ANIA CATHERINE
& DEJHA TI
TERMS AND CONDITION
“what you’re signing up for”
A. OUR TERMS
Reading this, we’re already together.
Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine are an award-winning Los Angeles-based artist duo whose practice merges environments, performance, and creative technology. Both conceptual artists, their expertise collide—Ti with an extensive background in immersive art and human-computer interaction (HCI), and Catherine a recognized choreographer, performance artist and London School of Economics gender scholar. Their work culminates in immersive experiences, drawing audiences into idiosyncratic worlds. Rooted in the understanding that immersion is not only a physical state, but also an emotional and psychological one, their work is defined by nuance within scale, producing a feeling instead of a spectacle.
Ti & Catherine’s practice is a provocative integration of fleshy experiential and poetic HCI (human-computer interaction).
“REALLY MODERN romance, we first met on instagram”
Says Ania Catherine.
Their seminal interactive installation, ‘On View,’ commissioned by the SCAD Museum of Art, won the 2020 ADC Awards for Experiential Design (Digital Experiences and Responsive Environments) as well as shortlisted for 2020 Lumen Prize for Art and Technology in the 3D/Interactive category. ‘On View’ looks at the generational desire to be the subject of an art experience. Contextualized in the era of experiential marketing and digital art museums on every corner, ‘On View’ asks: are you going to see what’s on view, or are you going to see yourself on view? Upon further research into this phenomenon, a performance installation about selfie culture’s impact on art engagement became redirected to the cycle of surveillance capitalism, data brokering, and gendered and extractive technologies. Audience-participants are moved through three distinct spaces: Terms and Condition > Stages Gallery > Golden Gallery. Using hyperbole throughout, ‘On View’ demonstrates how small and frequent choices in our daily lives have made us extremely vulnerable–like clicking a small checkbox that says “I agree” to a Terms and Conditions that we never read. The audience-participant agrees to the T&Cs, has their photo taken by the installation, and is put on display in the ultimate art venue—the museum.
When YOU lie in the ART; when you lie, in the art
“(ON VIEW) DOCUMENTS A PIVOTAL POINT IN OUR RELATIVELY SHORT YET EVENTFUL DIGITAL HISTORY”
Says Surface Magazine.
While ‘On View’ appears to be a non-digital environment, it relies on a complex and ubiquitous network of technology, using TouchDesigner as a mainbrain integrating real-time facial recognition, dozens of microprocessor devices, environment-embedded sensors, kinetics, dmx light control, and guest profile generation. The technology is embedded both conceptually and technically into the backdrop of the experience—a critical nod to the use of ubiquitous computing, Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. ‘On View’ goes beyond VR and AR into Mixed Reality; attendees interact with a virtual world with no virtual layer. Both a socio-political critique and an experiment in art and technology, ‘On View’ is part of the critical conversation on data in modern society and a call to action and awareness, illustrating the larger structures and underlying forces shaping our everyday realities and actions.
B. OUR CONDITION
This is the ART.
OUTSIDE MUSEUM WALLS:
EXPERIENTIAL NIGHTLIFE & DISSONANT HOSPITALITY
Outside museum walls, the duo is making waves internationally in experiential nightlife and dissonant hospitality attracting the art world’s elite at the LACMA Party at Art Basel Hong Kong, consistently named the “best party of Art Basel Hong Kong” (Forbes), and also Berlin’s queer hybrid-art & fashion scene creating an experiential suite of performance art called ‘Empty Hour’ at Trauma Bar und Kino. “Their practice incorporates the human body—of both audiences and performers—in all its fragility and power as a central aspect of their practice.” says Storm Janse van Rensburg, Curator SCAD Museum of Art.
“Your moodboard is killing the mood”
say D&A.
Referred to as an “LGBT power couple” (Flaunt Magazine), Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine are recognized as critical voices shaping the future of digital and immersive art. “They act in unison as the two critical contemporary voices on digital art’s international stages” said Clot Magazine. They’ve been commissioned by and/or shown at cultural institutions like A/D/O , SCAD Museum of Art, Trauma Bar und Kino, Ars Electronica .ART Gallery, MoCDA, LACMA (VIP Party Art Basel, Hong Kong), brands like Adidas, Ableton and Sofitel, artists like Amon Tobin and Madame Gandhi, and fashion house Mithridate, most recently Automatiste, a digital fashion presentation for London Fashion Week AW21, and prior to that they created a performance installation, Anthropocene, presenting the SS21 collection at Serpentine Galleries. In 2020 they were artists in residence at Factory Berlin and Sonar+D. The duo has been invited to speak internationally at festivals, conferences and universities, including Christie’s Art and Tech Summit (Hong Kong), The Future of Experiential Technology Symposium (University of California: San Diego), Mutek (Montreal), the Contemporary and Digital Art Fair (NYC & Miami), Tech Open Air (Berlin), Aesthetics of Idleness Symposium (University of Rochester) about a variety of subjects including: ubiquitous computing (pervasive computing) and calm technology in experiential art; creating fluency between art and technology; ambient and environmental performance, the choreography of viewing art; the expected aesthetics of digital art; and their approach to experiential art—what they’ve coined as Durational Immersion.
Ti and Catherine call for moving beyond the tricks and gimmicks of digital art (selfie) museums, instead focusing on how art and technology can be merged and harnessed to reflect on, understand, and form broader social realities through new digital architectures.
Their medium-fluent practice leads to audience-participants experiencing their work in innumerable forms, culminating in: films screened at festivals; experiential art in museums and floating restaurants alike; panel discussions about sex between women; shoeless performers at shoe launches; and experiments in performance art and creative technology. The duo launched Operator, an art house that executes their large-scale multifaceted works and selectively that of like-minded cultural institutions and initiatives.