Join us for a fascinating and insightful talk by current QUAD exhibiting artist Petra Szemán in conversation with Rebecca Edwards. This virtual talk will explore Towards a New Monomyth –Petra Szemán’s exhibition in QUAD’s extra gallery spaces, and a deep dive into the animation and game-like landscapes in Széman’s practice. Szemán uses a virtual version of themself as a protagonist journeying through animatic realms and exploring liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction. Petra will also share their experience as selected as our Digital Participation Artist, doing workshops, residency and exhibition at QUAD.

This is an online event. After booking you will receive a booking confirmation email immediately and then a further email with Zoom information within the next 24 hours. Please check spam folders if necessary.

Artist and Speaker Bios:

Petra Szemán

Petra Szemán is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like landscapes. Their practice focuses on the murky borderlands along the arbitrary line separating real and fictional, and the kind of lives and experiences that are possible there. Using a virtual version of themself as a protagonist journeying through animatic realms, they explore liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction (both on- and off-screen). Turning away from thinking of the cyberspace as a radically ’other’ realm, Petra hopes to walk the line situated between dystopian and utopian frameworks, eyes set on new queer horizons. From this uniquely conceived and drafted kinetic viewpoint, fragments of different worlds segue into view, signalling perceptual ruptures that seemingly force subjectivity outside of itself, into strange new relationships of interdependency and intoxication with the moving image.

Rebecca Edwards

Rebecca Edwards is a London based curator, writer and producer. Her interests include cultivating experimental curatorial methods, interweaving fluid approaches to production, dissemination and representation of artwork, and exploring the nested fields of technology, digital aesthetics and internet culture. Rebecca was the curator at arebyte from 2017 – 2024.