Ian Cheng: EMISSARIES GUIDE TO WORLDING
This publication is co-produced by the Serpentine Galleries and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo on the occasion of Ian Cheng’s two-part exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries (6 March – 28 May 2018), which brings together his new work, BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018), with his live simulation video work, Emissaries (2015-17).
Emissaries is a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution, past and future, and the ecological conditions that shape it. Each simulation is centred on the life of an emissary who is caught between unravelling old realities and emerging weird ones.
For Ian Cheng, the making of Emissaries became a lesson in Worlding – the unnatural art of creating an infinite game by choosing a present, story telling its past, simulating its futures, and nurturing its changes.
This book is for anyone interested in bridging the complexity of Worlding with the finitude of human psychology. Reflecting on his experience making Emissaries, Cheng derives practical methods for seeing and making Worlds as a whole-brain activity. To produce a World, one must summon the artistic masks who already live within us but rarely get to exercise their power. We will get to know the masks of the Director, the Cartoonist, the Hacker, and the Emissary to the World.
As we enter into a strange transitional era, Worlding becomes a vital practice to help us navigate darkness, maintain agency despite indeterminacy, and appreciate the multitude of Worlds we can choose to live in. Whether you are creating art, games, institutions, religions, or life itself: WORLD TO LIVE!
In addition to Cheng’s writings, which guide the reader through its pages, the publication is appended by a series of newly-commissioned texts. Writer and researcher Nora Khan occupies the fictive space inhabited by the figure of the Emissary in the first episode of the trilogy. The book also contains an interview between Cheng and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a Glossary of Terms by Ben Vickers.
Authors
Ian Cheng
Nora Khan
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Ben Vickers
Editors
Rebecca Lewin
Joseph Constable
Veronica So
Copy Editor
Janine Armin
Design
Bureau Borsche
Dimensions
16 x 21 cm portrait
Publishers
Serpentine Galleries
Koenig Books
ISBN
978-1-908617-50-7
Price
£35