Screens that refuse to glow, the cyclic journey of the last survivor, and dreaming robots choosing laziness over productivity — in Surface Tension the artist duo T(n)C – Agnes Varnai & Tina Kult bring together a constellation of interconnected multimedia works created over the past four years. The exhibition explores what might grow from the cracks of failing systems and what new forms of existence could sprout under perpetual pressure.

─── optics locked in ──── t(n)c’s meditative video works mobilise science fiction’s relentlessly reiterated motifs, yet in ways that expose their underlying modes of thought:
above all, the mind slipping out of the body or being transplanted into a machine. the cybernisation of the human and the humanisation of the cyborg function only within the dualist lineage of the philosophy of mind – a lineage that presupposes already separated entities. [...]
yet all hybridisation signals a crisis or even worse: an utterly boring catastrophe. from this perspective, it is the body that becomes a cybernetic unit not by being abandoned by the mind, but by entering into new configurations of forces, intensities and capacities – a body that [...] deterritorializes through the painful and formative experience of immaterial and material forms of labour… much ado about the desire of a virtual paradise…
another motif is, of course, the post-apocalypse – not merely the contradiction between the world and its end, but a zone of indiscernibility where the image of the present and the iron law of its liberalist utopia [...] are propelled into a future already fractured. what immerses us here is not a linear projection but an affective suspension: an asymmetry between world and end-of-world, between being and non-being, that has nothing to do with causality or dialectics.
and yet again we are reminded: escapism is the worst enemy of escaping. ─── optics turned off ────
(written by conceptual drive-by)

T(n)C was founded in 2017 by Agnes Varnai and Tina Kult. They live and work in Vienna and experiment with a wide range of media, including virtual reality, 3D, installation, sculpture and film. By combining the different disciplines, they are researching immersive experiences to connect the digital and physical levels of realities. T(n)C’s aim is to expand the practices of collective storytelling. Through a dystopian lens, they tell speculative yet personal stories, drawing from daily lives, struggles, and the intimate act of collaboration. Doing so, they bridge these reflections into broader, universal concepts. Their work deals with structural and systemic problems of consumption, depletion and human desires, production relations and the misconception of laziness.
The works of T(n)C have been exhibited at various venues and festivals: Kunstraum Niederoesterreich (AT), WRO Biennale 2023 (PL), WIENWOCHE (AT), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (FR/DE), re;publica (DE), Kasseler DokFest (DE), RIXC Art Science Festival (LV) and iMAL (BE) among others. In 2022 they participated in the European Media Art Platform Residency Program at FACT in Liverpool. In 2023 they were awarded the LOKART Festival 2023 - Main Prize.

exhibition sponsors
Austrian Cultural Forum Budapest
Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria
Hullám-Pack Kft