Multimedia installation
Deep in the forest a fake fire burns revisiting two recent works as the catalyst for a new body of sculptural and video work.
The result is a speculative fiction considering the entanglement of early material culture and our present networked world through narrative, museological display, sculpture and generative technologies.
The stories we tell have always shaped our futures. What happens when we are no longer the only ones telling the stories? When tales are formed by autonomous networked agents from the digested remnants of culture, language and meaning. Do new possibility emerge or are we locked in semantic collapse with the spectre of ideas past?
The exhibition considers what it means to make and encounter objects within a networked culture that simultaneously offers a decoupling from materiality alongside entanglement with complex global supply chains, infrastructures, extractive industries and globalised consumerism. It brings together a collection of work that span multiple domains. Archaeological objects, cartoonish faces, server racks, and 4K video piece together an alternative story of how we got to here.
Deep in the forest, a fake fire burns embodies the disconnect between the lightness of ephemeral digital experience and the deep thingness of networked life.
Exhibitions:
Deep in the forest a fake fire burns, M2 Gallery, London, UK. 2026.
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