NINA DAVIES (SEPTEMBER 12—25 2025, ONLINE)

Precursing

digital video, color, sound, 11’ 13”, 2023, Canada/United Kingdom

created by Nina Davies

September 12—25 2025

vral.org

Precursing is a video work which was commissioned by Matt’s Gallery for her show Precursing in 2023. The video work presents a fictional narrative narrated by —software engineers and lawers—and filmed across urban interiors and public sites. Taking the NPC trend on TikTok as a starting place, Davies speculates on why people might be drawn to move in such a way. Looking to the inclusion of predictive technology within everyday object, such as self-driving cars, the works offers a snapshot into a world that is becoming increasingly informed by the future rather than the past. From this performers move not through narrative choreography but through anticipatory logics, blurring the boundaries between documentary realism and procedural animation. Precursing reframes human motion not as expression but as pre-emptive compliance: a choreography composed for the algorithm rather than the audience.

Nina Davies is a Canadian-British artist whose work explores the intersections of movement, technology, and speculative fiction. Through video, performance, and sound, she examines how bodily gesture is shaped by algorithmic systems, predictive technologies, and platform aesthetics. Often drawing from viral dance trends and gaming cultures, Davies constructs fictional frameworks in which choreography becomes a mode of adaptation, resistance, or legibility under machinic conditions. Her recent exhibitions include Precursing at Matt’s Gallery (London), Becoming the Edit at Seventeen Gallery (London), and Image Syncers at Future Gallery (Berlin), with additional presentations at FACT Liverpool and Artspace Sydney. She lives and works in London.