Ripples of Postnatural Imaginations
9.8.2024 - 13.9.2024
Civilization in the situation of the developing twenty-first century is most likely rushing into an epoch of technological singularity. We do not yet know the speed of this "fall". But it is still a "free" fall, i.e. a fall with constant acceleration, at the end of which it is irreversible, in a certain sense most likely a fatal impact for humanity as we know it today. At this imaginary edge, technological progress - especially in the field of artificial intelligence - will reach such a pace and sophistication that it will become unpredictable and uncontrollable for the human mind: beyond this "gate" the creations of the future superintelligence will overcome human norms and limits in all known fields, and thus substantially transform understanding and nature of reality.
The organic and the synthetic will inextricably intermingle in a radical metamorphosis of "life" and the old paradigms will cease to be valid - again, probably once and for all. The coming synthesis will transcend the biological and technological limits of the previously opposing poles of reality (ie, "living" vs. "inanimate") and open the universe to unknown forms of existence: hybrid, posthuman creatures, and beings beyond nature. Futuristic forms of being will have both new "bodily" structures and new kinds of consciousness transcending the original human and animal categories.
It is precisely this moment that unites the formally and at the same time thematically self-sufficient artistic approaches of the sculptor Ondřej Oliva and the painter Jakub Uksa. The ethos of a "transformative trajectory" is present in their work - albeit always in its own distinctive and characteristic way. Their attention always somehow touches the world at the moment (or after the moment) of fundamental transformation, which permeates both the phenomenal components of experience - i.e. the ways of our perception and experiencing new realities (Jakub Uksa), and the unknown and changing structures of post-nature (Ondřej Oliva ).
At the same time, both authors implement a certain universalist element into their authorial visions: a flavor of transcendence, i.e. faith in the discovery of new perspectives, faith in hidden structures and innovative forms of perception revealing higher and deeper forms of existence.
