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Rnav or Moon Rabbit

Inbar Hagai (2023)

 

Moon Rabbit (Diorama), Variation 2 consists of two connected elements: a vertical video and a kinetic sonic sculpture. The work juxtaposes two seemingly disparate scientific missions: a NASA-CMU lunar micro-rover searching for water on the Moon and the artist’s own absurd experiment to restore her pet rabbit’s libido after having him neutered. Through this pairing, the work reflects on tech-solutionism—the belief that complex social and ecological crises can be resolved through technology. The sculpture, a DIY shake table activated by the video’s low-frequency soundscape, disrupts the projected image while gradually degrading the projector itself, embedding failure into the installation’s structure. Engaging with ideas of productive failure, cinematic illusion, and the diorama as a museological form, the piece reflects on the precarity of technological ambition and the impermanence of the moving image.

 To watch the sculpture being activated, click here

And, as my time at NARS is coming to a close, I’m more than excited to invite you to PROXIES, a screening event I’m organizing in collaboration with Departure Lounge. It’s been an absolute joy to work on this event, and I truly can’t wait to screen this incredible lineup of video works by Yasmin Caspin Guetta, Gloria Fan Duan, Kei Ito & Andrew Keiper, Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, Matthew McGaughey, Karam Natour, Michael Robinson, and Marianna Simnett. Each of the artists in the program engages with the idea of substitutes – replicas, simulations, and reembodiments – in order to complicate contemporary modes of representation. Using strategies such as reenactment, repetition, flattening, recontextualization, and the appropriation of mass-media iconography, these works probe the power structures inherent in current legal, political, and sociological territories, as well as traditional cinematic constructs of time and narrative.

 

This project was made possible by the Frank-Ratchye Further Fund Grant #2023-025.