 23 days, 8 hours each day. Agnes?’s act of bodily defiance is emphasised by Magnus Westwell’s choreography, which will take place on select days, with sound design by Portamento.
TRANSGENESIS is a performance for collective survival. Evolution, here, does not express the cumulative result of hereditary descent. It is not the biological progression of one organism toward an optimal design or an environment toward its dominant species. Curator Charlie Mills explains.
Agnes? Lives and works between London and Rome. They graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2018 and now work with performance to explore the relationship between humans and their natural environment.
TRANSGENESIS is open until May 23, 2021.
