Director:Lilia Li-Mi-Yan, Katherina Sadovsky

BIO:Lilia Li-Mi-Yan (1971) and Katherina Sadovsky (1985) are a duo of Russian artists who have been working together since 2016. Their diverse approach to art practice encompasses art media such as video, CGI, 3D, sculpture, photography, painting, installation, sound, site-specific practices.

Director Statement

In their projects, Li-Mi-Yan and Sadovsky explore questions of the future, ecology, the relationship between humans and Nature, the possibilities of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence.
What happens if we, as a species, have a new body created in interaction with new technologies, materials, bacteria? Will we be eternal, and will we remain the same people? What will happen to the emotions of the new human, posthuman, cyborg…? Will we be able to refuse to reproduce ourselves? Given the rise of medicine and biotechnology, our emotional development is frozen in the capsule of our ancestors. Today we are still hunters and gatherers.
Artists critically analyze these issues, inconveniently intruding into nature with digital images on polymer materials, comparing this art gesture with the attitude of humanity towards non-human agents and the biosphere in general.

FILM: The artists explore the theme of the possibility of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence. What would happen if we had a new body created through interaction with new technologies, materials, bacteria? Will we be eternal, and will we remain the same humans? We are concerned with the question, what will happen to the emotions of the new person, the post-human, the cyborg…? Will we be able to refuse to reproduce ourselves? Looking at the development of medicine and biotechnology, emotionally we are still in the capsule of our ancestors, who first killed for food and then for entertainment.
With the help of CGI graphics and 3D, the characters in the video are equipped with special implants and an additional organ system that allows them to survive in the modern world, where many environmental disasters have occurred, powerful CO2 emissions into the atmosphere have led to global warming, viruses have destroyed an ordinary biological body, and it forced to adapt to modern conditions. 3D organs move and pulsate with humans, responding to their emotional and physical state. Advances in technology and biotechnology have allowed the posthuman to survive in the most difficult conditions, reanimate the dead body and grow food with the help of innovative 3D printers and incubators. The posthuman also possesses new systems of perception and feeling. Brain mapping and emulation capabilities will allow new humans to be eternal as a neural network in digital reality, or having an augmented biological body that we create them using CGI.
The characters in the video no longer speak ordinary human language. Their bodies have evolved, so have their speech organs. The artists, in collaboration with sound artists, created a sound with which they speak to us in the video. It’s noise, robotic language, ultrasound. They are concerned with the same questions: the rights of the post-human, if an individual can dispose of their own death, if it is possible not to die anymore, love, responsibility, the possibility of reproduction and the transmission of their genes, if there is no more male and female gender, and children can be conceived, carried and born outside the body.