Withdrawn into the forest, a young couple imagine themselves to be living a life of great danger; as warriors, or dragons. Trying to reason with their sense of self, they remove their VR headsets.
Dreams and waking experience blend and they no longer see their reflections in the screens. The blindfold wraps around their eyes and they seek the edges of a new reality, searching for universal symbols: the stars, the forest, the darkness. Caught between past and future; subject to a new judicial order, pleading a case to an unseeing jury, whose reality is not theirs, who have not seen what they are seeing.
Information Skies is the first UK solo exhibition by the Dutch art and design studio Metahaven. Opening concurrently at Mumbai Art Room, it is also the collective’s first exhibition in India. Metahaven’s 2016 film project Information Skies weaves new realities, informed by VR. Through a dramatisation of this experiential technology, using live footage and animation, concepts of authenticity and lived experience are positioned as fictional provocations. How might we understand ‘truth’ and ‘law’ in a world of infinitely self-producing belief systems?
Alongside Information Skies, Auto Italia will present Metahaven’s documentary film installation The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda), a 70-minute dive into online and offline truths, fictions, and their sponsors. Guided by commentary of Benjamin H. Bratton, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, and Peter Pomerantsev, The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) identifies how planetary-scale interface culture is transforming geopolitics and state power. Taken together, The Sprawl and Information Skies become a new cinematic topography, creating fragmented territories of images and suggestions, and building a worldview that is at once attractive and terrifying.
With special thanks to Hannah Bennett, George Bularca, Elliott Burns, Tomas Clavijo, Esther Dillner, Joe Donohoe, Dan E, Bruno Gomez, Daisy Hodgson, Gale Hung, Yeline Mihaji, Josh Parker, Anastasia Perahia, Spela Pipan, Azzura Pitruzzella, Jake Charles Rees, Phil Richards, Ian Williamson, Alice Woodhouse and Rosie Woodhouse for bringing it to life.
Metahaven’s 2016 film Information Skies was commissioned by the 11th Gwangju Biennale.
