Lawrence Lek AIDOL, 2019. © Lawrence Lek. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London
Avatars: Alex Quicho and Günseli Yalcinkaya
This evening event featured lecture performances by writer and theorist Alex Quicho and writer and researcher Günseli Yalcinkaya on the subject of virtual avatars and online identities. Held as a parallel event to CCA’s exhibition Life Before Automation by Lawrence Lek, the event drew on the artists’ use of nonhuman characters in his work to explore the parameters of a near future interface between humanity and technology.
ALEX QUICHO: TWIN
In TWIN, Alex Quicho extends her ongoing research into nonhuman personae, tracing the erotic logic of doubling across art, politics, and everyday life. Building on Ruled by Venus, she explores the figure of the double — the twin, rival, or synthetic companion — as both seductive and estranging: a reflection that heightens distance as much as resemblance.
Through scenes of rivalry and replication, Quicho examines how the desire to merge is always shadowed by the threat of differentiation. From conversational AIs to cinematic doppelgängers, the double becomes a favourite machine for feeling: a system through which intimacy and alienation are jointly produced, accelerated, and aestheticised.
GÜNSELI YALCINKAYA: NPC
In NPC, Günseli Yalçınkaya traces the rise of non-playable characters – the programmable non-subject – across online culture to present an alternative reading of NPCs. In an age of hyper visibility and information excess, where standing out is a looming threat to individual freedom, being a non-player is a survival mechanism, a form of tactical invisibility against growing AI surveillance, both on and offline.
Using AI witness protection software, Yalçınkaya examines social media’s transformation into a non-space, from rewriting social codes to imagining an online environment defined by data, not vibes. With its blank face and pre-fab expression, the NPC masks itself from unwanted attention or state surveillance. Yet beneath its grey exterior lies the schizo, whose real intent is impossible to decode. The lecture-performance is accompanied by a live score, featuring London-based artist, VISIO.
Exhibition available to view from 6pm
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BIOGRAPHIES
Alex Quicho’s practice incorporates critical writing, performative lectures, and moving image, with a focus on how emerging technologies warp social reality and vice-versa. Past major projects include Girlstack (2023-25), an investigation into the planetary impact of inhuman ‘girl’ intelligence; Alley to Heaven (2021-23), a trilogy of videos and performances on data annotators and edge computing in the contested South China Sea; and Small Gods (2017-20), a book of departures in drone narratives. Her work has been featured in Wired, Frieze, Dazed, Vogue, Spike, The Face, MIT Technology Review, and more. Alex collaborates with arts institutions including Tate Britain, Somerset House Studios, Singapore Art Museum, Power Station of Art Shanghai, Julia Stoschek Collection, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Fondation Pernod-Ricard, and Rennie Museum. She teaches theory for MA Narrative Environments at Central Saint Martins, and studied Critical Writing at the Royal College of Art. She is from Manila, where she is in leadership of SYM, a think-tank for political narrative in Southeast Asia.
Günseli Yalcinkaya is an artist, curator and writer based in London, her practice of internet folklore explores emerging technologies, online culture and the myths embedded within those systems. She is a Contributing Editor at Dazed and the former host of Dazed podcast, Logged On. She has appeared in talks and panels at the Architectural Association, BFI, Somerset House, Sónar+D, Serpentine Galleries, LAS Art Foundation, Unsound Festival, Vienna Digital Cultures and X Museum. Her essays have been published in CURA, Dazed Magazine, Spike Art, Vogue, Zora Zine and 032c, as well as in books for Aksioma, Julia Stoschek and Metalabel.
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