ARK 1 is a multimedia installation composed and directed by the Berlin-based Scottish artist and choreographer Colette Sadler. Comprised of a live solo performance within a video installation made in collaboration with Mikko Gaestel, ARK 1 explores the precarious futures of human culture amid the life-altering interventions of artificial intelligence and ecological crisis. The video establishes a science fictional narrative to which a dancer responds: set in the future, a fictitious bio-technology corporation VESSELS INC created the spaceship “ARK 1” to preserve the distant memory of human life. As Earth’s resources became depleted and its ecosystems threatened human extinction, VESSELS INC launched ARK 1 into deep space, equipped with the technology for sustaining artificial life. Onboard, an algorithm digitally reconstructed the dancer Leah Marojevic to preserve the muscle memory of human experience.

Halfway through the film, Marojevic appears live to perform as the humanoid specimen against the video installation’s virtual backdrop. The live dimension of the performance collapses the temporal distance between our pandemic present and the video’s post-catastrophic future; its simulated world emerges and is embodied through the dancer’s uncanny movements.

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