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“I actually have more freedom to make choice with a flat screen” – interview with Vânia Gala, the Artistic Anchor of the Manifest project, about her experience in Nantes and the use of XR

The multimedia exhibition in Nantes marked the grand finale of the Manifest project, showcasing the culmination of two years of artistic work across a wide range of media—from traditional genres like painting to intermedia installations and XR technology. The exhibition, which ran from September 19 to October 6 at l’Atelier in Nantes, attracted over 2,000 visitors and was accompanied by various programs, including panel discussions, workshops, and school visits.

The exhibition aimed to offer an innovative perspective on the history and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, placing art at the centre of evoking memories and exploring these legacies. Through the works presented, the twenty-two artists of Manifest sought to reconcile both individual and collective memories, ensuring they are preserved from being forgotten. We spoke with Vânia Gala, the Artistic Anchor of the Manifest project, about her experience in Nantes and the use of XR as one of the central mediums in the exhibition, exploring both its limitations and possibilities in shaping the presented artworks.

Introductory thoughts of Vania:
“Everybody from the team should really congratulate themselves as the scope of the disciplines of the people we worked with is enormous and I think a lot of us forgot about this. For me it was very interesting to do the visit to the castle Château des ducs de Bretagneand be in the debates with the NGO’s that work around colonial slavery and its afterlives to get a better understanding of how they work and how France is regarding some of these issues or even art, art education, curation and its relation to other disciplines.

The fact that France does not have post-graduate education in the arts (PhD’s) or better that they are restricted to art history and PAR (Practice as Research) is almost non-existent makes the field restricted and the debates quite limited. As such things appear really fragmented and reductive. There are really interesting artists, thinkers in France but the university is not so much part of it and it makes the debates very sterile which is a pity. Yet as always there are many young people that are interesting!

The vast scope areas we worked with, includes: Activist NGO’s, technology enterprise, a media company, historians with expertise on slavery, cultural MA (some of these students were interesting one of them was really curious because I asked them how would they curate work that is non-western and speaks of and through communities they have no knowledge of and that is out of the western cannon and they had really some interesting thoughts or reflections.)

And last: visual artists, writers, animation artists, film documentary artists, designers, spoken word artists, one writer, one dancer and a performance artist (8 different artistic fields!!). I was thinking again the other day only three people studied fine art and work/circulate or wish to work within that field I believe! Others come from all those fields I would love to know what they learned from each other I wonder if the partners have made any inquiry or reflections on this. Rarely these artists would have met so this is great.”

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The interview

Johanna Liber from Pro Progressione: Was it your first project where XR is involved? What is your relationship with this type of art, with this medium?

Vania Gala: Yes, it is my first experience with XR. I think I want to first speak about my experience of getting involved in works that use XR. And then there’s the question of what kind of art it is. Those are two questions—one about experiencing XR and another about working with it.

Yes, I’m not sure because I haven’t worked with it from an artist’s perspective. From an audience’s perspective, I’ve experienced it and watched several works. One of the things that disturbed me a lot is being put into a virtual space that doesn’t allow me to choose or focus on particular things.

It’s a three-dimensional space, unlike a flat screen, which might suggest more openness to different experiences. However, I find that with a flat screen, I actually have more freedom to make choices, to focus on a part of the screen or a detailed part of a film. Coming from an art form that works in three dimensions in the real world…

J: Does it affect the interpretation of the artwork?

V: Yes, it does, because it restricts the viewer’s freedom to change focus or even to not look at something.

J: Does it exclude imagination as well?

V: It excludes some forms of imagination and different ways of relating to things because I can’t choose what to focus on. It reduces how I receive something. There’s an oppressive side to this experience because it limits freedom of choice. And while you can remove the headset, within that virtual world, you still can’t choose. It’s like being at an exhibition where you must stay in one spot, always viewing the artwork from the same perspective.

It partially excludes certain forms of imagination and ways of perceiving things, because I’m not able to focus on particular aspects or move away from something. I wouldn’t call it a reduction of imagination, but rather a reduction in how I receive things. There’s also an oppressive aspect to the experience, exactly because it limits your choices, your freedom. That’s quite an oppressive feeling.

Of course, you could say, “Oh, you can take the headset off,” but even if you do, you can’t change anything within that world. This brings up philosophical questions about what that does to the work and to the viewer. In performing arts, it’s as if you had a stage, but could only focus on one part, and that’s it.

It would be like going to an exhibition and being forced to stand in one spot to look at a painting, with no choice to view it from different angles. Perhaps what we are also speaking about is a reduction of agency.

J: When you’re in an exhibition space and listening to sound through a headset, it can be similar. Do you think it’s comparable?

V: No, I don’t think so. Of course, when you have a composition, it moves from one place to another, and even without headphones, you still have to listen to it. But within that composition, you can hear different sounds. There’s freedom in how your ears pick up on different elements, especially if you’re in a space where sound circulates.

Sound is a different experience because your ears can focus on different layers.

J: But isn’t that less true when it’s directly in your ears with the headphones?

V: No, even with headphones, I can focus on the bass or the rhythm because I’m used to listening. I can hear the different layers and pick out the harmonies or rhythms.

J: You’ve probably talked with the artists, and for many, it was their first time working with XR. Do you know how they experienced it and integrated the technology into their artworks?

V: Let’s talk about technology. The body is a technology. Working with an instrument is a technology. Working with film is a technology.

When we work with any of these, it takes time to understand their potential. To understand what a body can do, how an instrument functions, or how to frame a shot in film—this requires time. It’s not something you master overnight.

I pick up a headset or XR, and it’s like a friend. I play with it, see what I can do. But developing an artistic language with it can take years, not just months. And it may even be impossible to fully grasp. When video art started, many artists jumped on board. Today, we don’t have video art festivals anymore because the medium had its limitations.

Technology, by itself, is not art. It’s a tool, like the body. Not everyone who has a body creates art with it. The same applies to XR.

For many artists, it was their first time working with XR, and the time to experiment was limited, as they were working on other projects too. Plus, coming from different mediums, they had to adapt their practice, which takes time.

What I’d love to know is how much of their artistic voice or aesthetic transferred to this new medium, and how much was restricted or enabled by it. This would be an interesting question to explore.

J: We’ve discussed the technological aspect a lot. From the conversation, it’s clear that for many artists, this was an experimental first encounter with the medium. There’s still a lot to reflect on the technology itself, which could be the subject of the artworks as well.

V: Yes, we addressed different topics, so it wasn’t necessary to reflect on the technology itself. But it opened up possibilities for the artists, even though XR is expensive, and who knows when they’ll get to work with it again.

I want to add that this isn’t a new technology. XR has been around since the 1950s, originating in performing arts and theatre. In the 1960s, theatre began experimenting with different senses, including smell, and this technology stems from that.

The only difference now is that XR has become more widely used in gaming, which we didn’t discuss today. Many XR works draw on the aesthetics of gaming, and I wonder whether it can expand beyond that. It’s important to recognize that this technology isn’t new—it’s over 60 years old.

J: Yes, but the capacity of computers has grown enormously since then. It still takes days to render a few minutes of VR, so the experimentation is both costly and time-consuming.

V: Yes, and that’s why artists need to research the technology they’re working with. We use XR technology every day, like in Google Maps. It’s the same technology, and it raises issues of privacy and consent.

All technology has limitations and may raise ethical questions, and it’s important for artists to understand these when creating with it. For example, the environmental cost of storing data is enormous, yet many of us don’t realize this. There are huge data centers consuming 1% of the world’s energy (https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks), one of them is located next to where I was born – in Covilhã – as I just recently discovered (https://datacentremagazine.com/top10/top-10-largest-data-centres-in-europe). These are the kinds of considerations we should keep in mind.

Other aspects of urgent consideration are the inaccessibility of this technology and the in numerous ethical concerns related to it.

The technology of VR just like AI is provided by a private company which has a monopoly which opens us to all sets of problems in terms of how costly it is and the danger of large amounts of data being controlled by one or a few private individuals. We have witnessed this in a very practical way with the interference in democratic processes as the recent case of Brazil court injunction against Elon Musk demonstrated (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/musks-x-reinstated-in-brazil-after-complying-with-supreme-court-demands). Not only that, this technology is used in military training, warfare and to inflict war on unprotected populations as it has been recently shown to us.

We cannot detach our work as artists from technology because all these things are there in the work even if the work might be speaking about other things. Once you are using this material technology I as a spectator will make relations with the way I am used to relating to this medium. When I look at drone footage I cannot disconnect it in particular now of what is happening right now with the wars and other technologies used and I will make connections of that with the theme that we’re speaking about – colonial enslavement, colonial violence, agency and its erasure -and that’s why I think it’s really important for us to be aware of that.

In the present I think it is urgent for us to reconsider our complex relation to technology and AI, and how these are interrelated with the recent emergence of authoritarian and undemocratic tendencies in the Western world. Here, my VR experience felt like a metaphor for a highly pertinent question today: Do we really have agency in our choices even in democratic societies and even when institutions are working?

J: I’m glad we were able to touch on various aspects of XR in our conversation. We touched on the sensory and bodily experience—or the absence of it—within XR, as well as the question of what or whom the tool represents, the connotations of the tool in other contexts and how these associations can subconsciously influence the viewer. It’s interesting to note that usually technologies are invented long before anyone knows how to use them creatively. Later, new uses and artistic applications emerge.

V: Yes, that’s true. Take touchscreens, for example. They were invented in the 1950s, but no one knew what to use them for. Similarly, electric cars were developed before the 20th century, but weren’t widely used because they weren’t profitable. There’s a lot to consider, but I think there’s still room to experiment.

For instance, maybe it would be more interesting to take these VR headsets outside rather than using them solely in an art gallery. Maybe we should explore new ways like taking walks while immersed in virtual worlds.