Two visions, one world. Understanding how Cassian Robbertze and Paula Anta converged is to understand the nexus of catastrophe and hope which, indissolubly, binds all of us.
Ours is a plastic present, a plastic future. We are all ‘plastiglomerates’, amalgams of organic and inorganic matter. Knowing this is not only the sum of our demise, but also, wondrously, a means through which to grasp the ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be human – in a realm in which the synthetic, vegetal, animal, psychological, political and spiritual are reconciled.
In 1985 Donna Haraway published A Cyborg Manifesto, rejecting the false distinction between animal, human and machine. ‘A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.’
Today, reality and invention are one. The world is perpetually unmade and remade. It is this ambiguous interpenetration of the natural and man-made that shapes our being.
Mirrored Futures brings together Robbertze and Anta within this complex and evolving space – two visions confronting what it means to be human, and what we may yet become.