Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: Rumors of a Leak

Time: museum hours

Admission: with museum entrance

This new video installation by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan marks their first presentation in Mexico and critically explores the performative essence of life, drawing on decolonial, queer, and decentralised perspectives. Referencing Brazilian philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva’s book Unpayable Debt – a Black feminist reading of race, global capitalism and futurity, Massan simulates a new world filled with digital sculpture-actors, who establish a force-field of possibility through moments of connection. Filmed from multiple perspectives, Massan offers an ecosystemic view on the realities of life and emergence in the global present, as their characters interact, unite, and bid farewell on small islands suspended in the void.

Expanding their practice of critical worldbuilding, Massan actively creates spaces that promote the emergence and platforming of diverse voices. The accompanying soundtrack features Massan’s voice and sound design by Brazilian artists Agazero and Lyzza.

This co-commission between TONO and Serpentine Arts Technologies connects with Third World: The Bottom Dimension, Massan’s ongoing project commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies that incorporates a video game, exhibition and web3 tokens powered by Tezos. Through the prisms of decoloniality, queerness and decentralization (technological, social, economic and ideological), Third World: The Bottom Dimension challenges us to rethink the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world.

This new co-commission was made possible by the Rosenkranz Foundation and the Friends of TONO Circle.

Lead artist: Gabriel Massan; Costume design: Oscar Ouyang; Animation: Carlos Minozzi
Sound design: Agazero & LYZZA; Studio management: Antoine Simeão Schalk; TONO curation: Samantha Ozer; Laboratorio Arte Alameda curation: Lucía Sanroman; Serpentine Galleries curation: Tamar Clarke-Brown
Laboratorio Arte Alameda Production: Marcos Ysair Pérez Botello; Installation design: Germen Estudio; Installation fabrication: Trazos; Headset sculpture fabrication: Sebastián Martínez y Marco Palma; Original; Program adaptation: Esteban Chapela; Technical design support: Ivalyo Getov; Projectors – Final Solution; CPU asssemble- Serigala; Technical support: EIDOTech, Berlin; Technical sketches: Ricardo Sommer; Translation: Luis Garay

Photo: Gabriel Massan, Continuity Flaws: Rumors of a Leak, 2023-2024