Sadie Coles HQ

Unemployed Joseph Marti is hired as an assistant to Mr. Tobler, an inventor. However, it turns out that the inventions are useless and Marti becomes a Man for everything while he plunges into the everyday routines of Mr. and Mrs. Tobler.

This computer-generated fantasy tells the story of a fading superstar, Diva, who enlists an aspiring AI songwriter to mount a comeback performance at the 2065 eSports Olympic finale. Set in a smoke-and-mirrors realm of fantastical architecture, sentient drones and snow-deluged jungles, AIDOL revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity and Artificial Intelligence. Fame - in all its allure and emptiness - is set against the bigger contradictions of a post-AI world, a world where originality is sometimes no more than an algorithmic trick and where machines have the capacity for love and suffering.

La Gola (The Belly), Diego Marcon’s film commissioned by the Kunstverein in Hamburg, revolves around the correspondence between Gianni and Rossana. The two characters are portrayed by hyperrealistic dolls with digitally animated eyes and facial expressions. The combination of human voices, analogue dolls, and digital (post-)production brings forth hybrid characters whose status between analogue and digital defies clear distinction.