#SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Voice Bot
Jan 20-Feb 10, 2024
alpha nova & galerie futura, Berlin
As part of Vorspiel of transmediale and CTM Festival
The solo exhibition #SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Voice Bot explores how language, technology, and gender intersect in today’s digital infrastructures. Presented as part of Vorspiel 2024 of transmediale and CTM Festival, it reflects on a cultural moment in which voice assistants and algorithms have become omnipresent mediators of knowledge—yet often reinforce patriarchal hierarchies. Against this backdrop, #SOPHYGRAY introduces feminist thought as a counter-narrative, transforming technology into a site of dialogue, resistance, and collective learning.
Developed over three years in collaboration with more than 40 international contributors, Nadja Verena Marcin’s interactive voice bot engages visitors in conversations about identity, art, and feminism. Drawing on the writings of bell hooks, Donna Haraway, Silvia Federici, Audre Lorde, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Legacy Russell, among others, #SOPHYGRAY responds with philosophical, humorous, and surprising insights. Her constantly expanding and moderated knowledge base invites visitors not only to listen, but also to shape her: in a Feminist Write-A-Thon workshop, participants contribute new entries that become part of the bot’s growing archive.
The project extends into live performance, where Marcin and dancers Lena Strützke and Yumi Kuwabara bring conversations between human and machine back into the space as embodied dialogue. Accompanied by music from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, their movements confront the audience with the contrast between feminist values and the armored, mechanized female body, reclaiming the exhibition space as a site of agency and imagination.
Hosted by alpha nova & galeria futura in Berlin and part of the program series [Digital] Present Feminist Futures, the exhibition situates Marcin’s work among an international community of artists, writers, and performers who challenge how technologies shape our present and future. In this way, #SOPHYGRAY becomes more than a bot: she is a living, feminist archive that grows with every encounter.
Programming
#SOPHYGRAY’s Feminist-Write-A-Thon Workshop
January 27, 2024 – 1-4 PM
#SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Voice Bot Performance
February 3, 2024 – 6 PM
INSTITUTION
alpha nova & galerie futura
Weibliche Visionen in Kultur Politik und Kunst e.V.
Am Flutgraben 3
12435 Berlin
Germany
LINK TO EXHIBITION
Nadja Verena Marcin: #SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Voice Bot
LINK TO WORKSHOP
#SOPHYGRAY’s Feminist-Write-A-Thon Workshop, Jan 27, 2024
LINK TO PERFORMANCE
#SOPHYGRAY – A Feminist Voice Bot Performance, Feb 3, 2024
CURATORS
Dr. Katharina Koch & Sylvia Sadzinski
ARTIST
Nadja Verena Marcin
PRESS
Ilyn Wong, “Intersectional Fembots: An Interview with Nadja Verena Marcin,” Berlin Art Link, Berlin, Feb 20, 2024
SPONSORS
#SOPHYGRAY is made possible by the EMAP residency at Onassis Stegi, co-funded by Creative Europe program of the European Union, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Ministry of Culture North Rhine-Westphalia, NEUSTART KULTUR by the German Federal Culture Commissioner, Stiftung Kunstfonds in Bonn as well as sponsored by IT company Novatec. The artwork is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts.