Office for Contemporary Art Norway

According to curator Anthea Buys, ‘Machine Worries, Machine Hearts’ is a group exhibition ‘about the possibilities of human-machine empathy’ inspired by an ancient Chinese story by the philosopher Zhuangzi. In the fourth century B.C.E. he wrote a fable of a traveling scholar who encountered a farmer struggling to retrieve water from a well to irrigate his crops. The farmer didn’t want the help of machines, because he was afraid that they might corrupt some ‘essentially human quality’ within him. Buys states that 'this anxiety, and the territory of human-machine relations more broadly, is well-explored in science fiction and cybernetics. However, in this exhibition, we take the phrases "machine worries" and "machine hearts" at face value and imagine them as real emotional states or ways of feeling. What are “machine worries”, or what might it be like for a machine to “worry”? Can we imagine our way into the “hearts” of machines?’

For press inquiries and more information on this announcement, please contact Anthea Buys.

About the artists
Pedro Gómez-Egaña (b.1976 in Colombia, lives and works in Oslo, Norway and Copenhagen, Denmark) is trained as a composer and visual artist at Goldsmiths College, London, UK and the Bergen National Academy of Arts, Norway. His work with sculpture, video and audio has been presented in national and international venues such as Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen; L’appartement 22, Rabat, Morocco; Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK; CCMoca, Buenos Aires, Brazil and Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany. Gómez-Egaña has developed a variety of research projects at different institutions and with partners such as the British Council, Goldsmiths College, Kunstnernes Hus, The Laban Centre, Bergen National Academy of Arts, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Toril Johannessen (b.1978 in Harstad, Norway, lives and works in Bergen) holds a BA and MA from the Bergen National Academy of Arts and was trained from the Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles, CA, USA. She was one of the participating artists in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012). Her work has been presented at Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; SMART Project Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Bergen Art Museum, Bergen; CSA Space in Vancouver, Canada and INCA, Detroit, MI, USA.

Cameron MacLeod (b.1975 in Halifax, Canada, lives and works in Bergen) graduated from the Konstfack University of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a founding member of the artist collective and gallery Platform in Stockholm and he has been exhibiting his work in VIAFARINI, Milano, Italy; Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA and at Det Åpne Teater, Oslo, Norway.

Magnhild Øen Nordahl (b.1985 in Ulsteinvik, Norway, lives and works in Stockholm) is enrolled in the Masters programme at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Recent exhibitions include ‘Spatial Dispacements: The Space in Between’, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2012); ‘The Armory Show Annex’, ACE Hotel, New York, NY, USA (2012) and 'White painted bricks', Die Fabrik, Burgdorf, Switzerland. She held a solo exhibition titled ‘Statics’, at NO.5, Bergen Kunsthall in 2011.