280A Artist Collective and invited artists

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November 7th – 23th

Participants: Olga Holzschuh (DE), Ash Garwood (AU/US), Emir Šehanović (BA), Agnes Varnai (HU/AT), Maria Trabulo (PT), Martina Menegon (AT/IT), Sasha Kurmaz (UA), Magdalena Zoledz (PL), Susanna Hofer (AT), Lisa Jäger (AT), Eos Quinn (INTL), Michaela Putz (AT), Ernst Lima (AT), Christiane Peschek (AT), Isidora Krstić (RS/AT) & Philipp Pess (AT/DE)

For Church of Ego, a selected group of confidants had been gathered in a virtual symposium, a transformative process through different realms of the digitalized self.

The exhibited positions are artefacts of devotion to the Church of Ego about to arise.

Church of Ego remembers all the faces and all the voices and it rejoices over each new one.
You chose your own belief.
Are you a fundamentalist?
Your belief is empty.
It lacks devotion.
That’s why you need rituals and repetition.
You need clicks, swipes, flicks, taps.
Links, hacks, likes, feeds, adds.
You need selfies.
Your selfies are empty rituals of your self.
All your photos will become the archive of yourself.
Your virtual graveyard.

Your digital self is a double. A duplicity.
Privacy, publicity, audiences, and the self – they are deeply intertwined.
You exist only in relation to one or to the other.
Your self is not so much a static identity as a story, a story made out of your past experiences, future hopes and immediate surroundings.
Your self is not a given; it is made and learned like a language.

You created your virtual self as a means of the embodiment of your optimisations.

You are your own hyper-reality.
Imagine becoming your alter ego, your own avatar.
You are the embodied manifestation of your own ideas.
All the bright and all the dark aspects of yourself orchestrate the melody of your song.
A song that you need to hear first, before anyone else.
But in order to hear it, you have to learn to listen.
The shadow is always there and will always be there.
Your dark side is concealed or camouflaged, it’s your painful attempt to protect an image thats fits the narrative you decided to maintain for yourself.
Do you feel the distant tremor?
JUST BELIEVE in the divine force that will rescue you from your suffering.

Imagine you are dead now. You are not buried under the ground. Your face and your appearance is clearly visible. You shine for all eternity.

You are your own church now. Worship and embrace it, you have become your own religion.

Photo: Susanna Hofer, Philipp Pess