Krupa Gallery London, February 2025
I think we have met before is a site specific comission for a group show - The Ark.
THE ARK challenges human exceptionalism, proposing a reality where humans and non-humans co-exist without hierarchy.
It deconstructs human dominance and strips away our privileged position as rulers of the planet to envision a world in which alternative existences take precedence. The further one descends into the exhibition space, the more human influence dissolves, giving way to new ontologies.
The exhibition blends object-oriented ontologies, queer and interspecies bodies, and the natural world within a technological framework. THE ARK becomes a vessel without a captain, navigating a post-human world where survival belongs not to those who dominate, but to those who adapt and transform.The ultimate question remains: In this utopian future, if Homo sapiens endures, will they learn from animals rather than exploiting them for their own use?
On the closing day of “The Ark” group exhibition, Krupa London presents four sound, voice, and movement performances hosted by one of participating artists Natalia Januła. Engaging bodies, space, and sonic landscapes, the event extends the artist’s interest in organic transformation and interconnected systems.
Hollie Miller & Craig Scott will explore the interplay of bodily movement and sound, using fetal motion sensors to activate an evolving sonic environment. Karolina Łebek will present an experimental composition intertwining folk instrumentation with digital soundscapes. Agnieszka Szczotka will perform a spoken word piece bridging memory, language, and presence.
Aprigoat & David will create a semi-improvisational performance merging modular synthesis and sample manipulation into surreal sonic narratives.:
These two hybrid forms emerge from the mulch; one is a creature of the deep, bulging breasts and the head of a fish – a grotesque (come) erotic vision; the other a lithe, long limbed, bird-like being. They came for the beach party, but have they been deceived? There a facsimiles here, copies of, representations for, but nothing is quite as it seems. Geological artifacts that remember the time before and after those animals they used to call ‘human’, who existed for about the time it takes for a rock to blink.
Back to our friends. The sand is bathed in artificial light, they will have to bathe on the concrete floor. The beach has filled with gawking spectators – ghosts of a time past. They’re trying to communicate something, this pair, but their voices too have been subject to distortions – the universal translator is playing up today. Fish wants to flop, come hither, they tempt, get between my scales. Bird is skeptical, are we doing this again? Fine. I do love when we get slippery…
Their holidays always seem to go like this. They’ll have to fix it themselves, the broken machine. Plug in, into the wires, get the sound-system going, we’ll have an inter-temporal party. The ghosts have an insatiable appetite for novelty (this led to their demise), but they have been appeased for now. Fish and bird stalk off following the climax; who knows what chimeras may emerge from their union.
Text by David Williams