slimeQore, 2022, immersive video quantum montage with performative lecture, 45 minutes.
“Slime is a dark and dystopian mirror to patriarchal capitalism.
Jekyll and slime.”
– quote from slimeQore
slimeQore is a playful performative lecture with an immersive video montage generated by non-binary quantum computing that uses slime as a metaphor for quantum particles – which are fluid and indeterminate unlike Newtonian matter – and the slimy world of big tech.
Slime
Slime is a recurring motif throughout Heaney’s practice, which speaks about the unstable nature of reality and the self. Following Susanne Wedlich’s The Natural History of Slime, Heaney also sees slime as an entangling medium between all types of life, as no multicellular body exists without incorporating some sort of slimy, mucus or viscous gel.
Through slime, slimeQore entangles nature, our bodies, science, technology, space and time to intuitively and playfully paint pictures of quantum physics and its entanglements. Audiences also experience this viscerally as they are each invited to open a black box filled with slime and to engage in collective slime play.
Layered blurry aesthetic
Libby Heaney uses data from IBM’s five qubit quantum computing systems to continually (re)compose the placement of the video montage across the gallery revealing the layered reality inside quantum computers and inviting audiences to the vast multidimensionality within nature and themselves.
Heaney sees the blurry, layered unstable nature of fundamental reality as productive of new expressions and possibilities, moving us away from this polarized, atomised moment.
Agency within our quantum future
Throughout the performance, the artist uses metaphor and participatory slime play to engage the viewers and explore how quantum thinking and feeling will impact our future. She warns against big tech’s appropriation of quantum computing, and shifts power back to the audience by explaining quantum’s functioning and queer potentials.
slimeQore was commissioned and premiered at the Zabludowicz Collection, London on the 18th of June 2022.
It was translated into Italian and performed by an Italian actor for Digitalive, RomaEuropa Festival, Rome on the 6th of November 2022.
“Of quantum theory, Einstein said God doesn’t play dice. But reality revealed to us that God was a veteran gambler, a cosmic fruit machine scrambler, rolling his dice at every turn.”
– quote from slimeQore
slimeQore at Zabludowicz Collection
