Machine Poetry (2023)
Video, DV, color, sound 5:21 min
Hair and wool crochet sculpture
Archival print mounted on MDF
Across three parts, Alhimiary builds a digitally fabulated
origin myth of vision, engaging with the language and
imaginaries of the future. The work interrogates the cost of
this future-oriented paradigm, asking what forms of
sacrifice, erasure, and transformation are required to
sustain it. It extends Alhimiary’s investigation into memory
by examining how futures are constructed through
selective erasures of the past.
The series begins with an offering marking a gesture of surrender and preparation. In the second part, this act is reworked into a headset, transforming bodily residue into a prosthetic device of vision. Here, the interface becomes a site of witnessing, where memory and material are reassembled into a tool that mediates how the future is seen. in the last part, the headset is worn by a figure that channels an abstracted Gulf futurism, embodying a vision shaped by excess, projection, and technological aspiration.
Across these shifts, Machine Poetry traces how bodies and devices become mutually entangled in the production of vision, where the promise of the future is inseparable from the material and symbolic costs it demands.
The series begins with an offering marking a gesture of surrender and preparation. In the second part, this act is reworked into a headset, transforming bodily residue into a prosthetic device of vision. Here, the interface becomes a site of witnessing, where memory and material are reassembled into a tool that mediates how the future is seen. in the last part, the headset is worn by a figure that channels an abstracted Gulf futurism, embodying a vision shaped by excess, projection, and technological aspiration.
Across these shifts, Machine Poetry traces how bodies and devices become mutually entangled in the production of vision, where the promise of the future is inseparable from the material and symbolic costs it demands.
Part I
Part II
Part III
