Where does a product spend most of its life? In a rubbish dump. At present, our mode of manufacturing produces intelligent but harmful commercial products. No matter how much AI technology we implement into a microwave oven it will one day break down beyond repair and after salvageable components have been torn from it’s circuit boards, it will be discarded and waste toxicity into the earth.
Beyond our current limitations and the narrow window of definition we think of AI through, we may one day make a truly meaningful innovation. Creating products that are grown or born from natural matter, their intelligence bread into them, that will know when they have become obsolete and dutifully discard themselves in the organic waste recycling bin. At first they will look like Burger King’s impossible burgers, I imagine their flesh lacking rigidity. Early adopters will need to be careful that their organic toaster doesn’t overheat and cook itself. But over time and much fear mongering, the technology will take off, boom, bust and then the inevitable realistic application.
The work of Kakia Konstantinaki makes me think about that future. In Day: who gives a f*** (2020), part of her ongoing and ever expanding Daydreaming (2017 - ongoing) series, I watch as a structure of lab grown flesh shimmers across her Athenian balcony, nodules splitting, congealing, spatting away. I wonder whether this formulation of meat is navigating towards the sunlight to recharge itself? And what task it was performing up until a moment ago? Can it do multiple jobs or is it only bread for a single function? Does it’s owner consider it a product or pet? Is the word owner still used in this context?
Comprising three works, the Day: who gives a f*** collection offers us tantalisingly few clues. The first unfurls like an octopus's arm making sense of its environment, presumably touch is extremely important as it features no discernable eyes. Whilst the second multiples from a small globule into a drawn out form featuring shapes of kidneys and rib cages. The last and most stoic of the three, rotates mid air crumbling and hollowing itself out, a meaty form of erosion.
Conversely, within The Terminal (2021) Konstantinaki presents a seemingly early version of this technology, conceived well before intelligent flesh became the norm. Shown undulating, expanding, contracting, Unloop me (2020??) appears to be made of a flexible metal, it’s blue surface giving off the impression of a polish Koons sculpture. Imposed into a Google Street View loop of Facebook’s California HQ, the unidentifiable form is propelled by the sound of a heartbeat. Potentially set in a patrol pattern it recalls the Rover from avant garde sci-fi The Prisoner (1967), but updated for today's tech giants.
Kakia Konstantinaki (b. 1986) is an artist and multidisciplinary designer based between London and Athens, who holds an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins and a BA in Architectural Engineering from the Technical University of Crete. Her ongoing Daydreaming Project inserts futuristic and impossible architectural forms in cityscapes, testing the horizon between physical and digital. Exhibitions, screenings and projects include: Ruins of an Extreme Present, Athens (2020); Near is Now, Now&After - International Video Art Festival, Moscow; Movement Festival, Torino (2019); Singularity Now, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens (2018); The Intelligent Optimist, Lethaby Gallery, London; and Hyper-Opera, online (2015). As a 3D artist, she works on commissioned projects within the culture and music industry.
The Terminal: Human Shaped Whole
directed by: Jason Isolini
featuring: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ian Bruner, Joshua Citarella, Jessica Evans, James Irwin, Claire Jervert, Kakia Konstantinaki, Angeline Meitzler, Erin Mitchell and Neale Willis
curated by: Off Site Project
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Kakia Konstantinaki .