Nina Davies: Haters will say I’m real

Videostill from Nina Davies, Haters will say I’m real, 2024, Video, 09:04 min., color, sound. Courtesy of the artist

- selected by Inke Arns (HMKV), in the context of the exhibition Holding Pattern -

Haters will say I’m real (2024) takes the form of a podcast conversation between an actor describing a film role to an interviewer. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that this show is set in a fictional near future as the pair discuss changes in the legal system driven by automation, technological development and the resulting ethical consequences. The film posits a hypothetical reclaiming of image rights: an assertion of control over a user’s image made through dance and specific coded movement that situates the person in their real environment. In the dance the performers revolve their phone over their body in a rapid series of poses described as an ‘edit’ because of its realtime mimicry of offline editing. (Nina Davies)

Nina Davies

Nina Davies (b. 1991) is a Canadian-British artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture and how it is disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed. Previous research projects have included; the recent commodification of the dancing body on digital platforms and rethinking dances of today as traditional dances of the future. Oscillating between the use of fiction and non-fiction, her work helps build new critical frameworks for engaging with dance practices. Her work has recently been exhibited at The Photographers Gallery, London; Seventeen, London; Matt’s Gallery, London; and Bloomberg New Contem-poraries 2023. In 2021 she co-founded Future Artefacts FM with artist Niamh Schmidtke and was awarded an Arts Council Project Grant to produce their 2022 programme and in 2023 they produced a mini series for Het HEM’s online program The Couch.