metropolis m

Moving from technology focused works to something more tactile and material, The School of Mutants’ The Dig (2024) is an installation that combines a sandbox with an excavation site. While many works in the exhibition address technological or speculative futures, The Dig redirects the attention to a different kind of system: the educational and historical frameworks that shape collective memory. Its tangible nature expands the exhibition’s understanding of what a system can be, not by creating an entirely new system, but by regrounding already existing ones through physical engagement. Set against the technologically oriented works, this focus on hands-on learning and discovery adds a layer that helps anchor the work in our everyday lived realities. The work asks who decides what is remembered, what is forgotten, and how learning happens outside formal institutions. On the wall, three outfits are displayed, in front of them is the sandbox and a set of tools for visitors to use. It raises questions about how we absorbed knowledge as children, what a less manipulated form of learning might look like, and what we may need to unlearn as adults.

Shu Lea Cheang’s Virus Becoming (2024) explores the idea of refusing a system, rather than existing within. It follows a discarded humanoid, Reiko, who was created by a corporation but later thrown out as e-waste into a site filled with other discarded bodies and technologies. In the video work, we see Reiko trying to reassemble their body in both a literal and metaphorical sense – regaining agency, rebuilding identity. Reiko then begins their journey, meeting other bodies in the realm who have been deemed ‘excess’ or ‘unproductive’ by the corporation, like hackers, trans-mutants, workers or refugees. Ultimately, Reiko mutates into a virus, UKI. The virus becomes a counter-being, a response to the systems that discarded Reiko and to the bodies that are regularly overlooked or erased from dominant discourse. In this context, becoming a virus functions as a kind of liberation: a glitch that destabilises the system, constantly changing shape and refusing a fixed form.

My reading of the exhibition is quite technology focused, though there are several other works – Shertise Solano’s Overboard and Still Breathing (2022), Cristina Lucas’ 4 FAIT/H BILL/BOARD (2025) or Folkert de Jong’s Jacob’s Pillow (2025) – that broaden these themes in different directions. They range from ecological systems to political and historical ones, yet I found it difficult to fully engage them within the density of the presentation. The works that relied on active participation, like Soul Paint or Songs of Cyborgeoise created strong points of connection, but this also made the more passive pieces feel noticeably in the background in comparison. Maybe this is tied to the curatorial aim of activating the viewer, so works that require a more observational form of engagement receive less attention. At the same time, they offer moments of pause and transition within the exhibition’s flow.

The exhibition set itself a large task by addressing so many infrastructures at once, and what works well is the focus on how we navigate these systems from within, rather than simply dissecting their problems or strengths. Even though the show feels dense, the variety of approaches does add layers: from navigating the systems of our bodies, to interventions in educational and historical frameworks and speculations about future environmental and social issues. Though it made me question whether there was simply too much information for each topic to come through clearly. The works that turn toward the body ground the exhibition the most. Through VR body mapping, play, hands-on digging, or bodies in transformation, these moments offer a way of thinking about navigating these systems through mental health, care and lived experience. They make the exhibition feel more tangible, even when its themes are hyper abstract and in doing so, offer a rare sense of agency.