Requiem for an Exit
5 days ago
- #violence-history
- #collective-memory
- #robotic-art
- Frode Oldereid and Thomas Kvam created robotic installations (1994-2004) exploring technology, ideology, and collective memory, later revisiting these themes in *Requiem for an Exit*.
- *Requiem for an Exit* features a 4-meter-tall robotic figure with a hyper-realistic face, using rhetoric to deliver a monologue on violence and human history.
- The robot’s voice and soundscape create a dense, liturgical atmosphere, discussing genocide as a recurring feature of human history, not as an aberration.
- The installation confronts viewers with humanity’s complicity in violence, offering no redemption but forcing a reckoning with our capacity for destruction.
- The work critiques myths of progress, intelligence, and technology’s redemptive power, framing the robot as an archivist of unconfronted truths.
- The artists integrate robotics, AI, CGI, and hydraulics to create a multidisciplinary piece that blends philosophical inquiry with cutting-edge technology.
- The installation serves as a mirror, reflecting humanity’s violence and delegating responsibility to bureaucracies and algorithms, questioning whether silence is our own.