4K ZEN

Our inaugural screening looks at the mind and body within the expanding narratives of the future. Their needs have grown alongside technological development because we are now more abled to remedy and facilitate them through advances within the sector. Gender, emotion, and an urgent need for care, are entangled subjects within society that are important components of a progressive world.

Stine Deja’s two videos make up '4K ZEN', a work which is framed through a meditative environment and looks at the possibility of technology to overcome emotional and physical restrictions. Often presented as part of an installation including yoga matts and a ‘head tv set’, the location Deja creates inside and outside of the video is one of contemplation and presentness.

Escaping reality through technologies such as television is a regular way to ‘switch off’. Cinemas offer the chance for total immersion through what Deja terms a ‘passive active’ state, a surrendering to the wide format of the screen to distract ourselves from modern life.

Jake Moore’s videos are the first two parts of a trilogy about working through his feelings towards his own femininity whilst also considering a ‘lack of’ masculinity. The sleek videos portray the birth and awakening of figures removed of the phallus, but who still have male features. By constructing identity by building the characters, Moore considers a subversion of power structures within the gay community making an argument for effeminate men who receive antagonism particularly through technology such as dating apps.

Moore considers the works to exist in a technological utopia for LGBTQ+, a future space and digital world of escapism and fluidity. A location where the potential of the body is unresolved and therefor can possibly overcome physical and mental challenges. The last video in the series has not yet been realised, but will follow the narrative set by the first two works.

Both artists sleek and tender aesthetics consider a soft-future in which we can inhabit.