This panel takes its starting point from The Masked Monkeys (2015), a video essay by Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy, that is shown as part of the screening programme of the IMPAKT Festival 2022. The video documents Javanese street art performances, in which trained monkeys carry out theatrical rituals. Goaded on by the voice-over, these scenes gradually take on an allegorical character that seem to recall the movement from animal to human. The creature that appears in the video is caught in an ambiguous zone where technological mastery and technological imprisonment become difficult to tell apart. The panel invites the two artists to discuss their work with philosopher Oxana Timofeeva, in a conversation that takes us back to the most basic technological operations of all: the imitation, repetition and domestication involved in the acquisition of culture, language and conceptual thinking. If such operations provide the gateway to human society, human means of communication and human knowledge, they simultaneously herd us into a hierarchical system of thought from which no escape seems possible.

Single ticket for this programme

What else is on Saturday?

See the Day timetable to visit the other programmes with your Festival Pass (5-days) or Day Pass (1-day). With the passes you can also visit the festival exhibition The Curse of Smooth Operations at the IMPAKT [Centre for Media Culture] and Steenweg 26.

Saturday day pass 5-day festival pass Online festival pass

For more information on the festival tickets please see here.