a viral performance in mutation

Shu Lea Cheang, 2021

With Isabelle Arvers (producer), Mathieu Marguerin (VFX director),

Roland Lauth (3D avatar design) and Aérea Negrot (music composition)

Sa, 18.9. 17-20 open casting performance

So, 19.9. 16-19 motion capture performance

UKI Virus Becoming takes the script excerpts from Shu Lea Cheang’s UKI, a sci-fi viral alt-reality cinema in the making and stages aspects of UKI’s film production in progress as live performance with its production crew members and the presence of spectators.

Conceived as a sequel to Cheang’s acclaimed scifi cyberpunk cult film, I.K.U. (2000), UKI tells the story of REIKO, a defunct IKU (orgasm) coder dumped on E-trashville by GENOM Co., whose eventful trajectories through the E-trashvile lead to UKI virus becoming. In her attempt to reboot herself, REIKO engages herself with the diverse, other-worldly E-trashville inhabitants that include human, non-human, nerds, geeks, trans-mutants, symbionts, microbes and variants. Emerging as UKI the virus amidst the noise blast, UKI propagates as critical mass and takes up the mission to infiltrate the occupied human body, to sabotage GENOM Co’s OrgaNismo production, to reclaim her own lost IKU data.