A Living Error is more than a flaw or glitch in the system. It is an unforeseen deviation that does not signify failure, but transformation — a beginning from which something new emerges. Life forms that fall outside the grid: hybrid, ambiguous, in a state of perpetual becoming.

On the occasion of the exhibition LIVING ERRORS, the gallery MARTINETZ is transformed into an interdisciplinary laboratory. Katja Novitskova, Eva Papamargariti, and Mary-Audrey Ramirez conduct speculative research at the intersection of art, biology, ecology, and technology — beyond the test tube, beyond genetic manipulation. The beings that emerge here are plausible, but not yet real. They fit into no category. That, too, is a Living Error: a form that falls outside the grid, simply because the grid is too narrow.

What connects the three positions is a shared perspective: one that reaches beyond the human and perceives the non-human not as a threat, but as transformative potential. Their hybrid beings — critters, mutants, approximations — resist binary categorisation. They are neither entirely organic nor entirely mechanical, neither fully real nor purely fictional.

Katja Novitskova delves deep into scientific databases — into genomic landscapes, protein models, and the image data of wildlife cameras that ceaselessly document the non-human. What she finds there, she transfers onto plates of synthetic clay, printed with UV ink. Like ancient clay tablets, these works capture the poetics of numerical vision — and become cultural fossils at the very moment of their creation. What can we learn about the world when we explore it through a gaze that is more than human, and cease to place ourselves at the centre? Perhaps that our perception is very monotonous and limited — and that shifts in perspective hold enormous potential.

Eva Papamargariti gives form to digital hybrid creatures in ceramics and moving images — bodies suspended between matter and code, between the present and an as yet unwritten tomorrow. Her practice explores the corporeal as a fluid concept, shaped by technology and the countless non-human actors that inhabit our world. The error lives here in the in-between: in the not-yet-finished, in the being that refuses definition — and in doing so raises the question of whether the boundary between human and non-human was ever as clear as we thought.

Mary-Audrey Ramirez first models her critters in digital space before translating them into 3D-printed sand. Her creatures spring from a visual world of gaming and digital pop culture, yet feel timeless — like gargoyles that have passed through an algorithm. They carry no sense of menace: what we encounter here are insectoid and reptilian beings that disarm us with their strangeness just as much as they enchant us with a peculiar cuteness — critters that awaken in us an impulse to care. Especially when they meet us on picture carriers of finely shimmering satin.

Together, the three artists sketch a speculative form of coexistence: LIVING ERRORS creates a laboratory in which errors need not be studied and corrected, but where the strange — so often associated with threat — is welcomed. An invitation to entertain the idea that errors do not mean the end of the world, but can be the beginning of something new — and perhaps, too, to accept oneself and others, with all their imperfections and flaws.

Sophia Naumann

‍