concrete metamorphosis

2023 exhibited at Sehsaal
Vienna, AT
comissioned by Best Austrian Animation Festival

(c) Maria Belova

In “Concrete Metamorphosis,” the artist collective room69 muses on the fractured paradoxes of concrete, a material as mundane as it is monumental. The installation stands as a repurposing, interrogating the essence of this material body, especially in the time defined as the Anthropecene: humans have become the determining factor for a global ecosystem, environmental impacts are interwoven with technological advancement. This is a speculative inquiry into the materiality of our world, and how time, material and human expansion shape us.

For Concrete Metamorphosis, room69 employs a mix of 4-channel video, embedded by a soundscape that lingers on the surface, projection and reactive light to create a spatial dialogue. Each element of the exhibition – from the repurposed and restructured concrete rubble to the speculative digital future imagining – is a commentary on the dichotomies of destruction and creation, scarcity and abundance, the tangible and the conceptual.

The installation, pieced together by two central sculptures challenge us to reconsider concrete not just as a material, but as a possible artifact of human desire and its consequent fragility. They bring forth a queer and post-human perspective, thinking about the conditions that construct our future.

By integrating physical artifacts with multimedia technologies, room69 creates a symbiotic relationship between the creator and the created. It urges us to contemplate the potential of collective action in shaping future narratives. And asks us to consider what it means to build, to create, to exist in an era of dwindling resources and expanding possibilities.