Octapod and The Lock Up present Critical Animals as part of This is Not Art.

The Future’s Knot is the official exhibition presented by Critical Animals in 2014. Responding to the festival’s broader provocations for ‘possible futures’, this exhibition takes place at a time when power relations are increasingly governed and mediated by technologies. Much attention has been given recently to the use by government, big business and activists of information technologies – the insatiable hunger of intelligence agencies for metadata; increasingly targeted content and advertising using big data demography; and the digital direct action protests of groups such as Anonymous. However older technologies continue to develop and remain relevant in shaping the way we behave, form individual and collective identities, and how societies function – the accepted pervasiveness of CCTV for one.

Is it possible or even desirable to find points of resistance within these systems? Is it possible to re-purpose technologies of power for our own ends, exploit glitches to widen cracks that run from the surface all the way down, or take technologies as subject matter for discussion and analysis? The Future’s Knot is curated by Peter Johnson and features new and recent works by Baden Pailthorpe, Benjamin Forster, Giselle Stanborough, Jonny Niesche, Josephine Skinner, Kylie Banyard, Marian Tubbs, Philjames, Pia van Gelder, Tristan Deratz, Vicky Browne & Darren Seltmann.