Sole Soil / online opening of the exhibition and an artist talk
Sole Soil
Julia Vergazova & Nikolay Ulyanov
Online opening of the exhibition and artist talk: 10th of December, 2021 at 6 p.m. / KAIR FB fan page
Duration of the exhibition: 11. 12. 2021 – 31. 1. 2022
Šopa Gallery, Hlavná 40, Košice
Opening hours: MON – FRI / 4 – 6 p.m.
We cordially invite you to an online presentation of the exhibition Sole Soil and the artist talk with its authors – Julia Vergazova and Nikolay Ulyanov. The exhibition project was created during Julia’s two-month residency on Human Responsibility as part of the Art and Tech Days festival and in cooperation between Creative Industry Košice and the KAIR residency program.
The Gaia hypothesis, according to which the Earth is a single living superorganism, was put forward by the British climatologist James Lovelock and the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis. Soil is the upper fertile layer of the surface of this superorganism, inhabited by collaborating communities (bacteria, fungi, plants), upon which the existence of all other life forms on the planet depends.
User interface design is about designing relationships. The main interface of human-soil communication is the reliefs and dents left by the surface of the soles of our shoes. These tactile interactions could become conscious and heal the soil layers by choosing the optimal shape of the sole, taking into account their individual needs and problems. Reasoning in dialogue with this sensitive skin of the Earth, the project prepares the conditions for a radical transformation of our relationship with surfaces – from extraction/exploitation to being gentle, caring, and following their needs.
Sole Soil. The landscape of care/artist talk
Artists will talk about the history and transformation of the concept of “caring”. How self-care can be turned towards caring for the non-human beings around us, e. g., towards the soil. Developing an approach of “speculative thinking” as a political imagination of the possible, the authors of the project will present how technologies could become a tool for designing care interfaces and tuning planetary coexistence.
Julia Vergazova studied art in Moscow and Cologne, where she currently works. The area of her interest includes the redefinition of prior distances between biology and technology, natural and synthetic intelligence. As part of her research-based practice, she tends to develop speculative narratives related to unobvious interfaces of communication with the environment.
Nikolay Ulyanov composes microtonal albums, writes poetry, and programs graph hypotheses. In terms of future creative goals he plans to experiment at the intersection of formal and informal restrictions: be they connected to semantics, rhythms, rhymes, sound, combinatorics, mathematics, programming, etc.
The residency program is supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.
The residency of Julia Vergazova is organized in cooperation with Creative Industry Košice within Košice’s designation as UNESCO Creative City of media arts. The project is also supported by City Košice.