One thing can be said with absolute certainty:  the old ways are now erased, and the cities which they led to have been burned. It is an ending that is physically present, tangible even, as the gray smoke travels through the air, leaving the skin looking dull and the dust causes a burning sensation in the eyes. The Anthropocene slowly fades and sensory organs now only discern its blurred lines; any attempt at reflecting on decline comes too late, grappling with its slippery evasiveness. The smoke carries with it the spores of the forgotten practices that hatch into a time of these changes, for the old theology has no use here. What demands attention now is the need for alternative knowledge that could pave the way for ethical approaches, allowing us to navigate spaces whose logic we currently cannot comprehend. In this scenario, the body, already born interconnected with machines, becomes some kind of an ill-glued compound subjecting its parts to the technology. It is no longer allowed (if it ever was) to “know itself”, thereby losing the ability to recognize what surrounds it as well. It is now becoming an object standing in the course taken by alien colonies, while still itself aspiring to colonize and move beyond the restraints of the Earth’s soil – even though, along the way, it slowly loses individual limbs. It is a transfiguration we are witnessing, from a royal figure once perfectly protected inside the walls to the one of a pirate who is able to navigate even beyond the marked paths. Ecological catastrophes, transitioning from the zone of anticipation to what is being experienced, demand the presence of such shapeshifters. 

The works of Matyáš Maláč and Aleš Zapletal are the newly trodden paths connecting disparate domains that have only recently converged. Not only through the  combination of their different artistic approaches, but also by embracing the integration of another party – AI-generated imagery – they transform the space they work with into a place of experiment. Emerging from a chosen selection of virtual characters, the cosmograms offer a multiplicity  of perspectives facilitating a navigational system leading to the newly materialized fiction. Nevertheless, the question of who is being navigated and who is in control of the  chosen path becomes impossible to answer. The delineation blurs between the mechanical labour that draws the individual lines and the intuitive generation of an image. Aleš Zapletal   takes the diagrams derived from the world views of seven AI characters (listed below) and employs multiple layers of coding to project them onto walls. Consequently, the resulting visual takes on its distinctive form that  resembles organic growth. The contrast of organic fragility and mechanical rigidity is similarly present in the artworks of Matyáš Maláč. In his paintings, the human body is depicted as deformed or differently conjoined, often surrounded by cosmos, whose vastness escapes its  control. Collaborating side by side on walls and canvases, the human and the digital borrow from each other the abilities only the other was meant to possess. These are, therefore, no longer tied to a specific type of an entity, but rather they need to be allowed to move freely among them. Creative work is thus achievable only by the means of active cooperation rather than passive coexistence. The exhibited artworks are examples of such an attempt: “Synthetic spells” refuse to mourn the  loss of the modern conception of humanity, whose visual representations of reality have long lost their core. Such rejection, however, takes the mutual influence between the  mechanical and organic further: the symbiotic interaction implies the two species are mutually infectious. And the call for a specific ethical approach seeks not to cure the inflicted diseases but attempts to provide ways of adaptation.

List of AI-generated Characters
Dr. Elena Rodriguez
Profession: Music ethnologist and composer
Location: Havana, Cuba

Aiko Tanaka
Profession: Astrologer, magician, and astrophysicist
Location: Tokyo, Japan

0.14159 “Pi”
Profession: Retired mathematician and philosopher
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Siddharth Patel
Profession: Philosopher, yogi, and spiritual teacher
Location: Rishikesh, India

Jeanne Durand
Profession: linguist and expert in AI ethics
Location: Paris, France

Kofi Mensah
Profession: Environmental scientist and expert in indigenous tribes knowledge
Location: Accra, Ghana

Alejandro “El Loco” Mendoza
Profession: Former psychedelic smuggler and activist
Location: Ciudad Juárez, Mexico