The Future's Knot, 2014

Baden Pailthorpe

MQ-9 Reaper I, 2014, high-definition 3D animation (1920 x 1080), colour, sound, 4:39 minutes, ed. 5 + 2AP.

Philjames

left to right: Algebra and Fire, 2014, oil on vintage offset lithograph; Caravan, 2014, oil on vintage offset lithograph; Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014, oil on vintage hand coloured photograph.

Marian Tubbs

left to right: stale to me, 2014; typical quasi coy, 2014; another world, 2014; all works digital print on silk.

The Future's Knot

Installation view, The Lock-Up, Newcastle, 2014.

Benjamin Forster

fxxbxxk (after Dockray), 2014, an lcd screen, a computer, a network, a rock found in a cemetary, Facebook, an old jail cell.

Kylie Banyard

left to right: Domescope Four1, 2014; Domescope Four2, 2014; both works C-type print.

Vicky Browne & Darren Seltmann

Entering the Cloud, 2014, mixed media.

Pia van Gelder

You or Me?, 2011, closed-circuit video set-up: two CCTV cameras, RCA splitter, LCD monitor.

The Future's Knot

Installation view, The Lock-Up, Newcastle, 2014.

Josephine Skinner

The end, 2013, multi-channel HD TV instalaltion, re-used YouTube content.

Kylie Banyard

Domescope Haze 2, 2014, HD video, formply, 20 minutes.

Tristan Derátz

First Born, 2014, motion sensor, speakers, water, LED lights. Technical work by Marcus and Stephen Derátz.

Giselle Stanborough

Wiccan wifi, 2014, single-channel video, artist mobile phone, artist hair, glass beacon, nanocheck strips, artist toenail clippings, robotic vacuum cleaner, tape, Mickey Mouse wizard badge from artist childhood holiday to Disneyland with her now deceased father.

Giselle Stanborough

Jonny Niesche

Cosmos and cosmetics, 2014, voile and steel.

The Future's Knot was the official exhibition presented by Critical Animals in 2014. Responding to the festival's broader provocations for 'possible futures', this exhibition took place at a time when power relations were increasingly governed and mediated by technologies. Much attention has been given recently to the use by government, big business and activists of information technologies – the insatiable hunger of intelligence agencies for metadata; increasingly targeted content and advertising using big data demography; and the digital direct action protests of groups such as Anonymous. However older technologies continue to develop and remain relevant in shaping the way we behave, form individual and collective identities, and how societies function – the accepted pervasiveness of CCTV for one.

Is it possible or even desirable to find points of resistance within these systems? Is it possible to re-purpose technologies of power for our own ends, exploit glitches to widen cracks that run from the surface all the way down, or take technologies as subject matter for discussion and analysis? The Future's Knot features new and recent works by Baden Pailthorpe, Benjamin Forster, Giselle Stanborough, Jonny Niesche, Josephine Skinner, Kylie Banyard, Marian Tubbs, Philjames, Pia van Gelder, Tristan Deratz, Vicky Browne & Darren Seltmann.

Exhibition catalogue: available on iTunes or download the PDF.
Visit The Lock-Up's website.