Ania Catherine & Dejha Ti multimedia artists have announced their collaboration with gender-neutral Chinese luxury brand, Mithridate and Creative Director and Designer Demon Zhang. The interactive experiential digital work entitled Automatiste, will showcase Mithridate’s AW21 collection at London Fashion Week on 22nd February 2021.
This will be the second collaboration between Mithridate and the duo, represented by MTArt Agency, having presented the brand’s SS21 presentation at London Fashion Week in 2020 in a piece that replaced the catwalk for a 35-minute immersive performance installation at London’s Serpentine Galleries. The title, Automatiste, is derived from the French adjective to describe the Surrealist Automatism method for creating art. Automatiste will plunge viewers around the world into temporary portals portraying the richness, the danger, the beauty and raw honesty of the subconscious mind, a key inspiration for the collection. Ania and Dejha’s work seamlessly weaves the Mithridate AW21 collection pieces into an immersive digital world and AI, the end result and the creative process alike draw from automatism and chance operations to conceptualize a journey into the protagonist’s subconscious inner workings, illusions, memories, and dreams.
“We cherish being trusted so fully by Mithridate, and that trust is bleeding into the rest of our phenomenal team, who are all pushing the boundaries with their own contributions to make an experience that we all believe will mark a new chapter in the history of fashion, art, and technology. We want to show that digital-only doesn’t need to mean second rate and everyone shouldn’t be sitting around waiting for the ‘real thing’ to happen again. This is the real thing. It’s thrilling to us that anyone with internet access can take this journey with us, share digital space and be introduced to Mithridate’s collection through our art.”
Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti
As one might expect from the critically acclaimed and award-winning art+tech duo, there is no shortage of ambitious and experimental tech going into this multifaceted work. It weaves together performance art, interactive film, augmented reality, poetry, 3D, machine learning, AI, XR face filters, photography, sound, and experimental web design. “It feels like we’re creating a digital opera” say the artists, as they oversee and direct an international team of programmers, artists, producers, musicians, designers, editors, to bring to life their interpretation of the collection’s core themes. Their team is working across Los Angeles, Shanghai, Istanbul, London, Washington DC, Rome, Baltimore and includes musician Tony Cruise, XR artist Aaron Jablonski, 3D artist Curry Tian, and Immersive Kind Studios.
Incorporating some of the most advanced technologies used in fashion to date, the artists stress that innovative use of technology is not the end in itself, only a means to an end. According to the duo, digital-only contexts present just as many exciting possibilities as they do challenges to those willing to open their minds and take risks; which they continue to demonstrate with their boundary-pushing work.
Automatiste will be live at 10:45 GMT on Monday, 22nd February at London Fashion Week and will be accessible via automatiste.mithridate.uk
ABOUT MITHRIDATE
Gender-neutral, luxury Chinese brand Mithridate was founded by Demon Zhang in 2018 with an overarching appreciation for art and community at the heart of the brand’s DNA. Through Zhang’s considered designs, her work celebrates luxury sustainable couture, bespoke craftsmanship combined with ancient Chinese artisan techniques to provide strength and protection whilst empowering her collaborative, artistic, global community. mithridate.uk @mithridate.official
ABOUT ANIA CATHERINE & DEJHA TI
Dejha Ti and Ania Catherine are an award-winning Los Angeles-based artist duo whose practice merges environments, performance, and creative technology. Both conceptual artists, their expertise collide—Ti with an extensive background in immersive art and human-computer interaction (HCI), and Catherine a recognized choreographer, performance artist and London School of Economics gender scholar. Their work culminates in immersive experiences, drawing audiences into idiosyncratic worlds. Rooted in the understanding that immersion is not only a physical state but also an emotional and psychological one, their work is defined by nuance within scale, producing a feeling instead of a spectacle. operator.la
