Toy Volcano by Mochu | A Lecture-Performance with Video
Toy Volcano
40-45 minute lecture performance with video
Tuesday, 13 February 2024
6:30 PM at the FICA Reading Room
"Toy Volcano," a video-lecture-performance by Mochu, transported the audience on a journey through the peculiar correlations of technological media, physical landscapes, and geological phenomena. Held at the FICA Reading Room and Project Space, on the evening of 13th Feb 2024, Toy Volcano explored the skepticism and paranoia of technical media, and the parallels between the landscapes of our physical world with the medium of animation theory, machinic delusions, and the curious concept of portable holes within the context of a forgotten manga universe.
Talking about the genesis of his project Mochu explained that the project traced back to 2015 with a prompt from the Raqs Media Collective, to contemplate post-cinema. He started forming connections of special effects with the Earth itself.
The lecture performance ended by sparking lively discussions and conversations ranging from borders and politics to history of landscapes. It gave an intriguing perspective on intersections between technology and geology but also a renewed sense of wonder at the boundless possibilities of human imagination.
About the Artist:
Mochu works with video and text arranged as installations, lectures and publications. Ideas around anxiety, futurity, and weird selfhoods, particularly emerging out of large-scale technoscientific paradigms and the knots of international mobility, feature prominently in his works.
Recent projects have explored cyberpunk nostalgia, corporate horror, mad geologies and psychedelic subcultures. Mochu is the author of the books Bezoar Delinqxenz (Edith-Russ-Haus + Sternberg Press, 2023), and Nervous Fossils: Syndromes of the Synthetic Nether (Reliable Copy + KNMA, 2022). He is a recipient of the Edith-Russ-Haus Grant for Media Art (2020-22), and his works have been supported by Ashkal Alwan, India Foundation for the Arts and The Sarai Programme, with exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Sharjah Biennial 13, 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale and transmediale:BWPWAP.
