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At the centre of this showcase is the idea of Impossible Objects. Historically, an impossible object was a two‑dimensional representation of a three‑dimensional form that could not exist, as cited in Marcel Duchamp’s Apolinère Enameled (1916). Almost a century later, Mark Leckey’s canonical exhibition The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things (2013) imagined the material object exceeding its physical boundaries: physical and virtual worlds coexisting through techno‑animism.

Made from paper and digital technologies, the interactive novels in this showcase bring histories, possible futures and dreams into bodies in the present. Rather than offering a disembodied, patriarchal God’s Eye View, they locate the human within multiple temporalities at once. The visual novel becomes a space/time‑travel tool, allowing pasts, possible futures and imagined worlds to be embodied in the present.

That this proposition is made through the work of women from different cultural backgrounds matters. Those historically excluded from defining both technology and the universal Human are here constructing the terms through which they are encountered. Drawing on Jamaican philosopher Sylvia Wynter’s Being Human as Praxis, Impossible Objects becomes not only the artwork but the possibility of performing another living entity: human, animal, plant. Brought into being through bodies that touch, choose, imagine and act.

This Art & Technology presentation brings together interactive graphic novels by Anna Bunting‑Branch, Danielle Brathwaite‑Shirley and Kinnari Saraiya, accompanied by bespoke ceramic controllers created by Aliyah Hussain.