8 MARCH - 1 APRIL 2023
FELTDARK

PAIGE GLANCEY, ANIKA GARDNER, NIC SCAGE
MALADJUSTED

Code uploaded. Code uploaded. Systems ready. 

Scraped rebar across scorched hyper-realised Moonta. Sculptural forms adjusted, maladjusted. Cut. Stripper heels slicing galvanised steel poles. Cut. (distorted, contorted.

This video work is an augmented reality jarred across the ravaged abandoned copper mine of Moonta. A bit Hacker crossed with Priscilla Queen of the desert, it documents the work of two bots overloaded with the greedy code of the imagined miners. ‘Oi got me one of them AI bots, reckon I’ll have ‘er to f*ck and do me job for me’. Confused in this glitching dichotomous reality the bots enact and short-circuit their daily algorithms. 

At the conceptual core of this work is a humorous unpicking of the direction of AI, as understand by ya tradies at the pub. Mate they’re going to take our jobs. Mate would you f*ck one? Sex in the unspoken innovator of humanity after all, and brute labour is how our world goes round. Through movements jarring and processes of work by two tradie stripper bots, this video explores the toxic patriarchal ethos perpetuated onto the ultimate ‘man’-made slave.

Photography: Brianna Speight