DUNA – Adapting to the Present

23. 11. 2022

We usually absorb science fiction stories with a certain condescension – after all, it's still fiction, underlined by future tense on top. It's just that time mutates insidiously from the present to the future, and we may not be where we were not long ago, even though we think we are. The DUNA group shows these mutations – on us and on our surroundings. Who are we right now? And what are we becoming?

In 2021, The DUNA group was included in the book NONFICTION 02 - On Nature among the artists born after 1980 who show what the future – perhaps – can hold for us.

The group's statement includes the message that it was formed out of the need for collaboration, suppressing individualism and individual egos. The collective authorship of Lenka Bakeš, Ladislav Kyllar and František Svatos is enhanced by the subjects of the works and the motifs depicted. Their existence is unbounded: the cycles build on each other, intertwine in time, and often exist only in digital space, although they look realistic. They thus fulfil the thinking and epistemology of posthumanism, emphasising human existence in symbiosis with everything non-human. If we want to continue to exist, we should not only pay attention to what we appear to be but also accept what we are becoming.¹ The Vitruvian model of man is collapsing – we are all mutants, amoebas, (non)creatures. Monsters are terrifying but they are also fragile, uncannily beautiful, non-binary, connected to technology, nature and our bodies. To what extent are we humans, animals or bacteria, to what extent are we our own tools? And how much is our DNA transformed by planetary (hence human) changes? DUNA shows all the spices² we absorb into ourselves and what stories await us in the more-than-human world.³ For our future does not lie in the stars but is shaped by our every step in the present. DUNA's ongoing projects (e.g. Adaptus) show the possibilities of transforming human DNA and exposing (extra)human existence. Speculatively, imaginatively and with ecology behind their backs, they bring us back to Earth.⁴ Because the mutants looking back at us from the photographs may look like an advertisement for a science fiction film but above all, they hold up a mirror to us – this is reality knocking at the real door. And maybe we can survive if we focus on more than just homo sapiens.

Text: Tereza Špinková

Image captions

1 | DUNA group, Adaptus 0, 4+4 days in motion, Prague, 2019
2 | DUNA group, Adaptus 9.19 online exhibition, inhabitated.net, 2020
3 | DUNA group, Adaptus Archeology, Is It Just a Myth?, online exhibition, www.isitjustamyth.com, 2021
4–5 | DUNA group, Adaptus X, online editorial DEMONS for Hugo Zorn, Viena, Austria
6–7 | DUNA group, Recycling ideologies, group show, Gallery of Emil Filla, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, 2017
8 | DUNA group, collage, 2021

As written about by Donna J. Haraway and Rosi Braidotti.
The Spice as used by the author of the novel Dune, Frank Herbert.
More-than-a-human world aacording to, e.g., David Abram.
I‘m basing this primarily on Bruno Latour‘s Down to Earth.

Tereza Špinková

is a theorist and curator. Currently she is studying for a doctorate at the Department of Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, where she deals primarily with the relationship between human and non-human entities.

DUNA group

is an open collective of artists (Lenka Bakes, Ladislav Kyllar, František Svatoš) focusing on themes of the future topics such as ecology and technology. Adaptus is a speculative project in which we explore the borders of humanity and complexity of fragile relationship network between various entities. DUNA has presented in a number of solo exhibitions, presented the first volume of the Adaptus series in 2019 as part of the 4+4 Days in Motion festival in Prague, and has continued to develop the series through the NoD exhibition in Prague and online platforms. The Duna group was included by the French publication NONFICTION 02 on Nature, among a selection of artists born after 1980 setting the trends of the future, with recent works presented by Duna in the exhibition HOLY MATTER at Below Grand in NYC and in the exhibition Baitball at Polignano a Mare Italy.

#43 Collecting

This edition departs from our series of thematic issues, as it is a celebration of the magazine’s twentieth birthday. As is usually the case with birthday celebrations (particularly such important ones), memories of the past intersect with the future. This is why this issue is dedicated to our activities and a summary of them, along with talents we believe in. In place of allotting the second part of the magazine to theory and current news, as in other issues, we decided to create a special edition on a topic that we have been discussing for years – now, the time has finally come to open it, grasp it fully, and thus change the art market in the Czech Republic. The topic at hand is collecting.