Social Psychoanalysis in the Age of Spectacle.
After the Future is a rare opportunity to engage with the universe of AES+F online — a format the artists have approached with great selectivity. The playlist for After the Future follows a reverse chronology, offering a retrospective journey through AES+F's evolving aesthetic — from their most recent immersive works to early media experiments. All pieces are presented in selected fragments, with the exception of Psychosis (2016-2018), shown in full. Featuring original music by Dmitri Kourliandski, this video installation was inspired by Sarah Kane's final play. The exhibition opens with a fragment from Turandot 2070 (2020-ongoing), a recent large-scale video installation accompanied by a specially commissioned score by Vladimir Rannev. Also featured are fragments from Inverso Mundus (2015-ongoing) and the Liminal Space Trilogy — Last Riot (2005-2008), The Feast of Trimalchio (2009-ongoing), and Allegoria Sacra (2011-ongoing). The exhibition continues with selections from the King of the Forest cycle — Le Roi des Aulnes (2001), More than Paradise (2002), and King of the Forest: New York (2003) — and concludes with early experimental works including Othello. Asphyxiaphilia (2000), Yellow is Cooking, White is Eating (1998), and Who Wants to Live Forever (1998).
Alongside these major works, the exhibition includes behind-the-scenes footage from the Making Of series, offering viewers a privileged glimpse into the conceptual and technical processes behind AES+F's complex visual worlds.
With After the Future, CIFRA invites viewers to revisit and reimagine AES+F's prophetic visions — at once haunting, seductive, and disarmingly precise in their diagnosis of our collective present.
This landmark exhibition traces the arc of the collective's bold and relentless practice, which confronts the contradictions of the modern world through beauty, complexity, and a deep engagement with art history, reimagined for the digital age.
(From the press release of CIFRA)