FUNCTION OF DESIRE

SOLO EXHIBITION BY DRINKMILK

 

May 24 – June 10, 2025

Opening: Saturday, May 24 at 6:00 PM

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The exhibition Function of Desire marks the culmination of Drinkmilk's six-month artist-in-residence program at Scope BLN. 

Through a series of video and objects made from natural and corporeal materials, Drinkmilk - the duo Luc Cimino and Gracie Margherita Elbel, explores the intersections of digital systems, bodily memory, the digitized concept of desire and the erotics of repetition.

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A translation of digits and the technology of the body. The way in movement can become a dream, a direction, merely a velocity, action focused, the result; a matter of fact. The erotic is found in the parallel, like porn hiding behind a curtain. Erotica likes to repeat a movement so that it becomes memorable, expansive in the mind’s storage and never disillusioned by a result of action. 

What's saved is naturally velocious, regardless of its hard drive. Even the slight of arm, foot, tongue, could become rigid, un-lubricated. When does an action become a way to get something? Where does it become motivated to be anything bigger, to reach fantasy into reality? 

For the object itself (technological or other), these actions may look like: downloading, searching, zooming, scrolling, inserted, plugged. It can contain actions of offloading (bin, trash, recycle, junk, spam). 

For the physical (body or form), it could be: grasping, grabbing, pushing, pulling, inserting, looking. A verbing sensation that can align with the antiquated. An antiquated sensation that has a direct completion, a direct line to finishing. 

Porn likes to be seen and used up. Exploitation feels good because its fast and “I'm guilty of it”. Logging-in feels good. Remembering a password feels good. Statistically satisfied in the profane blue light. 

But there are boundaries to this, it lives on a scale, measured and known. Exploitation reaches its capacity in the field of the visible. Drowned in blue light the body becomes over exposed. The velocious nature of subscriptions, ‘new-videos-every-thursday’. 

We have subscribers who have accumulated us a sum of money for the use of ourselves. But where is erotic in these instances? It is not the touch, the physical nature of sensual conjunction. Instead it is the semiotic understanding of the view of a body on display. 

The connection between the visible and the known. This connection holds less the more the velocity is increased. Time is shortened between connections and you are asked to be less sensitive, as this diminishes the ability to self-exploit. Meaning is reduced to its lowest capacity.