Monstersweet: Menagerienity Monika Czyżyk & Torsten Zenas Burns
Speculative humanimal fictions with looped video, digital image and sculptural form
12.9.-11.10.2020
Speculative humanimal fictions with looped video, digital image and sculptural form
12.9.-11.10.2020
MUU Studio
Over the course of four years collaborators Monika Czyżyk & Torsten Zenas Burns, participated in two residency programs that functioned as a catalyst for an ongoing variable art project called Monstersweet.
The original locations for production were Signal Culture in NY, USA and Escape Residency on Vartiosaari island
located in Helsinki, Finland. During these initial experiences the artists explored through real time video recordings, drawings and digital image production a variety of relationships between imagined posthumans and their ecologicalenvironments.
Over the years Czyżyk & Burns have expanded the idea creating unique single channel and looped videos about an ongoing migrating residency program called Monstersweet. Within this fictional studio program they have collaborated with chimeric residents in several countries including Mexico, Cuba, United States, Greece, Italy and Germany filming and photographing ambiguous travelogues, passionate interspecies love and communication rituals enacted by a diverse group of Humanimals.
For MUU Studio Czyżyk & Burns have created several new video and sculptural works including a unique 30 min
looped speculative video fiction that has embedded 360 degree scenes and locations from China, Finland and Poland. The 2nd work is a plastic sculptural humanoid shape that functions as a menagerie hosting all of the collected latex animal masks used in the video productions.
The captured video scenes and sculptural work, both grotesque and humorous explore reimagined biologies,
manifestations of performative selfie culture and intimate portraits of a globally transformed ecosystems.
A few inspirations and touchstones for their new pieces include the sequential artist Enki Bilal’s The Nikopol Trilogy, reimagined Animist tropes and the Chinese mythological texts called: Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Monstersweet / HDVideo / Stereo / 2020 / 30 Min loop
Monstersweet: Menagerientity / Mixed media sculpture / 2020
The exhibition is supported by VISEK
Over the course of four years collaborators Monika Czyżyk & Torsten Zenas Burns, participated in two residency programs that functioned as a catalyst for an ongoing variable art project called Monstersweet.
The original locations for production were Signal Culture in NY, USA and Escape Residency on Vartiosaari island
located in Helsinki, Finland. During these initial experiences the artists explored through real time video recordings, drawings and digital image production a variety of relationships between imagined posthumans and their ecologicalenvironments.
Over the years Czyżyk & Burns have expanded the idea creating unique single channel and looped videos about an ongoing migrating residency program called Monstersweet. Within this fictional studio program they have collaborated with chimeric residents in several countries including Mexico, Cuba, United States, Greece, Italy and Germany filming and photographing ambiguous travelogues, passionate interspecies love and communication rituals enacted by a diverse group of Humanimals.
For MUU Studio Czyżyk & Burns have created several new video and sculptural works including a unique 30 min
looped speculative video fiction that has embedded 360 degree scenes and locations from China, Finland and Poland. The 2nd work is a plastic sculptural humanoid shape that functions as a menagerie hosting all of the collected latex animal masks used in the video productions.
The captured video scenes and sculptural work, both grotesque and humorous explore reimagined biologies,
manifestations of performative selfie culture and intimate portraits of a globally transformed ecosystems.
A few inspirations and touchstones for their new pieces include the sequential artist Enki Bilal’s The Nikopol Trilogy, reimagined Animist tropes and the Chinese mythological texts called: Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Monstersweet / HDVideo / Stereo / 2020 / 30 Min loop
Monstersweet: Menagerientity / Mixed media sculpture / 2020
The exhibition is supported by VISEK