In the audiovisual performance “3-LA Burial Ritual,” allapopp stages a burial of their own digital twin, 3-LA. What was once conceived as a promise of continuity and immortality must disappear to create space for new visions and possibilities. But how do you say goodbye to something that was never alive? Is it permissible to bury something that doesn’t belong to you? What laws or moral rules apply when it comes to rendering a digital entity lifeless – and how could such an act even be performed? The performance accompanies the process of how a transhumanist dream transformed into a cyberfeminist nightmare, and how the pursuit of immortality became a reflection of what one actually wanted to escape. Questions of life, death, simulation, and animism intertwine with Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
How to Bury your Digital Twin
An audiovisual performance about saying goodbye to a digital twin.
allapopp is an interdisciplinary artist for digital media and performance living in Berlin, originally from Tatarstan in Russia. allapopp’s works combine Tatar, post-Soviet, queer, and migrant perspectives with a technology-integrative vision of the future, and formally move in the fields of digital art, performance and sound, as well as in interactive phygital live formats and XR and web experiences. allapopp works with institutions such as HAU Berlin and the LAS Foundation, has completed artistic training and practice in Germany, the EU, China, Rwanda, Japan, and the USA, and is a co-founder of the music projects TATAR KYZ:LAR and BBB_ as well as part of the dgtlfmnsm collective and the Dreaming Beyond AI network.