Welcome to the multi-dimensional dinner party, take a seat and see rituals weave themselves through each generation. Presented by ARE and B93, ‘Force of Habit’ is a collaboration between ARE artist-in-residence Anya Palamartschuk and roboticist Edwin Dertien. 

Opening: March 22, 20:00-23:00
Periode: March 22 – 29, 2023

This exhibition centres around roots and reflections, further contorting glitched panoramas of repeated patterns within nature. 

When these images are manipulated with technological processes, this exhibition intertwines patterns between nature, technology, and collective psychology in order to showcase the formulaic, and almost mechanical nature of entrenched rituals.  This layered installation is a ‘serendipiscape,’ a word coined by Chat GPT for this project. If serendipity is the finding of something ‘unsought’ after, then serendipiscape is the landscape or location that sparks a chance meeting of ideas. The audience are invited to sit and meander in this serendipiscape and go on their own journeys. 

This project fuses ideas of repetitive technological processes and obsessive natures, primarily comparing the rituals belonging to both religious practices and OCD routines. This palimpsest of ideas investigates how patterns from each generation pass onto the next, creating cyclical kaleidoscopes of repeated compulsions.

Can we break the cycles of rituals that supposedly combat coincidence and soothe our fears of fate? How do you untangle yourself from entrenched compulsions that grow at the dinner table each and every time you sit together?

The collaboration between installation artist Anya Palamartschuk and roboticist Edwin Dertien is part of the Robot Theatre Lab residency. This is a two month research and development programme at XPO and B93. With Anya’s background in wax sculptures and projection installations, and Edwin’s background in tinkering and robotics, these makers have collaboratively found ways of telling stories across a range of interdisciplinary techniques. This processes include clay 3D printing, laser cutting, robotics, and embroidery machines, thanks to the FabLab at Tetem.

Anya is a multi-disciplinary visual artist with British, Ukrainian and Spanish roots. Their practice centres on creating projection mazes that combine installation and imagery for an audience to walk within. Playing with scale and gravity, these spaces transform 2D visuals into 3D labyrinths that abstract the rules of the world in order to invite new rules, championing queerness, re-wilding the body, offering spaces of healing in nature and allowing an audience to forget the world behind them.  They believe with storytelling, the most personal experiences can also be the most universally impactful, and their works explore this connection that we all have.

Edwin Dertien is creative roboticist, engineer, maker, educator, tinkerer and performer – and recently started the Robot Theatre Lab as attempt to bundle all of his interests (if only to find even more new interesting things to do and to make).

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