Lito Kattou

San

Point Centre for Contemporary Art, Nicosia
Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini
May 20 - Jun 20, 2018

Developed over the course of the artist’s residency at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, San, is a basic AI (artificial intelligence) created to embody an ecological subjectivity alien to human thoughts. The structuring data is collected from Red Lake, a mine site located near Nicosia, Cyprus, one of the fastest climatic changing regions of the South East Mediterranean zone. The lake is a remnant of the ancient copper mine of Kokkinopezoula in Mitsero, active from the Chalcolithic period until the 1960s. The high acidic environment of the lake does not allow any biological living organism to develop, leaving the surrounding area impervious.

San, an ungendered AI hybridly conceived with human, divine, and animal traits lives in the Red Lake - recreated by Kattou as a real-time digital environment. Their [1] body and actions smartly respond to specific climatic variations such as temperature, humidity, visibility, wind speed and weather. San’s brain is built to guard and react to the Red Lake, they are imagined as a mythological figure protecting their unique surroundings. The exhibition San, at Point Centre for Contemporary Art, focuses on the character of this special guardian illustrating sculpturally their alien physical and mental traits, the fluidity and necessary adaptability of their post-human existence. Conceived to embody a specific natural environment, and condemned to a Sisyphean fate of a repetitive everydaylife, San is constructed to embrace the hard conditions of the territory.

The show materialises current ecological concerns whilst confronting us with philosophical questions about the relationship man-machine and the complexity of the non human and post-human conditions.

[1] In this text San and throughout the show is always referred to as they. This specific linguistic choice wishes to address in depth San’s multi-layered subjectivity rather than being a grammatical mistake.