Mi†ra presents ‘nine-sum sorcery’ a collaborative project by Studio LABOUR in collaboration with Hani Mojtahedy, Enes Güç, Zeynep Schilling, Evelyn Bencicova, MFO, and Hydra .‘nine-sum sorcery’ premiered at Berlin Atonal 2019 as a live audio-visual performance work as a project initiated by studio LABOUR.

‘nine-sum sorcery’ is an audio-visual piece composed of three chapters – “The Wheel”, “Cyclone” and “Xerodrome”. ‘nine-sum sorcery’ draws inspiration from Reza Negarestani’s theory-fiction book “Cyclonopedia”, which imagines oil as a sentient being. The work presents itself as a lament, an allegory of global complicity with strange and dark forces, and views oil as a “narrative lubricant”, “pipeline crawler” and “hydrocarbon corpse juice” that runs through the far-away past into the present until it consumes the entire future. The object of desire defines the means of destruction, using conflict and human greed to free itself from the depths.

The sound of ‘nine-sum sorcery’ is co-created by experimental musician HATAM, Persian/Kurdish vocalist Hani Mojtahedy, and percussionist Colin Hacklander in a bold synthesis of traditions and sculptural digital sound practices. The visuals by Enes Güç and Evelyn Bencicova combine different approaches to the 3D-realm closely related to the concept of each chapter: modeled objects, drone scans, and point-clouds representing the data-dust of the infinite desert, the Xerodrome. The piece is completed with an original graphic illustration by Zeynep Schilling, using specific occult imagery, inspired by ‘Hydroglyph, or simply snake-writing,’ another reference to “Cyclonopedia”.

Together they form Mi†ra.

(images from Atonal Berlin 2019)

Evelyn Bencicova (b. Bratislava, 1992) is a visual creative specialising in photography and art direction. Informed by her background in fine art and new media studies (University for Applied Arts, Vienna), Evelyn’s practice combines her interest in contemporary culture with academic research to create a unique aesthetic space in which the conceptual meets the visual.

Evelyn constructs compelling narrative scenarios that blur the lines between reality, memory and imagination “fictions based on truth”. Depicting multifaceted representations as illusions, Evelyn plays with the viewer’s perception to entice them into the labyrinth of her imagination. Her disturbingly beautiful visual language and washed-out colour palette, set within curiously symbolic environments, allow for a deep exploration of the themes that take her works and images far beyond what they reveal at first glance.

Collaboration repertoire includes cultural institutions such as Frieze, Royal Opera House,
Berghain, Kunsthalle Basel, National Portrait Gallery, Institute for Molecular Biotechnology and MQ Vienna. Evelyn's work was published in international art books, magazines (Vogue Portugal, Vogue Czechoslovakia, ZEIT Magazine, Dazed & Confused, i-D, Frieze, GUP, HANT, Metal etc) and exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. She also received numerous awards for
both photography and art-direction including Hasselblad Masters, Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize, Portrait of Britain, Lens Culture award, Gomma Grant, Lens Culture and Berlin Masters 2020 to mention a few.

In 2019 Evelyn completed artistic residency in Mimic Studio which shifted her practice into more immersive and experimental forms of story-telling. Audio-visual work “Next time die consciously” (2018) and “nine sum-sorcery” (2019) were premiered at main stage of Atonal Berlin, MIRA (Barcelona) and Regenerations (Amsterdam). VR installation “Artificial Tears” was exhibited at Berlin Photo Week in Kraftwerk and Synthesis Gallery (Berlin). The work was also awarded by VR Art Prize scholarship by Deutsche Bank.