‘I’d rather be in dark silence than…’ by Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti

As part of the By Appointment Only event series participants in the Factory Berlin x Sonar+D Artist in Residence program supported by Beats by Dr. Dre will share the work they’ve been creating and conceptualising during the program.

I’d rather be in silence than..

At the center of the exhibition is a collaboration with fashion designer Barbara Sanchez-Kane, a signal-blocking trench coat that merges conceptual art, fashion, and function. Devices and radio-frequency identification sealed in the dark pockets are unable to be reached, tracked, traced, hacked, nor monitored.

Alongside that, the duo collaborated with other local Berlin artists and participants in the residency to ‘translate the coat into other outputs, culminating in an environmental tapestry around the state of privacy.’ The user is enveloped in a score created by Amon Tobin, in collaboration with Tony Cruise, whose voice penetrates the space with a reading of his poem, ‘Privacy Is Fake Now.’ The XR Room installation spaces provides a canvas upon which an art film by Mischa Kornai is projected, and photography by Evelyn Bencicova, featuring both Ti and Catherine, is presented in the space.

Guests are invited to interact with an augmented reality filter designed by Aaron Jablonski that blurs faces and bodies. The AR piece foregrounds the nature of ‘invisibility’ – something that the coat provides the wearer from online-tracking. Encouraging users to interact with the installation via their mobile phones holds a tangible sense of irony. The artists’ perspective is clear; we’re insistently reliant on technology, despite being well-informed on the cost to our privacy that it entails.

About Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti

Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine, “the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages” (Clot Magazine) and “LGBT power couple” (Flaunt), are an LA-based experiential artist duo whose practice merges environments, performance, and technology.

Rooted in the understanding that immersion is not only a physical state, but also an emotional and psychological one, their approach employs nuance within scale, focused on producing a feeling instead of a spectacle. Both conceptual artists, their expertise collide—Ti’s extensive background in immersive art and human-computer interaction, and Catherine a recognized choreographer, performance artist and gender scholar.

By Appointment Only

By Appointment Only is a series of exhibitions, shows and events from the 10 artists, creatives and collectives of Factory Berlin x Sónar+D’s second Artist in Residence program supported by Beats by Dr. Dre. Events from December 2020 to March 2021.

All Factory Berlin exhibitions and events are held in line with the most up to date COVID-19 guidelines from the Berlin Senate.