Gala Hernández López: IBB Video Space

Gala Hernández López (b. 1993 in Murcia, Spain) has an interdisciplinary practice that encompasses film and video works and performances in addition to her academic research. She frequently explores human self-perception in a world shaped by digital technologies. From a critical feminist perspective, she examines the ideas, desires, and visions of the future that emerge in virtual communities and how new, often reactionary technological utopias influence our thoughts and feelings. Her works are based on intensive research and combine factual, socially critical analysis with poetic, personal, and dreamlike elements.

A trilogy of video works is on display at the Berlinische Galerie. The starting point for The Mechanics of Fluids (2022, 38 min.) is a suicide note written by a user on an online forum for incels—a community of heterosexual men whose worldview is characterised by self-pity, misogyny, and violent fantasies. This kind of content dominates large parts of the internet and sometimes leads to real acts of violence. The artist develops an essay about patriarchal structures and loneliness in the age of algorithms that is as precisely analytical as it is astonishingly empathetic.

for here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world (2024, 18 min.) addresses the commonalities between crypto culture and Cryonics, the ‘freezing’ of humans after their death so that they can be brought back to life in the future. In both instances, the future itself becomes an economic commodity to be exploited. Collages of YouTube videos, archival material, and 3D animations reveal the connections between financial speculation, science fiction, and the human desire to predict and control the future.

The third part, +10k (2025, 30 min.), follows Pol, a young Spanish crypto trader whose goal is to earn 10,000 euros a month: he strives for economic advancement through financial speculation, online coaching, and visualisation exercises. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s idea of ‘capitalism as religion,’ this work explores the intertwining of money, belief, and self-optimisation in the digital age.

About the artist
Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker and researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice combines filmmaking with the creation of video installations, performances, and publications. Her works are based on research, combining materialist analysis with poetry, intimacy, and dreams with the aim of dissecting fantasies of unlimited techno-scientific control over reality. Her work has been presented at international festivals and institutions such as Cannes, Berlinale, DOK Leipzig, SEMINCI, Raindance, IndieLisboa, Gijón Film Festival, Cinéma du Réel, Palais de Tokyo, Punto de Vista, Tabakalera, Documenta Madrid, transmediale, International Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, FRAC Île-de-France, iMAL, York Art Gallery, and the Salon de Montrouge, among others. Her film La Mécanique des fluides won the César for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024. 

In 2023–24, she was artist-in-residence at the French Academy in Spain–Casa de Velázquez and at the Palais de Tokyo. She is currently artist-in-residence at the Connected Minds program at York University in Toronto. She regularly gives workshops, performative lectures, and talks at venues such as Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Escola Massana, The Photographers Gallery, the Locarno Film Festival, Harvard University, Goldsmiths University of London, University of British Columbia, and University of Michigan. 

IBB Video Space
Since 2011 the IBB Video Space has been screening artists who work with time-based media. The programme features not only established names in contemporary video art but also up-and-coming artists rarely seen in museums to date. For these, the Berlinische Galerie seeks to facilitate an institutional début. Each screening brings a new encounter with work that raises questions about the medium and about social or political issues. Importance is attached to including marginalised perspectives and to shedding light on the impact of power structures.

More video works online here. This project has been facilitated by Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB).