Questioning the idea of an object and space, which evoke memories of incidents in time, leads to a performative and installative work. A ruin and hunger of consumed electronic machinery feeding into our human genetic system, revealing a ghost of utopia and dystopia. In the realm of robotic remains are unforeseen circumstances driven by death. Echoing voices of bleeding electronic gadgets powered by experimental driven sound. A cry of industrial and technological machinery in our everyday activities as an ambiance coordinated by Emilio Gordoa ,guides the decayed robotic body of Martin Toloku in a costume made of discarded electronic objects with a series of improvised dance and body responds to the evocation of accident. Lena Czerniawska on the other hand reveals the untold story which is obscured from judging eye through a series of drawings on the scrap automobile. Merging the actions of all the three performances in an interchangeable reaction and communicating the same message of the unfortunate of human life.

“Future Remains” is a futuristic tale of sudden death – the decomposition of speed, the warning, the lament, the robotization of death. Civilization is a deadly toy that brings excitement, change and demise. The future is obscured by smog and in the darkness it is easy to have an accident. A moment of inattention, unnecessary acceleration and reality shatters. Continuity is broken, a person disappears. What's left is a lonely garbage dump – a broken window, torn clothes, a suddenly aged shoe, a crushed car body, a broken phone. And that's just a fragment of the life we had with them. Everything we leave behind becomes part of a great, baroque garbage dump. The ghosts of modernity wander through landfills, get entangled in cables, plastic bags and the flames of the unnecessary. This is the downfall of humanity, exposing our greed and selfishness. It is a wasted future, a future derailed, lost, without meaning and without waste plunged into the darkness of burning waste and oceans of garbage. We are trying to resuscitate it, inserting mechanical limbs, valves, connecting it to electricity, performing electric shocks. This is how the image of our own caricature is created. A distorted mirror of who we would like to be. Instead of a superhero we see in the mirror a crumbling robot, a battery running out of power. How do we wake up from this?

This project is a collaboration between the artists Martin Toloku (Ghana), Emilio Gordoa (Mexico/Berlin) and Lena Czerniawska (Poland) with the support of the Goethe-Institut Germany, Adam Mickiewicz Institute and perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) Kumasi.

August 2021 at Ussher Fort Accra, Chale Wote Street Art Festival.

What happened to a body at the process of decay, the moment of gradual transitioning. The act of capturing that one time encounter of a body, object and space. We become reminded by this experience that reveals itself in a moment in time, one that we can never escape when triggered.

A work which is inspired by green burial, the process of becoming of nature. To be close again to the people you care for and to evoke the memory you share with them in the greeny environment around us. 

Using broom sticks and motors from discarded electronic gadgets, Emilio Gordoa represents the germination of grass revived from a decayed metallic mattress. With the motionless body of Martin Toloku in meditation teleported by sound ambiance from Emilio. Which is resuscitated by the spinning grasses (broom sticks) encompasses with obscured memories and human encounter with objects in intimate spaces. The decayed bed is in a state of memorization through the drawings and written poems from Lena Czerniawska. And to stage a moment of silence between people we lost. Also Emilio is seen in the mood of mourning and incantation building the tension of intensified energy of communication between dolurrh (the realm of the death). 

August 2021, crazinisT artisT studiO.

Hedge-Subs[tant]itute is a combined story between two individuals from different parts of the world who discovered each other through sharing their experiences of witnessing the corpse of a loved one. Performing opposite each other under one roof constructed from a mixture of collected dead and fresh woods (a structure of relics), their collaborative performance sees Martin laid-in-state as a wounded body with Eryka as a psychopomp dancing in search of a response from the soul that has begun wandering away from his body. Meeting in the liminal space between opposite sides of animacy and inanimacy, the performance sees Martin’s wake invoking the collapse of the roof above his body as Eryka attempts to create a bridge for him with hers straddling the Above and Below. Drawing inspiration from their material construction process, early histories of tableau ritual dances and improvised movement exchanges, the earth and the wood laid upon it are engaged as a door upon which life force is exchanged in their bodies’ attempts to embody a beat in silence. Hedge-Subs[tant]itute is a space designed to hold a restaging of the aftermath of death and witness-bodies’ resistances to it. 

March 2021, perfocraZe International Artist Residency (pIAR) Kumasi.