Presented by Onassis ONX Studio and MoMI

With only a few days left before it closes on February 11th, I was delighted to visit Eva Davidova’s interactive installation GLOBAL MODE > at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Inhabited by re-imagined mythological humans and floating, shape-shifting animal avatars linked to the audience, GLOBAL MODE > is a compelling invitation to play, and an invitation to act in the midst of ecological meltdown. 

The museum’s entrance Media Wall is transformed into an interactive environment with fast-paced, lush visuals and performative, seemingly absurd actions. The soundtrack by Matthew D. Gantt is entrancing, unsentimental and powerful; the tracks change pace and mood as the four scenes change visually, jolting at moments, and holding firmly the interlinked spaces at others. In the distinctive Davidova mixture of video and 3D landscapes, immense flowers, falling heads, cement landscapes and dirty waters, the audience is pulled into motion, entering a dance of agencies between themselves, shape-shifting animals, and performers from the past. 

The performers—MX Oops, who also offered a beautiful, fearless performance at the opening, Heather Mo’witz, Naicha Diaby, and Davidova herself—enact spiraling variations of the bizarre actions the artist assigned to each: Prometheus switches on and off lights and unplugs cables compulsively; Narcissus drowns her Horse-cow-women herd, and then cuts off her own head in the reflection in the water; Cassandra, inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, pushes a police helicopter and, if the audience pushes with her, makes it bloom—a giant lotus flower bursting  from the helicopter’s head. Another Cassandra, unseeing, and clad in yellow black warning tape, pushes against the air and against everything. In the last scene (Birds Birth) Davidova, with an iPhone covering her face, balances between giant revolving birds with plastic caps shooting out of their bellies. In front of the 50 feet long media wall, the viewers move, lift their arms and stop the flying plastic caps in mid-air. In Global Mode > Davidova layers sharp 3D aesthetics with stretched, impossibly wrapped videos, juxtaposing, separating and linking again humans, birds, pigs and helicopters. She quotes James Bridle in Ways of Being: “Not only do we share our lineage by entanglement with other forms of being, but those entanglements include non-humans as well as humans.”

Initially conceived in 2020 as a networked, participatory online performance, Global Mode > transposes ancient myth and contemporary reality to address interdependency, and the powerful connection between global crises. In her text for the exhibition, Regina Harsanyi, curator of Media Arts at MoMI, writes: “Each scene embraces the rich and sometimes tumultuous interplay of politics, history, and climate change, encouraging reflection on our interconnected responsibilities in an era marked by urgent biological and environmental challenges.” 

Presented jointly by Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and Onassis ONX Studio, the installation is on view in the Museum lobby on the Herbert S. Schlosser Media Wall, from October 20, 2023, through February 11, 2024.

Featuring: Naicha Diaby, MX Oops, and Heather Mo’Witz

Interactions design & XR development: Danielle McPhatter

Original sound:Matthew D. Gantt 

Second camera: Daniela Kostova

Motion capture: NYU Tandon School ofEngineering Marcel Oliver-Rose Truxillo. 

Photo scanning: NYCAP3D. 

Originally commissioned by ISSUE Project Room and Harvestworks

About the artist: 

Eva Davidova is a Spanish/ Bulgarian, New York based artist with a focus on new media. Through her work, she explores the political implications of technology, incorporating performative elements rooted in the absurd to question the things we take for granted. Often “misusing” technology deliberately, Davidova seeks to disrupt its easy acceptance and the prevalent emotional manipulation enacted through both physical and informational architecture. Growing up in diverse cultural and linguistic environments has informed Davidova’s interest in hybridity and layered imagery, and the all present, but not-always-visible connections between war, ecological collapse, and technology. She sees new media as a language, with which to participate in the making of cultural conditions and a way to transmit the urgency we face as makers of new realities. 

Having exhibited globally, her resume includes appearances at the Bronx Museum, the UVP at Everson Museum, the AKG Buffalo Art Museum, MACBA Barcelona, CAAC Sevilla, Instituto Cervantes, and La Regenta among others. 

Davidova is currently an artist in residence at Wave Hill, and past resident of Silver Art Projects, Triangle Arts, Residency Unlimited, Harvestworks, ISSUE Project Room, IEA, Djerassy, Delfina Studios, and many other USA and international residencies.