Molecular Sex
2020
Johanna Bruckner
Video, 18 min.
Supported by: Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, Gwaertler Stiftung, Zurich, Culture Fund Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zurich
The future is often described as a toxic breakdown of the human. For Johanna Bruckner, the hybridization of the nonhuman and human is rather a starting point for the indeterminacy and queerness of being. Her video installation shows an entanglement of human, animal, technology, sex, and atmosphere in which molecularization shapes a networked world. The fluid main character is a fictitious sex bot that evokes plastic as a chemical substance impacting biological life; it further performs as a brittle star (a sea creature) as well as nanotechnological beings that distort lovemaking and gender. Pushing the limits of the human sensorium, it invents technological prostheses that redistribute the relations and patterns with which subjects comprehend the world.
Bio
Johanna Bruckner (*1984, Vienna) is an internationally exhibited artist. Recent solo exhibitions, screenings and performances: Berlinische Galerie, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; MAXXI - National Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; Mamco, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva; Galerie EIGEN+ART Lab, Berlin. Recent group exhibitions: ZKM, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, ICA, Institute for Contemporary Art, Milano, Galerie Roehrs & Boetsch, Zürich, the transmediale 2020, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Sammlung Falckenberg, the Kunsthaus Hamburg. She held a fellowship at the Istituto Svizzero, Rom and the Jan van Eyck Academie. In 2022 she was awarded with the Erste Bank MehrWERT Kunstpreis 2022 and the Pax Art Award 2022.