5 September - 10 November 2019

Solo Exhibition at HEK Basel, Switzerland

“Welcome to Farsight Freeport, the smart museum of the future!

Launching in 2029, our integrated architectural prototype demonstrates how discerning connoisseurs can exchange, store, and exhibit their digital art collections.

For our demo showroom in Basel, we feature a selection of early media artworks by Farsight CEO and founder Lu Ming Long, created years before he pivoted from a career in content production to trend forecasting.

We understand how difficult it is for collectors to maximise public engagement while maintaining security and curatorial integrity.

To this end, our patented Server/Servant Surveillance System (SSSS) employs physical and psychological barriers to keep your precious artworks safe from accidental damage and unauthorised replication.”

- Farsight CEO Statement

Short introductory text

With Farsight Freeport, HeK(House of Electronic Arts Basel) presents the first solo exhibition of the British-Chinese artist Lawrence Lek in Switzerland. With his immersive, virtualworlds and electronic soundtracks, the London-based artist has developed an independent and unique visual language. Lek has created a very special scenario for the exhibition at HeK. Visitors are invited to enter a Gesamtkunstwerk that transports participants to the year 2065. It is a time in which artificial intelligence (AI) dominates and controls all areas of social, industrial and economic life. The real architectural environment is imitated to the virtual worlds created by the artist. In this utopian scenario, in which HeK has been converted into a freeport warehouse, we encounter the artist's works again and immerse ourselves in his video installations, computer games and VR installations.

Lek is deeply concerned with the interplay of politics, technology, and cultural production; his narratives reflect profoundly on the future of oursociety, for example on the automation of work through AI and its universal use in all sectors of our society.

In these works, the dystopian elements of the techno-industrial complex are not to be understood in traditional Orwellian terms where an elite dictatorship controls the population through surveillance. Rather, Lek mergesutopia and dystopia by envisioning automation without class restrictions, where everybody benefits from luxurious architecture, boutique services and endless fun. Farsight Freeport takes the models of platform capitalism embraced by Airbnb and Uber to their logical conclusion. Yet this future scenario remains governed by paradox; the absence of life is eerie and claustrophobic, but the presence of art renders the world visually appealing and seductive.

Reflections on techno-futurist tendencies and their implementation in society are not the only thought-provoking aspects of the artist’s work. Lek uses 3D animation, virtual reality and video games – immersive forms of mass-entertainment – to mirror society’s hopes and fears for the future. By producing interactive environments as a complement to his video essays, Lek highlights how new models of sensory immersion and the industry of networked spectacle continue to shape the human condition.

Curated by Sabine Himmelsbach and Boris Magrini