On Friday the 1st of February at 1PM an open lecture by Kolbeinn Hugi will be held at the Iceland University of the Arts, Laugarnesvegur 91.

In modern day Iceland, the Svartsengi (Black Meadow) power plant supplies immense power to the growing number of surrounding cryptomines who use the energy to generate and maintain The Blockchain, a digital ledger of incorruptible technological truth, used for global financial transactions of intangible cryptocurrencies. The industrial waste from the this production process is pumped into the lava fields next to the power plant and forms a large Blue Lagoon. This strange lagoon attracts pilgrims from all over the planet, who bathe in the gooey wastewater and paint their bodies white in a fascinating ritual started by the natives who believed in incredible healing powers of the white silicone sludge that lies at the bottom of the lagoon. This true, but surreal setting is the launchpad of the Cryptopia.one video series, a gonzo-ethnological exploration into a post-colonized nation’s distant past, all the way into a neo-cryptocolonial scenario of a deep possible future.

Born in 1979 in Reykjavík, Kolbeinn Hugi is an artist of a lost generation that emerged in the wake of the great cataclysmic rift between innocence and irony of the bleak landscape of neo-capitalist Reykjavík of modern times.
Taking diverse motifs from 1970s techno-futurism, pseudoarcheology and new-age conspiracy theories, his work aims to evoke an alternate model of society and suggests that the world as it is now isn’t necessarily how it has to be. Kolbeinn has recently studied with Edgar Cayce in the informal setting of dream state trances established by the great sleeping medium after his death in 1945. There, he absorbed the acute sensibility to time and space associated with Cayce’s phantom sculptures as set up in his Astral Pavillion. Kolbeinn’s work is simple work that aims for the heart, not for the head. His work has been exhibited widely around the western world from MoMA PS1 to abandoned abodes at the arctic circle.

Open lectures in Laugarnes will take place in the fall of 2018, hosted by Departments of Art Education, Fine Art and Performing Arts.

The lecture will be held in English and is open to all. Facebook event.