Human Factors is a group show presenting recent and new work by Hanna Haaslahti in collaboration with Tyler Henry, Anna Estarriola and Yassine Khaled. The exhibition is reflecting on the human condition and human connections in current times. We are constantly connected and present, but how are our relationships changing or affected by technology? How do we perceive others or relate to each other, our environment and the universe as we move through challenging times, and what does it mean to be human today? The works displayed are exploring relations of power and conflict, borders, individual and communal behaviour and representation.

Image: Monitor Man, Yassine Khaled. Photo: Tani Simberg

Public Launch Event

Wednesday 17 October 2018, 6.30pm – 8.30pm – Join us for a gallery tour and a chance to meet the artists, with refreshments.

Works on display:

ANNA ESTARRIOLA

REINCARNATION FALIEUR (2016)

A character reacts to its given body; a hairy dog. The one living inside the hairy, four-legged body is trying to growl and pant. During the four minutes loop the creature goes through a little life journey, it wakes up, barks a bit, wonders, gets excited, appears forceful, but also puzzled and sharp, only to go back to sleep and return again in a new cycle.

LANDSCAPE (2015)

A microscope-like device points to a green surface; a planet or a cell-culture dish. The viewer is presented with the events unfolding on the surface of the circular dish. The staging of a survival scenario, where humans are left with nothing else but themselves, the scene depicts human activities to questioning the future and the hierarchy of looking.

Cinematography: Paco Bouazza

With the support of Angel Films and Whitepoint

HANNA HAASLAHTI in collaboration with TYLER HENRY

Captured (2018)

Captured is a participatory installation, which captures your face and creates a new identity for you in a collective scenario taking place in virtual world.

Captured enables people to step into virtual world as a digital double, making people actors and spectators in the same time. The doubles participate in a simulation depicting an unsettling cyclical performance of social humiliation, assigning doubles as one of the three components of the bullying triangle, the Bully, the Target or the Bystander.
Captured is a on-going research project about inhabiting the image, extending our physical likeness in virtual realities and simulations. The project explores new ways of telling stories, hyper-realistic capturing and 3D modeling technologies and their effects and social implications on human relationships.

The project has received funding from Arts Promotion Center Finland, Finnish Cultural Fund and AVEK – Audiovisual Promotion Center of Finland.

YASSINE KHALED

Monitor Man (2016-2018)

In Monitor Man, Yassine Khaled creates an embodiment of virtual communication in public space. The artist wears a helmet affixed with an iPad, which offers a real-time connection to a person outside the Western world with restricted freedom of movement. Through the use of technology and his own body, Khaled uses the performance to transgress actual, national borders and enables people to meet with someone physically far away. Monitor Man was inspired by the current refugee crisis and how it is unfolding in relation to the internet, social media, and the omnipresence of technology. The project began on the streets of Helsinki, but is ongoing as the artist presents the work in different locations around the Western world. Monitor Man received an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2018, Interactive Art + category.

The Age of DATA (2018)

The Age of DATA is a new installation that explores connections between the present and the past, technology, communication and classical art. A series of – disconnected at a first glance – objects lie on the same pedestal; a helmet (a part of a performance called Monitor Man), a copy of an ancient Greek sculpture Colossal Head, a drawing of a human head, a print of a digital grid and a smartphone readymade.

The installation challenges us to look at these objects together; their placement on the pedestal makes them equal, while the borders between works of art and products are blurred. Khaled strives to picture the development of art in The Age of Data by shaping the images of identity and memory. The copy ofFragmentary Colossal Head of a Youth from the Hellenistic Period wearing headphones with an electronic beat creates a metaphoric form reflecting cultural developments from ancient times until today. The central question rises from the installation: Is technology replacing our memory?

List of artists’ biographies click HERE