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Emobot
Catala’s work investigate emotions and empathy in our technological information-driven society. His computer generated Emobot appears at once familiar and strange as it utters simple statement about its feelings. The visually mesmerizing figure might serve as an avatar onto which we relate to the expression of strong feelings when they are delivered digitally-an increasing prevalent cultural phenomena. Listening to a not-quite human presence express its vulnerability may have less impact in us than hearing a real person communicate similar emotions. Nevertheless, the deliberate and repetitive manner in which Emobot articulates powerful sentiments affords us ample opportunity to reflect on the existential quality of their meaning.

Homo Economicus
Homo Economicus explores how men working in the City of London financial district both modify and commodify their own bodies. The work intentionally conflates the corporate and the corporeal, questioning male self-worth and its apparent apotheosis in the hyper-competitive financial services industry. Grounded in audio interviews with real city men, Homo Economicus proposes an alternative economy of the male body: not as an unquestioned instrument of power, but a site of vulnerability and power-play.

Who Wants To Be A Self Driving Car?

The moovel lab collaborated with MESO Digital Interiors to prototype this immersive experience. The idea was to make a machine that replaces the human senses with the sensors that a self-driving car might use. Our unconventional driving machine is essentially a steel-frame buggy with in-wheel, electric motors, complete with hydraulic breaking. Drivers lay head first on the vehicle; the positioning used to enhance the feeling of immersion (and vulnerability) created during the experience. A physical steering wheel controls the turning of the vehicle.The VR experience is created using data collected by the sensors outfitted on the driving machine.

For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit
‘For, in your tongue, I cannot fit,’ gives voice to 100 poets who have been jailed through time for their writing or their beliefs. The haunting work highlights the fragility and vulnerability of our right to freedom of expression today—and the bravery of those who struggle to resist. Visitors will encounter 100 microphones suspended over 100 metal rods, each piercing a verse of poetry. Over the course of an hour, each microphone in turn recites a fragment of the poets’ words, spoken first by a single voice then echoed by a chorus which shifts across the space.

山海塾

butoh

TOBARI

“Over the 90 minute performance, I feel no less than transported. There are eight male performers, including Ushio Amagatsu himself. The dancers often move slowly, with incredible muscular control, fluidity and elegance. And suddenly the spell will be broken and they’ll run across the stage, their painted bodies leaving clouds of white powder hanging in the air like a shadow or ghost. Slow sustained movements are countered with tiny, minute gestures of the fingers. Hands are often gnarled, the joints contorted with incredible tension. It is mysterious, hypnotic and strange. The countenance of the performers is most arresting – behind the white paint, their faces reveal the fragility, humility, vulnerability and truth of their humanity.”Day Helesic

the double

The gestures in the performance are inspired by gargoyle, a legendary stone-carved grotesque with a spout that normally is designed to convey water from a roof. Mouth serves as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. However, when performers wear the mouthpieces, or when women’s mouth is forced to open, the mouth loses its function. In fact, it silences and disables the women because they are unable to talk when their mouths are widely pulled open. This performance explores another side of the unseen and unspoken—the vulnerability, struggle, shame, and suffering that we are uneasy to share and expose.
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Void Entity
HART+LËSHKINA is an interdisciplinary image-making duo, composed of Tatiana Lëshkina and Erik Hart. Their work deals with the themes of vulnerability, disengagement, relationship between the individual and its surroundings, and a dislodging of everyday life through simple acts and absurdist theatricality.

Korean artist Kyuin Shim creates work that your pupils will interpret as a straight up science fiction novel. One body of work in particular, “Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

Hurricane Series
Rananim
A state of vulnerability seems to shroud human beings in Sylvie Zijlmans’ Hurricane series. Each work is titled after an actual hurricane: the 2006 tropical storm Vince that hit the Spanish coast in September 2005, Hurricane Emily or Hurricane Bret, Rananim or the 2005 devastating Katrina that hit New Orleans so severely.

Be the Inside of the Vase
Part I: Million Dollar Baby
Part II: Break the Vase
“I often invite viewers to participate, drawing strength from the audiences’ emotional vulnerability, and feelings of uneasiness, to complete the performance as a whole,” Morgan explains in her artist statement. “Here, my emotions become entwined with the audiences,’ creating a symbiotic relationship based on control and power.”

HART+LËSHKINA is an interdisciplinary image-making duo, composed of Tatiana Lëshkina and Erik Hart. Their work deals with the themes of vulnerability, disengagement, relationship between the individual and its surroundings, and a dislodging of everyday life through simple acts and absurdist theatricality.

Black Black
“Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

What Remains
By crafting bodily optical illusions, the Aisha Zeijpveld ‘What Remains’ series obscures reality. These captures were taken by Amsterdam-based photographer Aisha Zeijpveld. According to her website, Zeijpveld’s “focus on people their nakedness and vulnerability yet simultaneously their potency and pride characterizes her photography.” In order to create that capacity in her work, the ‘What Remains’ series was based around the sketches of Austrian artist Egon Schiele. By translating these sketches into photographs, Zeijpveld recreates the expressive figures portrayed by Schiele often were “unfinished.”

Voluntary Vulnerability
Shibari