Longing and Belonging, this month’s installment of the AV Live Performance series at the Art Gallery of Ontario, unfolds as an inquiry into the fragile terrain of human connection in the digital age. Immersed in the glow of devices and the rhythms of algorithmic attention, the work questions whether our technologies of communication generate intimacy or dissolve it into data — and whether we are also using technology as a form of escapism, a way to hide rather than be open and vulnerable. As Byung-Chul Han writes in The Agony of Eros, “Where everything turns into the same, there is no longer any relation — only a smooth, narcissistic reflection of the self.” Through a sensory interplay of sound and image, artists Felipe Requena and Hagop Ohannessian (visuals) collaborate with Dennis Neves, Demain Oritz, and Felipe (audio) to compose a live audiovisual environment that drifts between desire and disconnection — a poetic meditation on what it means to long, to belong, and to be seen in a networked world.
