What are the themes or messages you hope to convey through your work?

Pigeon Legend – Stories 100 Years After Agartha is an integral part of my larger project, Agartha, developed over the past year and commissioned by PinchukArtCentre for the Future Generation Art Prize 2024 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Unlike my earlier works focused solely on specific aspects of algorithmic control, identity politics, or technology-related geopolitics, this piece reflects on the theme of connection and disconnection from a broader, more macro perspective.
It explores how various forms of links—whether biological, technological, or social—shape our interactions and existence in a rapidly changing world. By examining the alternative infrastructures that emerge in the face of intimacy, opacity or even disconnection, I aim to challenge conventional models of communication and connection, offering new possibilities for how different species, technologies, and systems might coexist and interact in a world that emerges through diverse, accidental, and sometimes flawed connections, forming its unique existence.

Why does digital art matter?

Digital infrastructure shapes every aspect of modern life, from politics and military to economics and national power. As a former painter, I realized that (at lease for myself) merely “depicting” images wasn’t enough to confront the profound influence of technology. I had to immerse myself in technological fields, engaging with corporate power, engineers, and startups to critically address these forces. However, I also reject superficial uses of digital tools that just create spectacles, as they replicate outdated production logics without challenging the systems of technological hegemony that dominate our world. Thus, I’m not certain if digital art itself truly matters, but I know that confronting, engaging with, resisting, coexisting with, and questioning technological revolutions and hegemonies undeniably matters.

If you could choose one technological invention from the past or future, what would it be and why?

Telegraph. Before the telegraph, time was fragmented, with each region following its local solar time. Communication depended on transportation, and information could only travel as fast as goods or couriers. The telegraph changed history by decoupling communication from transport, enabling near-instant information exchange and unifying human time for the first time. It standardized “public time,” and laid the foundation for modern global systems like futures trading. This profound connectivity reshaped society. While the internet amplified this legacy, its rise has also introduced unprecedented control, manipulation, addiction, and extreme negative consequences nowadays.