Valentinas Klimašauskas: Telebodies. Bleeding Subtitles for Postrobotic Scenes

A strange hybrid of Teletubbies and Videodrome in the age of algorithms, Telebodies is a techno-somatic, multifaceted endeavor referring to the ever-growing entanglement of our bodies with epistemic, cybernetic, and kinetic materialities. The book offers an alternative art history in the near-present of automation and disinformation, portraying a Central Eastern Europe populated by speculative cultural producers.

Written in collaboration with a cloud-based typing assistant with “main character syndrome,” the text can also be interpreted as an academic novel about the doctoral research of an overcaffeinated generation with slight attention deficit disorder, or processed as a speculative script for (im)possible collaborations with AI or machine-based personalities to come. It is also an attempt to write a practice-based fine-arts doctoral thesis at the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

With artworks quoted, illustrated or otherwise used by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Marta Frėjutė, Viltė Fuller, Pakui Hardware, Laura Kaminskaitė, Marcos Lutyens, George Maciunas, Thomas Manneke, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Darius Mikšys, Tanja Ostojić, Ieva Rojutė, Janina Sabaliauskaitė, Allan Sekula, Slavs and Tatars, Gertrude Stein, Mladen Stilinović, Viktor Timofeev, Vytautė Žilinskaitė, and others.

published by Mousse Publishing
text by Valentinas Klimašauskas
graphic design by Nerijus Rimkus
2024, 198 pages, 17,6 x 25 cm