Performance premiere by Kawita Vatanajyankur

Mental Machine: Labour in the Self Economy 2022 is a new, live performance by Kawita Vatanajyankur made in collaboration with Pat Pataranutaporn from Fluid Interface at MIT Media Lab.

Directed by two cybernetic selves, in this durational performance Vatanajyankur becomes a human-machine hybrid as she uses her body to thread a massive graph-like textile pattern across the floor of the Gallery’s concourse.

Kawita Vatanajyankur creates performances and videos that require her to endure prolonged physical and emotional hardship. These performances are offered as a critical response to the exploitation of textile workers, the problems associated with hyperconsumerism, and the changing relations between humans and machines.

The premiere of this performance marks the launch of the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art (SLF ICAA), a major creative and curatorial initiative at AGWA supported by the Simon Lee Foundation.

Learn more about this visionary project on the SLF ICAA / AGWA website.

Image credit - Kawita Vatanajyankur Knit II 2021 (still). 4K video. Courtesy the artist, Nova Contemporary and Antidote Organisation.