Andreas Ervik
Why do pigs become cute when they put on a hat?
Thursday, 08.06.23 at 18:00 in the gallery. Kristoffer Myskja’s exhibition can be seen prior to the lecture. Note that it will be held in Norwegian.
In this lecture, Andreas Ervik will connect Kristoffer Myskja’s exhibition “Failures in Automation” to one of the most central aesthetic categories of our time: cuteness. Social media is full of videos and pictures of cute animals, and animals have been central characters in animation for years. What is cuteness, how does it work, and why has it become so important to us? And, most importantly, why do pigs become cute when they put on a hat? These are central questions that will be answered here. With critical perspectives on consumer culture, industrial farming and pets, new perspectives are offered on the animals we represent, subjugate to ourselves, and the animal that humans, despite all our technological development, still are.
Andreas Ervik (b. 1987) is an associate professor at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Ervik has a Ph.D. in media studies. His first book, “Becoming Human Amid Diversions: Playful, Stupid, Cute, and Funny Evolution,” was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. In the book, Ervik investigates distractions in digital culture, from mindless scrolling to cute animals on social media, with perspectives from evolutionary biology. Ervik is also an artist with a multimodal practice that includes everything from images, music, and video to site-specific installations and workshops. The luxury brand SANKE is a central ongoing project.
andreaservik.com
sankeofnorway.com
