Continuity Flaws: The Loophole
Gabriel Massan
Jul 30 – Sep 17, 2023
Every Sunday
12:00 – 18:00
Outernet Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies launch an innovative partnership, unveiling a digital artwork by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan that simulates and explores the precarious conditions of life in the global present.
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 new 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. 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. The collaborative, multimedia exhibition with web3 tokens is on show at Serpentine until 22 October.
Expanding their practice of critical worldbuilding, Massan actively creates spaces that promote the emergence and platforming of diverse voices. Through the use of a handheld camera technique within Unreal Engine, Massan explores the inequalities and challenges for Black existence within a global system that perpetuates cycles of precarity and inequality. The accompanying soundtrack features Massan’s distorted voice and sound design by Agazero, a producer, DJ and artist born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
“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
“We’re delighted to collaborate with Outernet Arts to present Continuity Flaws: The Loophole. Massan’s project not only demonstrates an iterative process in terms of our relationship with the artist - supporting development of concept, game, then exhibition, but also how work like this can exist and engage across fields, building new connections between artists and society.”
- Bettina Korek, CEO and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine
About Gabriel Massan
Gabriel Massan (b.1996 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Framed through a conceptual practice they call ‘fictional archaeology’, and working across 3D animation, digital sculpture, games, sound, and interactive installations, the artist challenges warped conceptions of the so-called 'Third World' while investigating possibilities for subversive otherness. Selected residencies and awards include the Arts Explora Program supported by Cité Internationale Des Arts (2023), Dazed 100 (2022), Circa x Dazed (2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (2020) and ETOPIA - Center for Art & Technology (2019). They have created significant commissions with Serpentine Arts Technologies (2022-3), Bangkok Biennale (2022), The Photographers' Gallery (2022), and X Museum (2022). Massan has presented talks and conversations at institutions including La Biennale di Venezia, Art Basel Miami, DLD Conference, University College London, Royal College Of Arts and Institut Français. Recent exhibitions include: 'WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age" (Julia Stoschek Collection, 2022; Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2023); 'Canon!' (FriezeNo.9 Cork Street, 2022) and 'Possible Agreements' (Mendes Wood DM, 2022). In June 2023, theylaunched the critically acclaimed multipart project 'Third World: The Bottom Dimension' at Serpentine, London, which includes a collaborative video game, multidisciplinary exhibition and web3 tokens.
Project Credits
Lead Artist: Gabriel Massan
Unreal Development: Gabriel Massan & Carlos Minozzi
Animation: Carlos Minozzi
Sound Design: Agazero
Technical Consultant: Tom Wandrag
