Part of the gallery and it’s yard was re-designed a bear’s den. After of months of exposure to online content from contemporary Russia, as part of my GZPRM GOPNIK project, my timeline was infected by countless reels showing bears engaging in friendly activities with humans: bears assisting men in their workout routine, humans feeding bears with spoons, cuddling with bears and so on. We know that, since the inception of Web 2.0, algorithms verge towards the taming of nature, and of animals in specific, by dressing them in cuteness. In contrast to this cybernetic logic, we’ve considered various local rituals which involve animals, and we also wanted to evoke that, prior to the internet, bear tamers would roam the Balkans. In my show, the bear swallows vintage wooden toys from Russia, proudly displays the heads of its victims, and undergoes surgery in front of the show’s audience. This was my first operation on an algorithmic bear.
