ifa proudly presents a virtual-reality-guided meditation for human-bat transformation, the final phase of a major commission by Zheng Mahler as part of the constantly growing web-based project ARE YOU FOR REAL which started in 2020.
What is it like to be a (virtual) bat? is the second artwork in Zheng Mahler’s series of multispecies sensory ethnographies around the ecosystems of Lantau Island, Hong Kong. It is an attempt to acknowledge the limitations of human sensory capacities and how technology can be used to “mediate” these constraints through the embodiment of more-than-human experiences. While the first work focused on Lantau’s water buffalo population, the current one looks at the island’s bats, specifically the pipistrellus abramus. Moving beyond a purely ethnographic approach to documenting the bats’ behaviour, the work explores larger philosophical and anthropological questions with new technologies. As a starting point, it takes Thomas Nagel’s seminal 1973 essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” which explored the question of whether a human being can truly understand what it feels like to experience the consciousness of non-human species. Zheng Mahler approaches this question from the perspective of current research in virtual reality and the field of “animal embodiment” which allows users to experience the physiological and sensory faculties of animals. By simulating the sensorimotor contingencies of what it is like to be a bat through immersive technologies, they ask the question whether we can get closer to the subjective, qualitative experience of being one. The work has been revealed over the course of a year with the research phase taking the form of a website on the ARE YOU FOR REAL online platform commissioned by ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in Germany. The website has functioned as a repository for the field work Zheng Mahler conducted surveying one local bat species in a village on Lantau Island, using text, thermal video, ultrasonic recordings, photogrammetry and virtual reality. What is it like to be a (virtual) bat? on ARE YOU FOR REAL now!
In addition to the purely virtual form, the work can now also be experienced in physical space in the exhibition What Is It Like to Be a Bat? at Kunsthalle Mainz from March 17, 2023 to June 4, 2023, which will present the guided meditation in virtual reality and as an immersive video installation. Videos from the research phase of the project will also be shown alongside a research zine which documents the various elements of their field research and development of the work.
March 16, 7pm: Exhibition opening of What Is It Like to Be a Bat at Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany.
March 17, 6pm: FOR REAL—artists’ talk about art, technology and science at Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany. With Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė, Royce Ng (Zheng Mahler), Giulia Bini, curator EPFL CDH-AiR Programme ENTER THE HYPER-SCIENTIFIC & ARE YOU FOR REAL Phase II and Yasmin Afschar, interim director Kunsthalle Mainz. This event is a cooperation between ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, in the context of the project ARE YOU FOR REAL, and Kunsthalle Mainz.
Zheng Mahler is artist Royce Ng’s and anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks’s Hong Kong-based collaborative examination of the mutual influence and relational networks connecting global trade, nature, and technology, with a particular interest in more-than-human geographies and the environmental architectures they produce. Utilising digital media, performance, and installation, they develop speculative scenarios and immersive sensory encounters that explore the limits and potentials of their respective disciplines. They have exhibited, performed, and participated in numerous art spaces, institutions, and residencies, working alongside various communities in Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the US. Recent presentations include those at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, and Shanghai Biennale XIII (2021).
Initiated by ifa and curated by Julia Grosse, Paula Nascimento, and Yvette Mutumba, ARE YOU FOR REAL Phase I launched in December 2020 and is conceived as a participatory project testing interactive artistic practices. It brings together artists, researchers, filmmakers, writers, and coders to create new works, each offering a different understanding of and approach towards the concept of “reality.” ARE YOU FOR REAL aims to create an international cultural exchange as well as a contemporary co-creative practice of exhibition-making. The artworks produced change over the course of the project, as new artists join and take over, add and react.
Further projects by artists Rasheedah Phillips, Nolan Oswald Dennis, and Nushin Yazdani & Can Karaalioglu (feat. Aylin Karabulut, Dounia Hagenauer, Rafiou Bayor, Tiara Roxanne, and Ulla Heinrich), as well as other contributions can be experienced on the ARE YOU FOR REAL website. The project website is designed and developed by Yehwan Song.
ARE YOU FOR REAL Phase II will be curated by Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás and Giulia Bini. More to come soon.
About ifa
ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen is Germany’s oldest intermediary organisation for international cultural relations. It promotes a peaceful and enriching coexistence between people and cultures worldwide. ifa supports artistic and cultural exchange in exhibition, dialogue and conference programmes, and it acts as a centre of excellence for international cultural relations. It is part of a global network and relies on sustainable, long-term partnerships. It is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart.
For further information: art@ifa.de / presse@ifa.de
