T(n)C aka Agnes Varnai & Tina Kult:
Surface Tension

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.

─── ocular implants 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. these transitions, these supposed metamorphoses, remain logically thinkable only if mind and body are treated as pre-given units, if one consents to the cartesian dogma that cleaves them apart. curiously, it was gilbert ryle – the behaviourist who explicitly challenged descartes – who first coined the derisive image of “the ghost in the machine,” a mutagenic phrase that later crystallised as the title of the japanese cyberpunk franchise ghost in the shell.

yet all hybridisation signals a crisis or even worse: an utterly boring catastrophe. from this perspective, it is precisely the body that becomes cybernetic unit not by being abandoned by the mind, but by entering into new configurations of forces, intensities and capacities – a body that does not lose its primordial skills of homeostasis but deterritorializes through the painful and formative experience of immaterial and material forms of labour… much ado about the desire of a virtual paradise…

a second 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 (the bureaucracy of an anti-bureaucratic fantasy!) 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.

every morning we awaken to the same fanfare: capitalism soon dies, long live capitalism! the system announces its own disappearance, its magical levelling-up to secure its endless run, multiplying its ghosts faster than any revolution could touch them. for those still dreaming of a utopia, the only landscape left is the scorched theatre of martyrdom and/or dogma: resistance has been absorbed as a decorative effect. (one battle after another.) and for the few who quietly conspire to drift beyond, a more seductive and safe horizon shimmers: life after the apocalypse! we return again and again to the place where our thought lies bound in the dungeon of its own models, because our imagination reaches the end of the world with perfect ease, yet cannot (even in theory, even in delirium, even in art, even just by accident) generate a whole new system.

stepping into t(n)c’s works, we are confronted with pressing questions: are we outside or inside this utopian sphere? what if we cannot transcend our own inherent imperialism and dualistic thinking? can the spirit slip out of the bottle, or have the ghosts of another holistic vision already taken residence inside the machine?

𓂀𓂀𓂀𓂀𓂀

…and yet again we are reminded: escapism is the worst enemy of escaping.

─── optics turned off ────
─── syscrash ────

artist-bio

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.