The car, speeding up to its limits, accelerates relentlessly. Dust swirls around, and the screech of burning tires can be heard. The view from the window blurs due to the achieved speed. The smell of exhaust fills the air, and soon, perhaps, the smell of blood as well. The tension keeps rising. The scene, reminiscent of a disaster movie just before a spectacular accident and destruction, appears in Laura Radzewicz’s film and becomes a metaphor for the present moment in the exhibition. We await the climactic moment. Images of violence and disasters accumulate, yet the apocalypse still does not arrive. We are trapped in an endless catastrophe, which we watch in slow motion. Mostly through screens, applications, short films, or memes.

As Steven Shaviro observes in his book “No Speed Limit,” the intensification of horror in contemporary capitalism does not lead to the expected explosion and, consequently, revolutionary change. Looking at these images in movies and on the Internet offers rather shallow satisfaction and relief. It’s a sense that we have reached the bottom. We already know it can’t get worse. If memes are the articulation of collective unconsciousness, then popular memes like “this is fine,” “tolerance training for eternity in hell,” or those derived from “American Psycho” reflect a comically-sad, resigned attitude towards the permanent state of ecological, political, and economic crisis.

In the exhibition, we present the latest series of paintings by Zofia Pałucha, in which the artist uses manipulated “found footage” materials from the Internet, creating a contemporary “stream of consciousness,” as well as VR films and installations by Laura Radzewicz, which tell the story of the human condition in times of automation, algorithmic power, and late capitalist practices. Together with the artists, we traverse the spaces of large corporations, application interfaces, gyms, alt-right chats, and sensational headlines sowing moral panic around satanism. We observe scenes of violence against women – manipulated images from protests pacification and pornographic freeze-frames – which we have seen many times before, yet they still resemble scenes from science fiction films. The artists attempt to capture the aesthetics of techno-accelerationism. They explore the visuality of the Internet, which was supposed to be a democratic and transparent tool but has become a place of manipulation and capital generation by technological corporations that profit from cultural wars, social conflicts, as well as the emergence of neo-tribal groups and the promoted ways of coping with reality, which often border on magical practices or conspiracy theories.

Curator: Michalina Sablik
Coordination: Kaja Werbanowska
Partners: Dom Kultury Praga