A New and Seemingly Alienated Reality: A Conversation with Kristīne Krauze-Slucka

Kristīne Krauze-Slucka is a Latvian artist who appeared on the Latvian art scene relatively recently, in 2017. Despite this, over the years, she has earned considerable professional recognition. In 2020, she received a scholarship from the foundation of the painter Valdemārs Tone and the Nordic and Baltic Young Artist Award, as well as the special prize of the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2021, and an opportunity to publish a photography book in collaboration with the Lithuanian publisher NoRoutine Books, which appeared this summer.

The occasion for our conversation is the exhibition ‘Digital Dark Age’, organised by the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2021, which also includes Kristīne’s works. We strove to conceptualise, from a broader philosophical perspective, the themes brought up by the objects on display: the ever-growing interaction between the material and the digital, and ways of reacting to these challenges of the times. In short, we strove to understand where we are, and where, in fact, we are heading.

Rūdis Bebrišs: First, I want to ask a more specific question about the exhibition currently on show at the Latvian Museum of Photography, ‘Digital Dark Age’, half of which consists of your personal exhibition ‘Obedient Touch’. Perhaps you can comment and elaborate. If I interpret what I saw correctly, you aim to capture the interaction between physical and virtual existence, and it is touch that serves as a point of interaction between these two planes. What, for you, is the role of physical touch today? What are the main differences between the impressions we leave in the real world and in the digital world?

Kristīne Krauze-Slucka: As a notion, an impression, as opposed to physical touch, already contains the precondition of an action, to press, directed not only towards the activation of a mechanism, but also to a large extent towards a delimiting result. The work Obedient Touch is a representation of how we, as humans, are being digitised and analysed, while teaching algorithms to better know, direct and profile us. We submit to this amazingly inspiring, seductive and quick mechanism. We entrust ourselves as biometric ecosystems to these devices. We allow them to store and utilise our data, scan our faces and fingers, and use our unique biometric data. There is a merging, where at every instant you touch, approve and accept this new system of interaction, and our analogous uniqueness transforms into pixels, points and lines. A new and seemingly alienated reality emerges.

RB: But what exactly is it that these devices capture? It is certainly not a complete representation of the self; perhaps it is rather some facet of it, or, to use the terminology of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, a narrative.

KKS: I believe there is only a small number of people in the world who are not bothered by questions of identity and the self: for the vast majority, including myself, it has always been, and will continue to be, a process of inquiry. Devices are merely a portal to a multiple-choice test, where the ethicality, the goodness or badness, of each of our interactive choices is guided by our intentions. The systems embedded in the device can amplify, multiply, attach or merge our interactions countless times. They can make them more visible, and equally invisible. And, naturally, we worry about it all.

An interesting question in this context is posed by Sherry Turkle, a licensed clinical psychologist, the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, in her book Alone Together. Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. In the book, she talks about understanding this new technology-driven life as a new language to conceive of the self. If we assume that devices are merely instruments, then we have reached a point where these instruments are no longer merely mechanical aggregators, but ones that affect our own selves.

RB: Speaking of instruments, your work at the Latvian Museum of Photography was accessible under specific conditions, so to speak: the visitor had to enter a special dark room, and see most of the works using a torch. What is the meaning of darkness and torches in the exhibition, especially bearing in mind that in 2019 most of these works were presented in a fully lit space? Is the torch like a symbol of our illusion of power, our ability to seemingly choose where to cast our gaze in the digital expanse? Or does darkness rather point to the fact that something has changed in the world over these two years?

KKS: Yes, this is the second, but also at the same time the first, opportunity to show the work in a solo presentation. The first opportunity was in the group exhibition ‘Academia’ in 2019 at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall, dedicated to the centenary of the Art Academy of Latvia, with the participation of many fellow students. Naturally, it was not possible to adapt the space specifically to the concept of each work in such a group setting. Therefore, I am very grateful to Anete Skuja, the programme curator of the Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2021, for the opportunity to let the work have its own space at the Latvian Museum of Photography.

But, yes, the dark space, for me, serves as profound and impenetrable matter, where a fragment is sporadically illuminated, but it is impossible to completely grasp everything that takes place; the totality of a view is impossible. That is the reason why for this work I use black-and-white, analogue photographic paper, whose photographic materiality is in itself based on the relationship between light and dark, where again it presents only a limited capacity to capture a small part of a process. Looking at the concept of the exhibition ‘Digital Dark Age’, one of the references for this dark space comes from the Medieval expression for the migration of peoples, and the formation of towns and villages; whereas today this aspect can be applied to the migration of data. And this migration takes place in this digital, dark space, which is constantly being stalked by strangers with by various intentions.

RB: Yes, it is an interesting detail, and a good reminder that whatever the work of art is made of also carries specific associations. It is obvious that today we can use a myriad of materials, and also methods, to create works of art; but how would you, being aware of the current context, characterise your long-term interest in analogue methods of creating art, and the physicality of the work? Is it, let’s say, a striving for something that is authentic and true, in opposition to digital alienation? In the words of the philosopher Walter Benjamin, striving to preserve the work’s ‘aura’, its presence?

KKS: In my case, what is most important is not the question what I, as an author with my own intentions, put on the photographic paper, automatically turning it into a collectible object; but rather what physically takes place on the photographic paper, as a material which in itself possesses unique physical properties. I am extremely interested and intrigued by situations where it is possible to work with the physicality of materials in the manner of Robert Smithson, or the representatives of Arte Povera, where linguistic additions are reduced to a minimum, and the choice of material or its combinations are self-contained carriers of a message. It is important for me to maximise the experience, the process that shapes the result. Yes, it can be said that these are my endeavours to strive for truthfulness.

Working with photography as a medium, I do not use the camera or film as classic methods for producing an image, where these instruments serve only as carriers and intermediaries for information to ultimately produce an image that is printed on paper or remains digital. Therefore, it can be said that my photographic works do not possess a mechanical origin; there is only the tactile work with analogue photographic paper and photographic chemicals, which may be followed by digitisation. This process has something different, which, furthermore, is very interesting: to work not only with new photographic papers, but also to re-use old ones, which are past their expiry date, and which in themselves already carry certain imprints of time.

I don’t know to what extent this striving for truthfulness can be coupled or equated with aspect of the author’s presence. I would think that, alongside these technologies as mediators, we have an opportunity to be present in a different way. The aura has not disappeared, it has merely transformed. Why should a digitally created work lose the presence of its author? If we enter a VR environment, is it not a unique, artist-made environment in which we are embedded with all our senses? It certainly is a shift in perceptual habits. I rather tend to agree with the argument that aura is not so much a synonym of exclusivity and prestige, as is suggested by Benjamin, but rather an authentic and personal experience with an original work of art or its reproduction, where the message, either phenomenologically or conceptually, is the determining factor.

RB: I believe we can draw parallels with what you said at the beginning about biometric data. Once, during a phenomenology conference in Prague, I encountered the term ‘onlife’, a play on the words ‘online’ and ‘life’, which seems to point to the ever-increasing embodiment of technologies in our  lives, to the point where the boundaries between being online and offline are no longer so clear-cut. Indeed, why would we, in this situation, not re-evaluate what authentic experience actually means, and whether it actually requires physicality?

KKS: Yes, there is a parallelism there. Physically, through your body, you are in one place, while through your mind and the mediation of a device, you are in another. Here and elsewhere at the same time. A somewhat scattered, split and merged state of being. It is clear that our consciousness has not developed sufficiently to assimilate the intense presence of 21st-century technology. Each experience causes physical and emotional reactions in us; that is also the main aim of a work of art. At the moment that the attention and the look are concentrated on a specific point, there is a physical experience.

I believe that right now it is a question of the body’s physical placement no longer being as important as the placement of the mind and the attention; which at the same time, of course, can create an unhealthy illusion that we are never alone, and that we do not have to be.

RB: In his analysis of how people’s relationship with power has changed throughout history, the French philosopher Michel Foucault underlined the fact that ‘[T]here are two meanings of the word “subject”: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge.’  We are, so to speak, both those who act and those who are acted upon. In this context, I find, you aptly highlight fingerprints as metaphorical determiners of contemporary life. But how would you judge it from a moral standpoint: is it good or bad?

KKS: I like the fact that you highlight the aspect of conscience. I believe that being conscious today is a fairly important competence for maintaining a morally healthy balance. It is a subjective category, which is nevertheless, of course, much discussed and studied by psychologists. Some will find it important to take a look and reflect, to critically evaluate the effect of time spent in the digital expanse, its activities and the acquired information, on their well-being or the development of their consciousness; while others will pay no attention at all to it, and submit to ever-deeper immersion.

RB: ‘Digital Dark Age’, for example, highlights notions such as ‘memory’ and ‘heritage’. But not only in relation to the past; the exhibition also talks about the ways our current work habits in the digital environment could influence the future. What is your prognosis: will we continue to spend an ever-greater part of our lives digitally (in this respect, also bearing in mind the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic), and also leave traces about life there in this period of human history? Or will we rather return to the physical world?

KKS: The first. Let’s not be naive.