Forum #15 - Katarina Ranković with Andy Holden

15 Jun 2020

Artist and PhD researcher Katarina Ranković (Goldsmiths) will present an extract from her novel Anomaline, a philosophical romance about a solitary protagonist navigating the vacated vestiges of a cliche literary world, and artist and musician Andy Holden joins us as respondent in discussion.

Katarina Ranković is a text-based artist exploring the extent to which personhood is encoded in character, and whether fictional characters can be reverse-engineered into something approximating persons; into literary prototypes of general artificial intelligence. Recent projects involve Anomaline, a novel about a lethargic antiperson; and using personality tests on her performed fictional characters, in a bid to problematise the distinction between ‘genuine’ being and ‘disingenuous’ performing. As a Serb-born-in-Yorkshire-raised-in-Norway, both the theory and practice of Katarina’s work originates from the daily necessity of inhabiting and switching between many selves. – katarinarankovic.art

Andy Holden (b. 1982) artist, musician and cartoon was born and now lives and works in Bedford, UK. Holden has worked collaboratively with his father Peter Holden, an orthologist, to produce lectures on birds and the recent Artangel project Natural Selection. He regularly performs and releases records with his band The Grubby Mitts and runs the project space Ex-Baldessarre in Bedford.

His most recent solo exhibitions include Natural Selection at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, LEEDS Art Gallery and Towner Gallery, Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, Glasgow International (2016) and FGAP at Venice Biennale (2017); Towards a Unified Theory of MI!MS, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2013), Spike Island (2014); Chewy Cosmos Thingly Time, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2011); and Art Now: Andy Holden, Tate Britain (2010). – andyholdenartist.com