Program

Legends of the Pixie Ring is a xenofuturistic project prepared especially for the KAF Project Space by the Eternal Engine duo. Martix Navrot and Jagoda Wójtowicz, in cooperation with Karolina Grygier and Eliza Chojnacka, use the former shelter to produce a speculative vision of an encounter between the consequences of technological acceleration and local folk beliefs.

The pixie ring, also known as a fairy ring, derives from legends that arose around a peculiar phenomenon – mushrooms growing in the shape of a circle or arc. It was believed that in these places, usually found deep in the forest, human rationalising action and attempts to shape space did not apply. A careless wanderer who accidentally ended up in such a ring was subjected to a “magical” force that could have fatal consequences.

In the Eternal Engine project, the magical and “hallucinogenic” connotations of the mushroom ring provide a pretext for breaking free from the market logic. Falling into the pixie ring is the beginning of a “bad trip” – a sequence of unapparent combinations of two orders: the technological and the magical. Threads from both of them merge and morph with each other while remaining in constant superposition – being here and there at the same time.

The Pixie Ring is a place where a technological vision of the future shows the possibility of ceaseless generation of alternative worlds whose social and cultural parameters are arranged differently from ours. The Eternal Engine project uses the technique of worldbuilding to create a vision of transcending the limiting framework of extant solutions. The artists are aware of the potential of digital technology, yet they do not provide a clear answer as to whether their vision is utopian or anti-utopian. Rather, they search for new possibilities and look beyond the future horizon with a pinch of criticism.

The individual elements of the project are rooted in the ideas of technological and feminist futurism developed by Karen Bard, among others, as well as Mark Fisher’s proposed attempts to break through capitalist structures.

Part of the exhibition is Eliza Chojnacka’s ephemeral installation Harvest of Fate, which opens The Pixie Ring.

Food is what fate has sown with poppies. The mallow is said to flourish where the prophecy of poverty looms over a house. This exquisite dye is brewed in a pond heated with succulent algae. The purple mallow infusion – the first meal prepared for the ants. The darlings ate rowan berries, sitting at a huge, brick-red, generously laid table. When they all went far away to sleep, the gifts disappeared under the presence of the pixie. Only crumbs were left on the table. The insects thank the pixies with food from a young man: ~We make small offerings to the creatures of the Pixie Ring and its Guests. Praise our abundant harvest each past and future summer, to satiate your desires before the endless journey and thank for favouring our fate.