Who counts as an ancestor, and what does having an ancestry mean?

By texting with a chatbot, you are invited to converse with The Interface, an otherworldly guardian who tends to The Hall of Understandings, a cosmic library containing different perspectives, practices, and provocations on ancestry. The Interface needs your help as the library has fallen into disuse: the ecological, political, and spiritual consequences of this on the Earth are growing harder and harder to reverse.

By playing the game and texting with the chatbot, you help The Interface by reflecting on your own relationship to ancestry or by exploring existing Extracts from The Hall of Understandings. With each participation, The Earthly Realm is Out of Balance furthers its experiment in building an archive premised on a collective, healing, and nuanced discussion around belonging, while hinting at the intergenerational web of connections we are all part of.

The game is accessible remotely via Whatsapp or playable in gallery as a digital-organic nest.

Scan the QR code below to interact with The Interface.

These new works by April are presented in our new gallery space designed by Chila Kumari Singh Burman.