**SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS**, Installation view, Glitch

Analysing the ties between facts, fake news and political phenomena, especially within right-wing populism, Emma Adler is a multimedia artist reflecting on the themes of virtuality and reality, the construction of truths and conspiracy theories. She has been working on the complex theme of conspiracy theories for over the last five years, in works such as Reality Show (2018) or Death means nothing when you're dead (2017), emphasising the dynamics that allow them to survive through their dissemination on the web and their relationship with particular socio-political situations of uncertainty, such as the recent pandemic and the rise of conspiracy movements such as QAnon. Or other realities such as Project Blue Beam, “whose followers believe that the sky is manipulated by sophisticated technology” she states.

**SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS**, Installation View, Corridor

In their infancy, the ideas born with contemporary information technologies had the utopian aspiration to bring knowledge to everyone, but it seems now people are more disoriented than ever. Adler plays up with the notion of what is real and what seems real, using self-made video footage found while browsing on Youtube, one of the main media used for the spread of pseudo-sciences and conspiracies.

**SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS**, Installation View, Creature

Retrieving elements from the digital realm is also a characteristic of her last exhibition SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS (2021) - a dystopian landscape where a flesh-coloured creature made of puffer jackets climbs up a wall “built” of modular images, reminding low poly video games aesthetic, which is also confirmed by other elements such as the Gaming Chair and an old pseudo-interactive gaming machine from early 2000s, which introduce to us visitors with a looping question: "Do you believe in truth?” If you do "press start”.

**SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS**, Installation View

Hi Emma, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions about your work… I have to admit, your art was pretty a new unexpected encounter, so I would like to have a more deep overview on your interests and processes. Your work relates to different medias such as sculptures, videos, light, sounds… they all intersect shaping environments to experience in first person. What were your first baby steps into the art world?

Hey, thanks you for your interest! I guess those first steps into the art world happened far far away from the art world, in a small village.I was actually doing homework for art classes one celebration - much to the consternation of my mother, who was always worried about the carpet, and for good reason. The outcome were weird paintings on giant cardboard or building-foam-formations. I used to take those productions wrapped in garbage bags on my 1 hour train ride to school and everybody, especially the teachers, were like: WTF?! Now, after many years and detours that brought me quite late but finally to and through art school, I am still tempted to build big…

Mostly, I am building large-scale multimedia installations, rooms into rooms which may resemble stages or sets. Usually my projects are developed after a period of research, and specifically for certain exhibition spaces. Besides the interlacing of spaces, realities and identities, my projects revolve around thematic complexes such as virtuality and reality, original and copy - and my focus: the fake with the confusions that arise around it. What is real what’s fake? Is a replica I build an original? Is the original dependent on the copy? I am especially hooked by those twists and turns which can be a base for new projects. For almost 5 years, the core of my interest has been in conspiracy theories.

The construction of different notions of reality is central in your research — as in Death means nothing when you're dead (2017), a multimedia installation of two rooms that plays up with these two concepts. As we living in times full of trolls and fake news, how does your work reflect on the relationship between media and the construction of lies and truths?

Yes! You are right: The question about various layers of reality is indeed central in my work. It brought me to the examination of conspiracy theories in 2017, when the work DMNWYD was developed and exhibited. 2017 was the year after Trump's election and when he actually moved into the White House. The occurring overuse of the term "fake," the invention of „alternative facts“, and the new habit, especially by right-wing populists, of simply labelling opposite opinions as "fake news" have shaken the concept of truth and reduced it to absurdity.

In DMNWYD, the visitor enters a grey and sterile office-like space consisting of two exactly identical cubicles. The image of a supposedly virtually constructed space flickers on the PC monitors. In the second part of the exhibition, however, it becomes apparent that that "virtual room" depicted on the monitors is actually „real“: not digitally built but manually constructed with wood, wallpaper, and other materials. Does one see the same space on the computers in the bureau? Is it perhaps a video surveillance system? In one cabin, the image is partly covered by an open browser - Youtubevideos of fake clouds, drone birds - manipulations of our so-called reality?

My works often deal with confusions and questions that assume certainties and provoke habitual patterns of vision. An important keyword within my artistic vocabulary is Wahrnehmung - which means perception in German, but the direct translation says: true - taking or take for true. How much does truth have to do with perception? Some say: I only believe what I see - but isn’t it rather to see only what one believes in?

The internets algorithms, constantly confirming one's own point of view by providing the corresponding images and data, reinforce the impression that one is getting closer and closer to the truth. It's almost cute that the www was seen as a "tool for democracy and peace," as in 1999 the Yahoo! Internet Life magazine orated that the constant verifiability of statements would oblige politicians to honesty. Well, we all know better now…There are probably as many versions of the truth as there are people searching for it.

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Conspiracy theories are probably the most extreme example of how knowledge and facts can be manipulated to produce a sort of “truth” and belief. Are there any particular conspiracies that inform your work?

True, and two things, the internet and uncertain times are fuel to the fire for them. I can tell, my research was more fun before the pandemic…

One of my favorite conspiracy concepts is Project Blue Beam, whose followers believe (among other things) that the sky is manipulated by sophisticated technology such as huge projections. In the net circulate numerous videos with alleged proofs of the falseness of the sun.... To support these wild theories, information material from Nasa, e.g. videos from weather satellites, is used - but completely reinterpreted.

With „evidence“ and eloquence a different reality is made up. Thus, while one may enjoy the beautiful evening sun, another gets into fear and fright because, despite the view is objectively the same, both are seeing something completely different. Conspiracy theories are, after all, nothing else than reality-creation-systems.

I took up this conspiratorial narrative in REALITY SHOW, 2018: the installation, a sort of clinical laboratory, contains ominous arrangements of artificial stones, iridescent materials and a solarium - a Sun-simulator - which appears in that environment as a technical instrument with its unnatural, strange (but real UV-) light. The monitors are showing different pseudo-scientific and self-made found video-footage.

The laughter about the abstruse theses and their believers quickly gets stuck in one's throat when looking at the political landscape (at that time): Trump in America and the radical right-wing party AfD in Germany (which has been growing stronger and stronger since 2015, receiving over 20% of the vote at that point in some parts of the country). I mean, in the same way that conspiracy theorists do, right-wing populists bend and stretch the truth to their liking. With the pandemic occurred an omnipresence of conspiracy concepts. This development went hand in hand with a shift in tone, becoming highly political. Political approaches of my projects are not always obvious: no matter what my initial starting was, the works neither comes with an introduction nor with instructions on how to be read or seen - but remain free for (any) interpretation.

**if the sun is so hot why is the space so cold**, 2020

The aesthetic of the virtual is a big influence throughout all your production, but especially in your latest exhibition SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS (2021), which include a pseudo-interactive video game among other elements coming from the gaming scene. This is also a fundamental way to engage with whoever finds in the exhibition space, which in this specific case was accessible by a sort of portal. I’m really curious to know more about the ideas and process behind this exhibition…

So, SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS* is the first part of a new body of work dealing with conspiracy concepts in our - one is tempted to say - post-factual age, dealing with populism and pandemic and their spread on the internet. The initial and central question is to what extent a separation between real vs digital can - in this context - still be maintained?

The current conspiracy scene around Corona, (from QAnon to Querdenker) manifested itself, especially in the early stages, on Youtube and later on Telegram. Obviously driven by the greed for clicks, Youtuber transformed to Covid-„experts“, while claiming to care about bringing the "truth" to light. So I based my researches on browsing forums and watching countless of videos related to this contents, so SIMULATOR [SIC!]NESS turned out quite dystopian.

Some elements I came across during my research have been transferred from the digital to the exhibition space, like the Gaming Chair - as YouTubers preach from such a throne to their followers. Beside that, the gaming chair is an insanely interesting object: its design promises dynamism and speed, but it is created to sit on it (in front of the computer) for hours - moreover, it is located on the increasingly obsolete border between virtuality and reality. Placed on a pile of sand in flickering neon lights, the one presented is a replica made of PU foam, a copy of a copy, painted with chameleon car paint, shimmering in a surreal alienesque violet-green.

Scrap heap, artificial stones and a creature of fleshcoloured puffer jackets, which are slightly moving, they all form together a dystopian landscape placed in between the room’s walls, where the constant repetition of the identical concrete slap gives a VR aesthetic à la second life or other games. To access this room one must pass through a kind of portal, cut-out in the wall of a low corridor which it narrows towards the end, bathed in the green light of selfie lamps.

Plus, at the entrance, a gaming machine from the early 2000s runs a pseudo-interactive video game. It features the protagonists, the EGO-Shooters of the current conspiracy scene as "players" to be selected. The game opens with a question: "Do you believe in truth?"/"press start"... no matter how much you interact with the screen, nothing changes. The game always ends in RESET before crashing and starting over.

*To the title: The term "Simulator Sickness" refers to a feeling of nausea that can occur in flight simulators or during extended stays in virtual realities, [sic!] highlights quoted errors in texts.

**Death means nothing when you're dead,** 2017, Bureau

**Death means nothing when you're dead**, 2017, Screen

Your productions has a tangible engagement with physical spaces, but it also messes up with the concepts of what’s virtual and what’s real. The idea of fully adopting virtuality is extremely popular nowadays, and seems to ignore the real complications of the case. What is your opinion on this metaverse-enthusiasm? Is for example taking your work to an exclusively virtual level something you have ever thought of doing?

I have to say that I really love to mess up a bit with these concepts: I am so much more interested in building a fake virtual world into the actual space than the other way round. It needs a weird turn, an absurdity is necessary to make it work for me. Only if there would be a conceptual plus or let’s say a necessity within the concept, I could quite well imagine to mount some virtual installations into the metaverse, but I adore a good old sweaty set-up. My work moves along the ever-decreasing boundary, back and forth between virtual vs real, exploring it.

The metaverse as a self-sufficient virtual world is exciting - also from a philosophical point of view: isn't our perception itself already a simulation (hi Plato!)? What then is the reality of the metaverse, which is supposed to exist autonomously? If Baudrillard, who already in the 80s spoke of hyperreality (regarding TV & Co), could learn about the metaverse, I wonder what pirouettes he will perform in his grave!

In the sci-fi novel from which the term metaverse comes, it becomes quite dystopian at the end. I am intrigued by it, but let’s see how it develops - for now it's off to a decent start: a second reality with no physical location, where all corporeality dissolves... and the first thing it offers? Sure: designer outfits to shopping for the avatar! I mean: that's so silly that it's already funny again!

**Death means nothing when you're dead**, 2017, Virtueller Raum

In Leaving Lavandia (2020) the soundscape is a reference to a modern myth from 1996 regarding a certain level of the popular video game Pokemon and a strange tune of music (the legend says) inducing suicide in Japanese kids. Sounds can lead to uncanny feelings and deeply characterise the viewer experience; often linked to light, it can animate environments and machines, such as in If The Sun Is So Hot Why Is The Space So Cold? (2020). How do you believe these two elements (sound and light) can contribute to defining the emotional experience of your environments?

Both elements obviously have a great influence on our physical as well as psychological state and feelings. Flickering (manipulated) neon light, dull machine hum or chirping drone sound have a rather subconscious effect. (I also choose wall colours carefully, or lower the ceiling of the exhibition space to create a claustrophobic feeling.)

Light is really a central element in many of my installations. I especially like to work with solariums a lot - it's that glaring light that you can't really look into, that unnatural but also supernatural uv light. False sunlight. These home tanning beds to which something oddly adheres, can - slightly disguised - transform and mutate into dystopian creatures or ... machines. The particular environment of the installation also influences in reinforce the effect. When switched on, they completely change the space. Combined with iridescent materials, they create reflections reminiscent of northern lights… some parts that were invisible before come to light in the UV light.

The machines also produce sound, which to me is important as well. In the case of Leaving Lavandia its more the information about it that makes it so uncanny…

In SIMULATOR [SICK!]NESS the sound that comes out of the game(ing machine), quite dark and intimidating, also penetrates the other space which supports the concept.

**REΔLITY SHOW Δ-δ** (delta-delta), A-Train-(NASA), Video still

Last but not least, I always like to ask about what’s coming next: current projects you’re working on or future experimentation you would like to develop?

I am excited about an upcoming solo exhibition at Galerie Martinetz during DC Open! For this I am working on the second part of the new series - not revealing too much yet, but the vexation between real vs.virtual wants to be pushed further. Currently I am realizing new pieces as an other gaming chair replica and in the near future I want to experiment with VR and AR and I am looking forward to collaborate with some great people to develop and realize my ideas.