Ananke: A Liturgy

Ananke: A Liturgy examines how contemporary systems of power operate not through explicit restrictions, but through a deliberate limitation of perspective, presenting a constructed field as the only possible world. Drawing on critical theory, postcolonial studies, and four thousand years of the labyrinth’s history as a political form, the work argues that the confusion experienced by those navigating contemporary capitalism is not inherent to the system, but a consequence of the position they occupy. The labyrinth does not confuse. It conceals the map.

The work is presented as a series of screens distributed throughout the space at different heights, each displaying fragments inspired by canonical Western paintings, processed through glitch aesthetics, ASCII typography, and generative particle animation. The screens do not form a sequence to be read from left to right. Instead, they constitute an environment to be traversed: a physical labyrinth whose overall logic remains inaccessible from any individual position within it.

Each screen displays shifting texts drawn from political statements, bureaucratic language, and literary testimonies spanning seven centuries — Dante, Rumi, Kafka, Primo Levi, Walter Benjamin, and Paulo Freire — voices that confirm, across different languages and centuries, that the argument being presented is not new. The viewer already knows this. The installation does not inform: it reminds.

The work culminates in a single phrase that forms simultaneously across all the screens:

فَأَيْنَ تَذْهَبُونَ — So, where are you going?

It is not a question about which direction to take, but about what one intends to do once the structure has been clearly seen.

Designer: Malak Yahia.

Tutors: José Carlos Florez i Mery Glez.