Facade Swap

On June 17th, the day that the Mutations Web Residency launches, a festival of new media and audiovisual art in urban space will open in Dnipro, a city in eastern Ukraine. Known Cages will participate in this festival, with an extension of the work Entangled Transposition, however, at the request of the festival, due to increased tensions between Russia and Ukraine, similar themes will be re-interpolated into the context of the urban space of Dnipro.

Known Cages (Clemens Poole, Elliott Shaw, Milena Khomchenko) / Maryland, US / Rhode Island, US / Donetsk, Ukraine — Jun 16, 2021

Known Cages - Facade Swap

We will be therefore looking at transforming the \“face\“ of the city, “swapping” it to create an \“ideal\“ self, while also investigating the side effects of this action. In a nation where an explicitly revisionist campaign of “decommunization” is transforming the urban spaces, the project hopes to draw out the questions inherent in this process by directly visualizing counter images.

Formats: code generated \“revised\“ texts scraped from the internet, doctored photos using algorithmically generated \“revised\“ landscapes and people, and processed video material that will \“fix\“ historical and contemporary issues. The project will manifest on different platforms: social media, websites, youtube, etc., and a physical exhibition in Dnipro.