WRO 2023 Biennale: Fungible Content
May 10–25, 2023
Subiektywna Instytucja Kultury’s 66P, Wrocław
The WRO 2023 Biennale: Fungible Content, explores how meaning shifts, mutates, and circulates in an age of hyperconnectivity and media saturation. It focuses on the symbolic instability of signs, especially as they are reshaped through digital technologies and social discourse. Rather than presenting finished objects, the Biennale emphasizes process, collaboration, and shared authorship as central to contemporary media art.
The exhibition addresses how media technologies influence identity, perception, and power, with an emphasis on accessibility, inclusivity, and co-creation. Initiatives like Art Wires enable artists, curators, and communities to shape the exhibition collectively, making it a dynamic platform for exchange and redefinition.
Within this context, #SOPHYGRAY by Nadja Verena Marcin reimagines the digital assistant through a feminist lens. Presented as both an immersive installation and a mobile app, it responds to users with philosophical, humorous, and thought-provoking answers informed by intersectional feminist perspectives. It questions the gendered design of mainstream virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, whose submissive, feminized voices reinforce stereotypes and power hierarchies.
Featured as an immersive installation as well as a live performance by the artists and dancers Dasha Bogdan and Sofiia Onishchenko, it further activates the space through embodied dialogue. As users interact with the bot, they contribute to and shape a moderated knowledge base, building a living archive of feminist thinking that challenges bias in today’s technologies.
Piotr Krajewski serves as the chief curator for WRO Art Center and oversees the overall artistic programme of the Biennale. Among the 70 artists presented across 13 venues—featuring 50 new works—were Susana Ballesteros & Jano Montañés (OPN Studio), Leon Butler, Emanuel Gollob, So Kanno, Akihiro Kato & Takemi Watanuki (Kazokutchi), Nadja Verena Marcin, Rosa Menkman, Paula Nishijima, Total Refusal, T(n)C, and Marleine van der Werf, and many others.
INSTITUTION
WRO Art Center
ul. Widok 7
50‑052 Wrocław
LINK TO EXHIBITION
https://wro2023.wrocenter.pl/en
LINK TO ARTWORK
CURATOR
Piotr Krajewski (artistic director)
ARTISTS
Susana Ballesteros & Jano Montañés (OPN Studio), Leon Butler, Emanuel Gollob, So Kanno, Akihiro Kato & Takemi Watanuki (Kazokutchi), Nadja Verena Marcin, Rosa Menkman, Paula Nishijima, Total Refusal, T(n)C, and Marleine van der Werf, and many others.
SPONSORS
The project is made possible by the WRO Biennale, EMAP/ EMARE Residency at Onassis Stegi, co-funded by Creative Europe program of the European Union, the Stiftung Kunstfonds in Bonn, the Ministry of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia, NEUSTART KULTUR of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and Legislature of the State of New York, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and sponsored by Novatec.