Emanuel Gollob: disarming

BC Gallery presents: disarming a solo exhibition by artist Emanuel Gollob (b. 1991; lives and works in Vienna), featuring the first works of his new disarming series.

Gollob has conceived a site-specific exhibition which presents an immersive experience and offers a performative exploration of the relation between detached robot arms, artificial environments, and human observers. A learning and unlearning of locomotions in posthuman environments and times.

Two durational robotic performances and two film works are exhibited throughout the gallery space which is transformed into an artificial fallow cornfield. All four works playfully explore the ambiguity of disarming as a process of physical detachment and emotional attachment.

Locomotion can be seen as a primal (post-birth) instinct and ultimate act of independence. A robotic limb, somehow detached from a human-constructed technological body, tries to find concepts for advancing movements even though it initially wasn’t made for locomotion—vulnerable yet determined. Parallel to a familiar dystopian plot of technological autonomy and the feelings going with it, witnessing these first clumsy tries may awaken compassion or even a certain emotional bond.

Emanuel Gollob paints a picture of a multi-layered narrative of technology as a convoluted species and potential valuable mediator in a multi-species world. An ecological system of intertwined digital and physical realms with parallel learning/unlearning on different levels. A relational world with and between independence and still connectedness.

Digital sibling
The exhibition will fuse physical acting with digital observation and vice versa. The disarming exhibition in the physical realm will be mirrored by an online sibling which also allows viewers not in attendance to experience the art. The sibling link will be published on bcgallery.ch at the day of the opening.

About the artist
With his art practice, Emanuel Gollob (Austria) (b. 1991) bridges the knowledge towers of aesthetic research, system-A.I. interaction and robotics. Gollob graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna with a diploma in Design Investigation (2019). Currently, he is artist in residency at MindSpaces, an EU research project in the STARTS initiative framework. Since 2020, he is a PhD candidate and artistic researcher at the University of Art and Design Linz.

Gollob‘s work has recently been exhibited in various international institutions, including: Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building, Washington DC (2021); Science Gallery Melbourne, Melbourne (2021); Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón (2020); Ars Electronica Center, Linz (2019) and Liedts-Meesen Foundation, Ghent (2019), among others.