Exhibition Opening: Agg Lab, "Epigenesis : Plastic Assemblages"

Exhibition Opening: Agg Lab, “Epigenesis : Plastic Assemblages”

Identity—human, animal and architectural—can no longer be defined by a singular character. It is a complex behavioral hybrid, in the process of responsive and adaptive change, a state of Deleuzian “becoming”, expressing plastic identity through the territorializing of behavioral traits. This differentiated identity becomes an instrument for spatializing innovative lineages, as it reconstitutes ideas of space and time and reshapes the cultural landscape through morphogenetic means.

The work scrutinizes the notion of the generic through the process of recombining physical members, growing new appendages and intensifying the human perception of normality. Regenerative bodies develop through differentiation from singular cells. These differentiated assemblages with multi coded surfaces act as malleable bilateral collectives with a varied capacity for new growth possibilities.

Bodies are cultivated through systemic logics that exhibit emergent behavior, and are examined based on the production of evolutionary traits. Design techniques are set up through the concept of growing self-similar assemblages, with varied degrees of differentiated characteristics – where surface, structure and volume are integrated. In its commitment to metamorphosis, rather than metaphor, bodies are pushed to the extreme to investigate their full growth capabilities toward a maximum of difference and a hybridization of behavioral conditions.

The work investigates the development of plastic ecologies that are bred from the evolution of variegated assemblies. Assemblages operate at multiple scales – from the scale of the body, to skin and surface, to integrated structural wall systems, to landscapes to ornament. Bodies fluctuate between growth and regeneration through digital and analogue algorithmic techniques of design and fabrication. Emphasis is placed on multiple acts of translation, which tend towards contamination. Evolution is sponsored by interferences, corruptive infiltrations, and intricate articulation of surface.

In collaboration with Academy of Art University Architecture students: 
Yi Wang, Saraswati Sri Lalitadewi Latumahina, Sami Almidani, Rapeepong Tanmanee, Ke Wang, Jesus Gutierrez, Si Beck Nam, Amany Alnofai, Anderson Andrade, Christina Andreas, Alireza Arabshahi, Ryan Baker, Chen Chao, Nathan Conrad, Kenia Duarte, Nasira Fabelhaft, Yuan Gao, Rodly Jean, Dinghong Jiang, Yaxin Liu, Yumin Liu, Matthew Mead, Jane Gee-Yeng Wan, Ximai Wang, Jiongyu Zhu, Rhonuel Domingcil, Fernanda Kanamori, Shunyi Yang