This Exhibition Explores The Relationship Between Virtual Bodies & Human Labour In Gaming, Porn & Tech

Running until 8 December 2019, London’s Chisenhale Gallery presents Welcome to End-Used City, an exhibition by Sidsel Meineche Hansen. The show brings together new and existing works to further explore Meineche Hansen’s ongoing enquiry into virtual and robotic bodies and their relationship to human labour within the gaming, pornographic and tech-industries. Central to Meineche Hansen’s exhibition is a new video work End-Used City (2019). Using a game controller, audiences can select and view three short videos, embedded in the eyes of an animated figure. The body of the figure is composed of portraits of key software providers within the global tech-industry, whose products and accompanying end-user licence agreements, set the terms and conditions of ‘surveillance capitalism’.

Following an introduction from the animated figure, three short videos can be activated. Set in London, in a dystopian near future, the videos explore different modes of surveillance, from a resident caretaker to behavioural tracking software. The videos follow a female character, in the role of a lethargic double agent, surveilling the city. Combining footage shot in London with computer-generated images, End-Used City explores a growing economy built on the monetisation of personal and behavioural data from a first-person perspective. Starring Anna Smith, End-Used City is made in collaboration with Black Shuck, Therese Henningsen, Troy Duguid and Clifford Sage with sound by Brynje.

The video work Maintenancer (2018), which was produced as part of Meineche Hansen’s 2018 PRE-ORDER I-III exhibition series, focuses on the use and maintenance of sex dolls in the context of a German brothel. The work documents the transition into post-human prostitution – where sex work shifts from the physical body of the sex worker, onto the sex doll or robot. Installed at the entrance to the exhibition space is Hellmouth (To Madame) (2018). This work acts as a gatekeeper to the space and partially obstructs the entrance to the gallery. Further complicating issues around privacy and access, the gallery’s toilet is only accessible by attaining an oversized keychain at the gallery’s front desk.

As part of the commissioning process, a series of discursive events have been programmed in collaboration with Meineche Hansen and will run throughout the exhibition. On 28 November 2019, Michael Veale, Lecturer in Digital Rights and Regulation at University College London’s Faculty of Laws, gives a talk on ‘data rights and data wrongs’ in response to Meineche Hansen’s exhibition. Veale’s research focuses on where emerging technology, law and human-computer interaction collide, and how we should understand data rights in the decades to come.



Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s Welcome to End-Used City is open at Chisenhale Gallery until 8 December 2019.



Feature image: Sidsel Meineche Hansen, End-Used City (2019). Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery, London. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate.