Stealth Care: Wellness from the Algorithm

Exhibition

31 May

Amanda Bennetts
28 June – 03 August 2024

Amanda Bennetts, *Stealth Care: Wellness from the Algorithm*, 2024, Studio view. Photo: Christine Hall

Stealth Care: Wellness from the Algorithm invites visitors into the spectral spaces where AI, health data, and artistic and scientific research converge, interrogating the porous boundaries where data ownership and algorithmic agency bleed into the realities of healthcare and wellness industries. This immersive, multi-sensory installation is born from six months of cross-disciplinary research in Austria with Ars Electronica x IT:U, and harnesses machine learning and Bennetts’ personal, ‘non-normative’ crip and chronically ill bio-data as a foundational research element. Can the quantified self serve the ill body? As someone with an extensive medical data profile, Bennetts sought to understand when her biological data becomes the focal point, separated from non-normative measurements and untethered from the exploitation of third-party health data frameworks; what will it unveil?

Amanda Bennetts, *Stealth Care: Wellness from the Algorithm*, Exhibition view, 2024, Outer Space. Photo: Louis Lim

Harvesting her diseased muscle data using a wearable Electromyography (EMG) device, Bennetts gives physicality to the unseen frequencies of her muscles into speculative therapies that blur the lines between empirical science and pseudo-wellness ritual. Can these emerging technologies truly make one's health visible and understood? Echoing the serene ambience of Bennetts’ time spent in Central European thermal spas against the sterility of medical environments, the gallery morphs into a site where bio-data is meticulously analysed, categorised, and experienced. In this context, the quantified self is not just a subject of care but can be empowered, active, and autonomous in reclaiming their own bodily narrative.

Outer Space Gallery

420 Brunswick Street,
Judith Wright Arts Centre,
Fortitude Valley, QLD

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Opening

6pm–9pm
Friday 28 June 2024
Free entry, all welcome

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Visit

June 28 – August 3
Wednesday to Saturday
10am–5pm

Exhibition Text

Written by Riana Head-Toussant

VIEW

Public Program

Artist talk with Amanda Bennets
Health Beyond Data: Do algorithms care?
June 29, 2pm–3pm

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Amanda Bennetts is a new media and installation artist based on the Sunshine Coast (Kabi Kabi Country). Living with a progressive neurological disease and a rare muscular disease, Bennetts harnesses her lived experience to critically explore themes of care, illness, and disability. Her work probes the politically charged and socially determined realms of living as an ill body, creating large immersive installations that blend materiality with emerging technology, video, sound, and mass-produced objects within clinical and disability aesthetics.

A Queensland College of Art and Design graduate, Bennetts was awarded with the 2022 Industry Graduation Award for Best In Show. Her installations have been featured in solo exhibitions at Sydney’s Firstdraft and Brisbane’s Metro Arts. Bennetts was also a finalist in the 2023 Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, showcasing her work at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane. In 2023, she expanded her international presence by exhibiting at the Ars Electronica festival, presenting a collaborative piece developed during the Ars Electronica x IT:U FOUNDING LAB Summer School. More recently, Amanda completed a residency at CTM Festival’s MusicMakers Hacklab in Berlin, where she was selected with 9 international artists to explore the festival theme ‘Sustenance.’ Her collaborative project, ‘Untuning Rituals,’ blended experimental sounds and body movement, culminating in a live performance at Berlin’s Radialsystem Halle.

@amanda_bennetts_ / amandabennetts.art