https://www.unknow.

online/

As part of of the exhibition for https://www.unknow.on-

line/ we decided to invite Helsinki based artist Ville Kallio
to exhibit his work GOREPLEX  as the online exhibit and to
open up a discussion with Ville about his generative prax-
is in a written interview form. We felt  GOREPLEX  served as
a complex metaphor and illustrative outcome for some of the
ideological and metaphysical issues that the digital sphere
ruptures, negotiates and perpetuates within the magnitude
of the multiplicity. Additionally Villes digital painting prac-
tice and sculptural works negotiate gaps between the digital
and meat space working through intersecting symbols that
generate an accelerated economy of signs and meta images.

We wondered how this kind of work speaks of

ideology when it is simulated  and  rendered, and how
this terrain of technology challenges core values and psy-
chological underpinnings of the human experience?

“I convert political desires to economic flows and data,

and then I convert them back again. I convert revolu- GOREPLEX
tions into revelations. I don’t want security,   I want to leave, (detail at 01.30.00)
and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time”  video
1. Gilles Deleuze, Fou- Ville Kallio, 2017
cault  (London: Continuum, 1988) 105-6 https://vimeo.com/207370161

The oceanic network of values, systems and symbolic logics that

cross and converge into new physicality’s of the digital sphere
are reminiscent of  GOREPLEX which  returns  the body to to-
tal tactility enclosed by the simulated world, it is  body that
en-frames another body - we as the viewers are the bodies
consuming its body again as representatives of the analogue
absorbing its own ether. There is a procession of  connective
tissues and networks that wash meta images through filters
and digital landscapes moving and out of the real and simu-
lated world.   Perhaps the simulated world is no longer simu-
lated but co-existing with the real as a sort of appendage. Does
a network finalise and enclose or does it continue to perpetu-
ally denounce the present passing on and on again, rendered
into a majestically vexed oscillating state of finite infintium? 

Magnus Myrtveit & Elizabeth McInnes

August 2018

1
Ville Kallio (born in 1990, lives
and works in Helsinki) is an
interdisciplinary artist work-
ing in the media of 3D anima-
tion, sculpture, digital drawing,
and site specific installation.
Through his angst of living un-
der eternal capitalism, his work
explores violence, bio-technol-
ogy, and the future of warfare
through video-games like sim-
ulations and accelerated

2
realities.

https://www.unknow.online/

GOREPLEX
(detail at 01.30)
video
Ville Kallio, 2017 EM: Hi Ville! Magnus and I wanted to open
https://vimeo.com/207370161 this interview with some of your thoughts on making
GOREPLEX, can you tell us some more about this work?

VK: I think the original trigger for the production

of the work was becoming tired of the weirdly moralist stance
of the basic humanist left with regards to technology, especial-
ly regarding life extension or otherwise modifying human bi-
ology. People have memed themselves into believing that the
body has some sort of pure essence that can be soiled by “play-
ing god”, even by something as non-intrusive as ingesting ge-
netically engineered foods. I obviously don’t believe this and
would rather see the species splintering off into whatever ex-
perimental biological forms that people would prefer to occupy.

3
 MM: The first thing I noticed was values of Tech-
nospirituality and trans humanism as occultism, what is this
about for you?

VK: Transhumanism as occultism is a pretty good way

to put it I guess. The occult part comes from a general sense of
hopelessness stemming from lack of belief in any kind of polit-
GOREPLEX
ical or personal agency, where the only thing you can resort to
(detail at 03.49) is performing occult rites in a final attempt to grasp control of
video
Ville Kallio, 2017
history. I had been thinking a lot about the concept of hivemind
and how we’re constantly moving closer and closer to becoming
https://vimeo.com/207370161
one as communication technology becomes faster and more per-
vasive. I thought a good way to visualize this would be to imagine
the human species melting into one enormous biomass, where
the communication technology is replaced by direct nerve con-
nections between brains, consciousness existing in a sort of fluid
bio-simulation. (Represented in the video by the Arma 3 modifi-
cation Altis Life)

MM: Is the concept of the occult not mired in pythag-

orean ethos about universal musical spheres, rigid structures,
and so forth and does this not in itself refer to something - not
natural, i.e. straight angles in nature, non-fractal structures,
etc? I mean, I’m not sure if I’m agreeing or disagreeing with
you but it seems like there’s a lot to your thoughts concerning
this that you’re not sharing with us and it seems very intrigu-
ing. Could you maybe elaborate?

VK: I’d be lying if I said that I know much about any

GOREPLEX of this stuff. My take on the occult is based on more free-form
(detail at 05.03)
practices like chaos magic, meme magic, hyperstition, etc. where
video
Ville Kallio, 2017 there’s not really any rigid traditions and the emphasis is placed
more on the results. For me it’s also very much tied to the use of
https://vimeo.com/207370161
internet, the way I see it the internet is very much egregore made
flesh. In general I think there’s a tendency of formerly spiritual
ideas to become profane through technological means, like the
idea of creating an AI god or a consensus religion existing on the

4
blockchain (like 0xOmega).

https://www.unknow.online/

EM: I think this looking back to mythos and sacred to-

tems has become an increasingly popular move by artists to gain
authority of the magnitude of the multiplicity, and the ethos of
Transhumanism holds within it such rich representational forms
and embedded characteristics of spiritual and religious models.
Like you say the context of the data sphere and networks becom-
ing bodily and meaty, universes within universes with conditions
and limits - expandable or otherwise. I was re-reading the other
day about Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis; that all reality
is in fact an artificial simulation much like a computer simula-
tion and this in itself hold within it the notion of an authorising
God figure, I was wondering if you feel as artist these ideas tran-
scend into your conception of lived reality and where the point of
one thing being real and manufactured begins and ends. Would
consider moving your work into a place with the digital space
is rendered intertwined with meatspace say as an interactive
game and as such how the work might operate in that capacity?

VK: The simulation hypothesis feels mostly irrelevant

to me and operates on many flimsy assumptions about what kind
of simulations would be run by an advanced (or just completely
different) forms of life. If we live in a simulation it’s just as likely
that we’re in a simplistic video game akin to Super Mario Bros., just
designed on on a higher order of reality with more readily acces-
GOREPLEX
sible energy and computation power. Which one do we put more (detail at 05.36)
resources into in general, games or “ancestor simulations”? Either video
Ville Kallio, 2017
way, to me there’s no point in distinguishing between real and man-
ufactured, my understanding of reality is that all of these borders https://vimeo.com/207370161
are extremely fuzzy and it’s pretty much impossible to draw any
lines. Even if we don’t live in a simulation everything’s still essen-
tially running on code and different embedded overlapping sys-
tems, like how our consciousness and identity is basically created
by a primitive wireless audio-visual-tactile communication net-
work between different brains, and how these networks structure
themselves into different politico-ideological operating systems.

5
MM: I was just thinking about your comment on Mario and real
and fabricated being indistinguishable, In video game engines theres the con-
cept of a skybox which creates backgrounds to make a computer and video
games level look bigger than it really is. The sky, distant mountains, distant
buildings, and other unreachable objects are projected onto the cube`s faces
(using a technique called cube mapping, thus creating the illusion of distant
three-dimensional surroundings. When I was a kid playing Super Mario 64
on a N64 at my friends house we used to trick each other into believing that
you could swim to the island way, way out in the water, but of course in the
course of doing so you would inevitably hit an invisible wall, the swimming
animation would continue and you’d just sit there experiencing this weird
infinite meaningless task, egged on by pure faith, trying to reach this island
that technically was just an image, an assortment of pixels. A sort of caste
in the sky. Is playing Super Mario 64 in that sense a religious experience?

6

https://www.unknow.online/

VK: I actually had very sim-

ilar experiences with SM64 as a child,
for example I thought that if I could fire
myself out of one of the cannons in Bob-
Omb Battlefield at exactly the right angle
I could fall on a cloud. There’s definitely a
similarity in how this works in compar-
ison to “real world” religion, where gaps
in knowledge of how things are structured
allows you to fill those gaps with pretty
Youtube video by pannenkoek2012
much whatever you want. Of course it’s
SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A
a lot easier to understand how a game Presses (Commentated)
works than it is to understand whatever
it is we’re living in. When I think about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk-
past experiences with these simple game 2tdsPh0A&t=301s
worlds I often feel like the TV screen was
this very material tunnel opening up into
the geometry of another world, which
most likely has to do with the human
brain’s fundamental inability to distin-
guish between real/artificial space. The
way it maps the route from Peach’s Castle
Courtyard to Tick Tock Clock is exactly
the same as the way it maps the route from
your home to the nearest grocery store.
This topic also reminds me of a great video
by pannenkoek2012 about SM64 where he
explains how to traverse parallel univers-
Youtube video by pannenkoek2012
es in order to teleport around the level.
SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A
Presses (Commentated)
EM: On another note there is
also a temporal trajectory to your work, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk-
2tdsPh0A&t=301s
things seem to be following a collaps-
ing of time into a point - there are mul-
tiple temporalities that cross moving
spaces and realities yet finalise with a
ritual happening. What is the signifi-
cance of this finality for you? And is it
really final or simply transferring again?

7
VK: The collapsing of time into a
point is I guess just basic technocapi-
tal singularity, technological acceler-
ation becoming so intense that future
is flattened into the present. Despite
the extreme speed being stuck in the
middle of it is draining, sluggish.
It all coagulates into this oobleck-like
mass that suffocates you the more
you struggle. I guess the what I’m
looking for is finality beyond the
finality of capital, the release of
planetary death and institution of
communism in the realm of hell.

8

https://www.unknow.online/

MM: Where do you see humanity in 500

years? Biologically and physiologically considering
capitalisms demand upon our natural resources, how
can we splinter off into anything if theres nothing left
to sustain ourselves on if the planet is all fucked up?

EM: Yeah I guess I feel this return to spir-

ituality has come from the anguish of catastrophe
and the production line, all things perpetually are
being manufactured, defined and spat back out
again - becoming more dispersed and meaning-
less. Its interesting that you say you are seeking
finality beyond capital, like this crushing of the
ad infinitum of manufactured time - is this a met-
aphor for you, an ironic theatre of possibilities or
something you see as a tanglble potential outcome ?

VK: We’re already beyond fucked as far as global

warming and environmental destruction is concerned.
We need to start thinking about how we’re going sur-
vive despite this. There’s plans to go to Mars, so we
definitely have some form of life support systems to
help us live on a shittier version of Earth. The problem
of dwindling natural resources is a problem of ener- GOREPLEX
(detail at 01.30.00)
gy. With enough energy anything is possible even on video
a fucked up planet, and there’s still plenty of capacity Ville Kallio, 2017

for both solar and nuclear energy. When I say hell I https://vimeo.com/207370161
mean it in the sense that we’re essentially Lucifer be-
ing cast out of heaven for rebelling against daddy. The
rebellion in this case is the discovery of fossil fuels and
the following unleashing of ancient death into the at-
mosphere, the casting out being temporal rather than
spatial. Like the princes of hell we’ll just have to make
the most of our raw deal. If anyone is still alive in 500
years the most significant faction will be composed
of fully carcinised post-humans floating freely in the
vacuum of space and subsisting on cosmic radiation.

9
M: What is this fascination with gore? Theres something
about fleshy bodies in cyberspace and trying to brute force hu-
man meat bags into digital space. Are you casting a sort of spell
with this work?

VK: I have this image stuck in my head of my body being riddled

with machine gun fire as a sort of final cyberneticisation. Total
opening up of the body to external flows. That’s how I’d like it to
feel when you use a computer, hands melting into the keyboard,
the screen as a meat grinder pushing you out into the world in
meat string format. It’s probably a spell in some sense yes.

10

https://www.unknow.online/

EM : I wanted to ask
you some questions about
your digital painting
practice. I guess the first
thing that comes to mind
with your digital painting
is the move to work with
digital materialities and
manufacturing processes
and how the metaphysics
of painting artifice chang-
es. The mineral properties
of the pigment, oils, waxes
and cloth are replaced by
rendered colour spaces,
pixels and the digital in-
terface constituted up by
numbers and data which
radically changes the
form of painting , its ar-
chiving and archeology. I
get a sense this change is
important to you and the
ethos of your practice so
I wanted to hear some of
your thoughts and ideas
about this transference.

VK: I can’t really say that

it’s all that important, it’s just what I do. I was pushing pixels long before I ever touched acrylics or
oils. After messing around with non-digital mediums for a couple of years I found out that there’s
usually no point for me to be doing that. I mean I still do it if I feel like it but I got over this idea
that it’s something you have to do. There’s also the whole hassle of buying materials and storing
stuff that I’m not really too fond of.

11

https://www.unknow.online/

MM: Yeah, for sure. In a tablet painting the building up and layering of the painting
is often made through a video of a series of gestures and colour choices, instead of the
materiality there is a literal visual archive of the gestures and choices taken into account
Left while creating the painting. I also feel like one way digital and analogue painting differ
is in the amount of pure information or data they can hold, much like in the sense of
Ville Kallio, 2018 analog and digital sound for example in a digital painting you can zoom in to a certain
VIBRANT MATU-
RITY® 7+ ADULT extent until all you see is huge pixels, or if its vector-based, you see a bunch of lines. In
SHOW the material world you can zoom in until you see the molecules making up the paint-
ing, and behind that an immense, immaterial void. Is it the void that you find interest-
artists - Ville Kallio,
Bora Akinciturk ing and is it that void that you want to bring into the digital/internet/electronic world?
curated by Christina
Gigliotti

VK: The material-immaterial distinction as it relates to this doesn’t really make

any sense to me. You’re right that when you zoom in all you see is pixels, but that’s a prop-
erty of how the computer processes the data and transmits the image to the screen. If you
zoom in more (metaphorically) you’ll find that it’s all electrical charges flowing through
copper wiring, nanoscale transistors etc. Even most of what we know as the internet runs
in massive data centers that produce tons of heat, very much like factories. It’s not really any

Right

Ville Kallio, 2018

VIBRANT MATU-
RITY® 7+ ADULT
SHOW

artists - Ville Kallio,

Bora Akinciturk
curated by Christina
Gigliotti

12

https://www.unknow.online/

13

Left
Ville Kallio, 2018
VIBRANT MATURITY® 7+
ADULT SHOW
artists - Ville Kallio, Bora
Akinciturk
curated by Christina Gigliotti
Right
Ville Kallio, 2018
VIBRANT MATURITY® 7+
ADULT SHOW
artists - Ville Kallio, Bora
Akinciturk
curated by Christina Gigliotti
EM: Your sculptural and installation work seems like spillage from the simulated,
as if the gap between the digital is spewing into the physical in a very urgent and abject
way. Have you always worked with these two realms as intersecting? So many digital
artists work with the screen space in a fairly rudimentary way, only conceptualising it
within obvious reason say with plush seating arrangements or projected surfaces. In
your installations the sculptural is not simply a vessel but a mirror phase zone where
the same digital interrogrations are are applied to meatspace - it is doing the same
thing but in another realm. I see it as not really a proscenium but a part of two parts
that look at each other and themselves. This provoking the physics of space and time
both digital and analogue opens up what I sort of see as a void portal between existing
and not existing and I wondered how this came about, if it was natural progression for
your practice and what you are seeking by interrogating the two zones as self reflexive.
VK: I don’t think it’s just my work, but something that’s happening everywhere
and at an accelerating rate. Accessing the cyberspace may have been more like opening
some kind of portal at an earlier time, but now it feels more like an unlocked door that just
needs to be knocked a bit for it to fly open. The mush and gunk is always packed against
the door waiting cover you up. We’re all data plumbers waiting for the septic tank to blow
up in our faces now. My installation work and how it relates to this is I suppose all about
just applying the things I’ve learned while navigating the feces-flows of the internet into
the more traditionally spatial reality of the gallery space. It’s all very intuitive and means
to an end, like I don’t think I’m necessarily actively doing any kind of interrogation as
much as humans as a life form have finally adapted to solve the problems of spacetime.
14

https://www.unknow.online/

15
Ville Kallio (1990) is an interdisciplinary artist working
in the media of 3D animation, sculpture, digital drawing,
and site specific installation. Through his angst of living
under eternal capitalism, his work explores violence,
bio-technology, and the future of warfare through vid-
eo-games like simulations and accelerated realities

www.villekallio.systems/

Ville Kallio, 2018

VIBRANT MATURITY® 7+ ADULT
SHOW

artists - Ville Kallio, Bora Akinciturk

curated by Christina Gigliotti

Magnus Myrtveit (1989) is a Oslo based artist working primarily

with painting and digital media. Currently undertaking his Masters
at Khio in Oslo, he was recently awarded the Kunstnernes Hus atelier
stipend and has exhibited across Norway and internationally. Many
of his works are in private and public collections.

www.magnusmyrtveit.com 

Elizabeth McInnes (1991) is an Australian curator, writer and artist

currently based in Oslo, Norway. Her research centres around insti-
tutional critique and expanded curatorial praxis. She is the director
of Conch Rotterdam a nomadic gallery and platform for experimen-
tal publishing and curatorial practice. McInnes has exhibited and
worked in Japan, Australia, South Africa, Scandinavia and through-
out Europe. 

www.conchrotterdam.com

16

https://www.unknow.online/

An interview and discussion with Ville Kallio as part of

Digital Democracy August 2018

https://www.unknow.online/

Curated by Elizabeth McInnes & Magnus Myrtveit

Ville Kallio