kennedy+swan - "The Red Queen Effect"

New technologies make it possible to collect, visualize, and analyze data from inside the human body. kennedy+swan explore how machines are being trained to recognize and classify human tissue and to diagnose potential diseases using an artificial medical gaze. They ask fundamental questions from both an individual and a collective perspective: What does it mean to open up the body to algorithmic systems? How does this alter our sense of responsibility and trust – and how do we negotiate autonomy when opaque systems are making medical diagnoses?

In the exhibition The Red Queen Effect, kennedy+swan look at the complex interrelations between data-driven diagnostics, technology-based prevention, and structural inequalities – and at the growing individual and social pressure to keep up with the accelerated pace of scientific-technological systems.

The title of the exhibition refers to a scene from Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where the Red Queen explains to Alice that she has to run as fast as she can not to fall behind. In evolutionary biology, this image serves to describe the race between species and the environment: biological systems need to change constantly to survive. For kennedy+swan, this image describes a collective feeling in the midst of technological acceleration – and the need for artistic imagination to offer new perspectives as a counterpoint to this dynamic.