Anastassia Varabiova
Blending dread and humour, **Try Normal Life Maxxing** is a collection of sculptural and time-based works that speculates on the social and material impacts of digital technology.
Normally-distinguishable realms of the real and the virtual are blurred in Varabiova’s work, showing the ways in which people might attempt to mimic normality after their ideas of reality have been transformed by screen-based living.
The title is a nod to ‘looksmaxxing,’ a term used in online forums to describe maximising one's physical attractiveness in pursuit of status. The work presents a blunt commentary on the absurdity of contemporary digital culture and its potential to distort ideas of reality.
In the live performance piece **Touching Grass IRL,** Varabiova interacts with a rectangle of turf roll grass installed on the floor of the gallery space. ‘Touch grass’ is a phrase used in online spaces to dismiss someone seemingly out of touch with reality. Responding to the development of increasingly simulated ways of living, this phrase is taken as literal advice for a better life in a performative gesture.
Accompanying the live performance is Varabiova’s smartphone, suspended on the gallery wall for the duration of the show. A cage-like structure holds the device as it plays **aissatsana_hope_doom_weird_core_edit.mp4**, a video-collage of appropriated footage collected from Varabiova’s social media feed, reflecting internet meta-humour and questioning the role of the algorithm in the construction of reality.
This thesis explores the leading misconceptions around digital technologies, in particular around the area of materiality. It investigates the possible consequences of using the word cloud in the context of computers.
Dissecting the metaphor of The Cloud, this thesis argues that it the metaphor is misleading, as it obscures both the material building blocks that cloud computing relies on and the tangible harmful effects exacerbated by resource-heavy computing.
Through an investigation of the marketing origins of the word cloud in the context of computing, this thesis demonstrates that there is financial motivation behind the misconception of The Cloud as immaterial.
A case study of an advertisement by Amazon Cloud Services reaffirms this statement. The thesis concludes with an exploration of organisations and artworks that propose new ways of thinking about digital technologies and their materiality.
Anastassia Varabiova is a Belarusian-born multi-disciplinary artist based in Dublin. Using the language of internet culture, Varabiova reflects on the absurdity of screen-based living and the odd behaviours such a lifestyle encourages.
Their work engages with the social and material impacts of digital technologies through performance, installation, and video.
Varabiova has recently exhibited as part of **In the Making: Mud Between the Toes,** Pallas Projects/Studios (2025), **Fractal,** Powerscourt Town Centre (2024), and the Irish Student Exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance and Space Design (2023).
