Risk Landscape

Through her experimental and conceptual work, Agnieszka Kurant (b. 1978, Łódź, Poland) examines contemporary phenomena such as collective, non-human and artificial intelligence and exploitations under digital capitalism. Following her invitation to occupy the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Pavilion, the artist presents Risk Landscape. Comprising new commissions alongside recent works, the exhibition is inspired by new technologies that attempt to predict, simulate and monetise possible futures.

Built around the notion of ‘futurity’, understood as the ability to project oneself into the future while taking a present situation into account – the exhibition reflects a contemporary conception of the future as a speculative object. Risk prediction is a way of quantifying the unknown. Drawing inspiration from technologies used in various fields (climatology, finance, insurance, gambling), Kurant examines the way they can influence the future. Conversely, the artist also highlights the impossibility of accurately forecasting the future of living things, climate, economy and society.

Some of the works shown here are the result of unpredictable and uncomputable processes, such as the construction of the uniquely-shaped, complex habitats of termites; chemical reactions of metal salts; transformations of liquid crystals and programmable matter or the evolution of irrational social phenomena. Other works were developed employing data analysis, artificial intelligence, simulations and statistical models – strategies used in the contexts of digital economies and catastrophe modelling.

Risk Landscape embodies a concept dear to the artist, who sees the future of creation and intelligence as the products of ‘a multitude of agents: a polyphony involving humans, minerals, microorganisms, viruses and algorithms.’ Her works are often made in close collaboration with scientists, researchers, computer programmers and engineers. They are hybrid objects that oscillate between the biological, the mineral and the digital, the natural and the artificial, the real and the virtual, the living and the non-living. By creating intrinsically unstable works, the artist paves the way to alternative futures and narratives.