ŠUM POD

Mikkel Rørbo, a producer of cultural detritus and interdisciplinary researcher on hyperstition, abductive inference, reality-production and desire. Mikkel joined us in Ljubljana just before the holidays to discuss the concepts and ideas from his text for Unreality Mode, a new double issue of Šum journal. The conversation is hosted by Maks Valenčič

Find out more about Mikkel’s work:

Brandon Rosenbluth speaks with Italian artist duo Invernomuto about networked creation, sound as a medium for tracing history, challenging the art institution with expanded formats, cybernetic animism and the emergence of Triton – a creature, a community, a multi-sensorial object and affect engine of new relations. Begin your exchange with Triton here.

Triton is commissioned by Haus der Kunst München, curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer, and supported by the Italian Council (2024), promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, with the support of PAN and partners including the Singapore Art Museum, TheCube Project Space (Taipei), EPFL (Lausanne), MAO (Turin), Museion (Bolzano) and La Becque (La Tour-de-Peilz).

Joel Anselm Dietz and Edwin Klint Bywater submitted a response article to Anna K. Winters’s “Hegelian e-girl manifesto” in ŠUM #22 Angel Mode. We invited them to Šum Pod to unpack their reply, clarify the core ideas behind the metaphysical Männerbund—literally “bonded men,” often interpreted as a “band of brothers”—and discuss what corrections or updates they propose to the project. We’ll also ask how the metaphysical Männerbund can provide both a means for survival (for projects like the Hegelian e-girl manifesto) and the foundational principles of a new order—philosophy as a lived and embodied social phenomenon. Check the link bellow to access their response article: “Metaphysical Männerbund’s Hegelian E-girl Apocalypse Fallout Kit.”

Theo Triantafyllidis, the artist behind multiplayer video game Feral Metaverse joins us on the pod to discuss the ideas, mechanics and the experience of the game, how he translates it to exhibition settings and how combining physical and digital media can address questions of embodiment, identity and collaboration in hybrid realities. We talk also about his wider art practice in which he uses various technologies ranging from game engines, VR, to live action role-play in order to create immersive, interactive environments often shaped by absurd, yet also poetic situations.

This episode is hosted by Tjaša Pogačar and Ondřej Trhoň, sound logo by Oliver Torr, cover visual by Jaka Neon. The episode features sounds and music from Feral Metaverse.

Curator and writer Nadim Samman talks about his research and curatorial approach, the notion of the Technocene, the esoteric imaginary surrounding contemporary tech, the book and exhibition Poetics of Encryption and, among other things, how their three chapters – Black Site, Black Box, and Black Hole – function as models for where we see ourselves in relation to technology’s encrypted core.

This episode is hosted by Ondřej Trhoň, edited by Tjaša Pogačar, sound design by Oliver Torr, visual by Jaka Neon. The cover image is based on the work Panorama Cat by Eva & Franco Mattes.

Lucia Pietroiusti and Lukáš Likavčan, discussing rituals of mourning, secular mysticism, relationship between technology and sacred tendencies, role of spirituality in contemporary art and possibilities to attune cultural institutions to the rituals for post-Anthropocene and facilitate a shift from “global” art world to a “planetary” one.

The discussion followed Lucia's and Lukaš's keynotes at ARIA World's End Symposium in Ljubljana. Hosted by Tjaša Pogačar.

A discussion with Alice Bucknell, Tom K Kemp and Klara Kofen following their lectures at ARIA's Worlds’ End Symposium. We talked about the potential of games as simulations to generate novel scenarios and outcomes, ways of avoiding habituated behaviours, the mechanics of non-human gameplay, about mysticism, opera, and language as worldbuilding technology...

We reconnect with the world of ARIA in anticipation of its upcoming edition and sit down with Omsk Social Club, a sprawling artistic collective to talk about their artistic practice, engagement with roleplay and personal take on the methodology as well as the inspirations that went into developing the Worlds’ End Hackathon, a Real Game Play they designed and will facilitate for ARIA this summer. ARIA - Algorithmic Ideation Assembly, is a week-long summer school that unfolds through a fiction-theory narrative to explore new possibilities for our world in a time of a changing planetary ecology. More info on the link below.

Brandon Rosenbluth talks with artist Áron Birtalan about the politics and potentials of roleplay, mystical theology’s embrace of unknowing, attuning to the relational, and a radical submission to the more-than-human.

An Interview on ethnoarchaeology, noise & cassette culture with a Serbian musician Vladimir Lenhart aka Lenhart Tapes whose music has become known as 'ethno noise', or as he puts it – a musical Frankenstein made of different musical traditions, from world and ethno music to industrial and noise. Since his early days, he has been a fan of the cassette format and tape manipulation, which represents the basis of his unique musical practice.

Two Prague curators and theorists, Tina Poliačková and Noemi Purkrábková, discuss their work, recent trends in contemporary visual art and beyond, the posthumanist and “emo-romantic” turn, online exhibition documentation, offsite shows, the experience of digital media, game principles in exhibition-making, the role of fantasy and fiction in shaping our reality, and the limits of art in enchanting the world differently. This episode is hosted by Tjaša Pogačar, the jingle concocted by Tisa Troha, visual summoned by Dorijan Šiško.

Michael Marder takes us on a journey through the mechanisms of natural and social reproduction and replication, especially those ingrained in our individual and collective lives. Along the way, we survey and explore the limits, both internal and external, to the seamless phoenix-like reconstitution of the same (organism, psyche, society, environment) across the gap of death, total destruction and devastation. Presented in August 2023 in Cukrarna, Ljubljana as part of ARIA (Algo-Rhythmic Ideation Assembly), a summer school designed as a role-playing game developed for More-Than-Planet project and produced by Projekt Atol.

A discussion with Michael Marder, Špela Petrič, Protektorama toxica and Simon Speiser centers around the concept of anthropoforming as proposed by Helen Hester addressing questions of human and non-human co-evolutionary potentialities as directed by human innovation and imagination. Presented in August 2023 in Cukrarna, Ljubljana as part of ARIA (Algo-Rhythmic Ideation Assembly), a summer school designed as a role-playing game developed for More-Than-Planet project and produced by Projekt Atol.

A talk by Romanian artist and writer Florin Flueras on Unsorcery, practiced concepts exploring ways of sorcery that can eventually surpass or undo some of the contemporary realities and subjectivities. The talk was presented in August 2023 in Cukrarna, Ljubljana as part of ARIA (Algo-Rhythmic Ideation Assembly), a summer school designed as a role-playing game developed for More-Than-Planet project and produced by Projekt Atol.

Simon Speiser, a Berlin-based artist talks about blending virtual reality and ancestral folklore, weaving science fiction with non-western conceptions of technology, and believing in storytelling as a tool in the fight against dystopian thinking. Podcast hosted by Ondřej Trhoň as part of ARIA / More-Than-Planet residency with Projekt Atol and Šum in 2023.

András Cséfalvay, a Bratislava born and based artist, on extinction, ancestral memories, mourning trilobites, limitations of Western technics, Death Stranding, and combining cutting edge technology with alternative and speculative storytelling to create new knowledge and help us inhabit the world anew. Podcast hosted by Ondřej Trhoň as part of ARIA / More-Than-Planet residency with Projekt Atol and Šum in 2023.

Under the mentorship of Metahaven, Holly Childs’ practice of post-Anthropocenic poetics and Gediminas Žygus’s post-club sound worlding have interwoven into a critical yet open ended multimedia output including two collaborative releases on Subtext, Hydrangea and Gnarled Roots, and performances presented in contexts from botanical greenhouses to Palais de Tokyo which explore our mediated existence within a post-Truth world. // 2023

UK-based artist and producer interviewed about his otherworldly laptop music, artwork, puzzles, strange online artefacts and other multimedia content which all gravitate around a fictional ecosystem of strange entities and tiny gods.

Shanghai-based Slovak philosopher Lukáš Likavčan interviewed about comparative planetology, geopolitics of “spectral Earth”, post-anthropocentric design practice, fashion, role of art institutions and why he’s put his curatorial work on hold.

Members of the Prague-based polyfunctional collective BCAA System (Bilej Kluk, Reality Congress) and sound artist Oliver Torr interviewed about their collaborative multidisciplinary AV project Awoo, which exists at the intersection of electronic music, graphic and sound design, gaming and worldbuilding.

North American London-based writer, artist and organiser of New Mystics and New Worlds Alice Bucknell interviewed about worldbuilding, narratives framing space exploration, speculative fiction as descriptive practice, magic and unravelling human language structures with the help of AI systems.

Mystical Milanese music producer Heith (new album ‘X, wheel’ out via PAN) interviewed about cosmology, time, sigils, asemic writing, Indonesia, and concepts from Federico Campagna’s books ‘Technic & Magic’ and ‘Prophetic Culture’.

A london based artist and software developer Jelena Viskovic talks about her exhibition Volumes: New Babylon, feminist take on situationist worldbuilding, homo ludens, talking stones, magic circles and teaching game design at UCL.