Serpentine Arts Technologies and Outernet Arts launch an innovative partnership unveiling a digital artwork Continuity Flaws: The Loophole by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan that simulates and explores the precarious conditions of life in the global present.
Join us on 25 July from 6pm for the public preview and a guided tour at Outernet’s flagship venue, The Now Building, renowned for its impressive 23,000 square feet of wrap-around 16K screens. The work will remain open to the public to explore every Sunday from 30 July – 17 September from 12-6pm.
Gabriel Massan’s new commission critically explores the performative essence of life, drawing on decolonial, queer, and decentralised perspectives. Referencing Brazilian philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva’s book Unpayable Debt – a Black feminist reading of race, global capitalism and futurity, Massan simulates a world filled with digital sculpture-actors, who establish a force-field of possibility through moments of connection. Filmed from multiple perspectives, Massan offers an ecosystemic view on the realities of life and emergence in the global present, as their characters interact, unite, and bid farewell on small islands suspended in the void.
“It’s about the potential of Black performance as a power that creates breaches in the current hegemony – a cycle of precariousness, a system built by colonial structures to maintain and lock Black existence in a position of subalternity.”
– Gabriel Massan
This commission connects with Third World: The Bottom Dimension, Massan’s ongoing project commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies that incorporates a video game, exhibition and web3 tokens powered by Tezos. Visit the exhibition at Serpentine North until 22 October.
Project Credits
Lead Artist: Gabriel Massan
Unreal Development: Gabriel Massan & Carlos Minozzi
Animation: Carlos Minozzi
Sound Design: Agazero
Technical Consultant: Tom Wandrag
Serpentine Credits
Curator: Tamar Clarke-Brown
Producer: Róisín McVeigh
Head of Arts Technologies: Kay Watson
Outernet Arts Credits
Managing Director: Tony Tremlett
Creative Producer: Ruth Waters
Artist Bio
Gabriel Massan (b.1996 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary visual and digital artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Across 3D animation, digital sculpture, gamification, sound, and interactive installations, the artist investigates themes around subversive otherness and fictional archaeology concerning the imagination of a ‘Third World’. Gabriel was a 2019 FUGA Residency Program Invited Artist at ETOPIA – Center for Art & Technology, 2020 Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) Digital Commission Artist and Circa x Dazed’ Class of 2021′ Selected Artist. In 2022 Massan was nominated as Dazed 100 and Serpentine Arts Technologies Digital Commission Artist at Serpentine Galleries, Bangkok Biennale Online Pavillion Invited Artist, The Photographers’ Gallery Open Space, and X Museum’s X Virtual Digital Commission Artist. The artist has promoted the discussion of its processes and practices since that year as a La Biennale di Venezia through Bloomberg Philanthropies, Art Basel Miami with Tezos, 2022-2023 DLD Conference, University College London (UCL) Art Futures, Royal College Of Arts (RCA) and Institut Français Invited Lecturer. In 2023, Gabriel was selected as a half-year resident at the Cité Internationale Des Arts by the Arts Explora Program. He presented his first individual show alongside invited collaborators entitled ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ at Serpentine Galleries. Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include: ‘WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age” (Julia Stoschek Collection, 2022; Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2023); ‘Canon!’ (Frieze No.9 Cork Street, 2022) and ‘Possible Agreements’ (Mendes Wood DM, 2022).
