Beyond the Virus Podcast: Past, Present and Future of Zombie Communities with Jamie Lewis

Access Art Trail, QR code Stop A

April 12—19

Nina Davies

Curated by Frances Painter–Fleming

Beyond the Virus Podcast: Past, Present and Future of Zombie Communities with Jamie Lewis

Beyond the Virus Podcast: Past, Present and Future of Zombie Communities with Jamie Lewis (2021) is a fictional podcast episode which is part of a larger series of work currently in progress. The podcast presents a post pandemic future after kids — who missed out on a crucial social learning curves due to endless days spent at home — are put through reintegration schemes. They have lost certain linguistic capabilities and now communicate through gestural languages of the body and face. But this speculative future is not as dystopian as one might think — this freedom from language is bringing these communities closer to meaning and potentially more trusting relations with the digital realm.

Nina Davies

Coming from an extensive dance and performance background, Nina Davies (b. 1991, Canada) now situates her work within the Fine Arts; questioning choreography beyond its performative state. Using mainly moving image, her practice aims to further critical discussion around dance by observing how it intersects with language and where it begins to take on commodified or material forms. Her recent work examining the legal cases between dancers and Epic Games for the use of choreographic work in the game Fortnite has led to a research project with lawyer and dance anthropologist Jorge Poveda. Together they look into how new technologies like accessible motion-capture and blockchain can protect traditional forms of knowledge, in particular dance. In addition to this, her work examines the formation of languages beneath the surface of narcissistic dance challenges seen on video sharing apps such as TikTok and attempts to translate these conversations between synchronized and isolated bodies. Her work has been exhibited at Robota – Center for Advanced Studies, Bratislava; Museum Tijdschrift Cultuurcentrum, Brugge; and Strangelove Time Based Media Festival, London. She has performed at Lilian Baylis Studios, London; The Ailey Citigroup Theatre, NYC; and The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver. She was awarded a place on the CSM/ACME Associate Studio Programme after finishing her BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2015 and is currently studying on the MFA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths.