Utopia Today x REX Box

Artists: Jessica Dudziak, Hörner / Antlfinger, Ferhat Özgür, Daisy Riley.

Curated by Toni Stooss, Bern, and Ferhat Özgür, Istanbul.

“Shifting Identities“

Social utopias, dreams of the "global village" and theories of the "end of history" seem to have finally failed in the face of multiple crises and changing global power relations. What can art achieve in the age of the virtual "Second Lives", real wars and migration? How can new identities be created in the face of changing values without artists slipping into the dystopian?

Both the gender debate and identity search are now penetrating broad social circles, but transmedia artists have been addressing individual aspects of these intersecting sets of questions for years and continue to do so. From this perspective, contemporary video production encompasses multiple approaches, from individual role-playing to "living" as an avatar in digitally created worlds, with the performative aspect offering a common ground.

Based on the concept of "Shifting Identities", the selection comprises six video works that approach the theme of identity in visualised gestures, sometimes witty, sometimes pathetically formulated. They range from the recording of an act of civil disobedience to the fantasy of the "cross-species" coexistence of humans and animals, the poetic portrait of a drag queen and the identity shifts in the fashion scene to a visual metaphor for contemporary migration. (Toni Stooss)