For the ICA’s Dialogues series, two curators invite two artists to each create an independent project that activates the distinctive “V” shape of its second floor galleries. The conversation continues in the related publication series. Each artist determines the contents of their half of the publication, which also includes texts from each curator. Dialogue through and about distinct artistic visions unfolds in the spaces of both the gallery and publication, revealing overlap, resonance, and difference.

For the inaugural installment, artists Irena Haiduk and Martine Syms created new works developed for the ICA. Both are committed to ongoing research-based projects that reshape familiar entities, such as the corporation or the personal digital assistant, into complex works of art. These are multi-disciplinary projects that are not merely representations of those things, but are the things themselves: a corporation founded by Haiduk and a chatbot coded by Syms. Marked by each artist’s visual style and conceptual approach, these projects inhabited the ICA as interactive platforms that invited participation.

By reinventing familiar commercial and technological forms, the artists offer calls to action. They ask us to rethink our relationships to things and to others, and to shift how we engage with dominant structures. Each of these projects is a chapter within a larger work that will continue to evolve over time.