In the version room, Abiogenesis: Forms of Language, Kseniia Stavrova and Qianxun Chen come together to examine different approaches to language, something fundamentally human, through the perspectives of non-humans.
The meaning of Abiogenesis is the origin of life from nonliving matter. Taking this as the meeting point, the two artists attempt to reconfigure language as organic or inorganic matter. The exhibition consists of various stations where viewers are encouraged to explore different physical states of language and growing textual beings. Language in organic and inorganic forms is in dialogue here to create a space for activation, imagination, and reflection on language, matter, and humans.
All photos by Jimmy Liu
biographies
Kseniia Stavrova
Kseniia Stavrova is a multidisciplinary designer living and working in Hamburg. She works across different disciplines, including graphic design, typography and motion design. Her approach can be described as experimenting and constant search for unusual combinations and methods to expand creative process. Observing, noticing and collecting random occurrences play an important role in her practice.
Qianxun Chen
Qianxun Chen is a media artist and researcher. Her works tend to bring up poetic and non-human perspectives of the world through the alternative use of technology. She also published many digital works online, with a focus on generative poetics, the aesthetics of algorithms, and digital textuality. Her digital language project, Seedlings_:From Humus, was shortlisted for The 2021 Coover Award, while a new book version of this project, Seedlings: Walk in Time, will be published by Counterpath this year in April under the book series Using Electricity.
