Entropy of Loops: Tenter Ground, London
ai. gallery’s programme this year is centred on the ongoing theme of sound. In this first exhibition, Entropy of Loops investigages sonic entropy and in particular, the concept of a "loop" not as a perfect circle, but as a grinding mechanism that wears down the subject-whether that subject is a human mind, a machine part, or a city's ecosystem. Artists: Pathompon Mont Tesprateep, Gabriela Mureb and artist collective Rubbish Music (Iain Chambers & Kate Carr) alongside Beibei Wang and Mike Skelton.
Join us for the live performance of Offcuts by Rubbish Music + Beibei Wang on Tuesday 11 March 18.30-20.00. RSVP required.
I: Pathompon Mont Tesprateep. Confusion Is Next, 2018. 21min59sec
"The 'I' is a hallucination perceived by a hallucination." — Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter, specifically his concept of the Strange Loop in Gödel, Escher, Bach and later, I Am a Strange Loop, describes it as a phenomenon where, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, one finds oneself back where one started. In Mont's 16mm film, sound functions as this recursive hierarchy. The artist visualizes this theory by trapping his protagonist, Thom, in a feedback loop of obedience and resistance. Thom is both the creator of the sound and the prisoner of it. The mantra "mare lu ze=i" is the "I" emerging from the noise—a desperate attempt to assert agency in a system (or a state) designed to suppress it. The work questions whether we are fed our beliefs or if they arise, like the mantra, as a necessary glitch in the loop of our own survival instincts. Here, the loop is ethereal—a frequency generated by the mind to protect itself. It is a loop of (self) preservation.
II: Gabriela Mureb. Machine #3: (belt), 2013.
Mureb’s work is comprised of a 0.75-horsepower, 1730 rpm electric motor, a rubber belt, and two pulleys with parallel axes. The motor, attached to one of the pulleys, starts the machine. The first movement of the engine, the rotation of its shaft, is transmitted to the pulley, which then pulls the belt, making it run at a speed of approximately 52.17 km/h, and then moves the second pulley. The belt keeps continuously spinning in a loop around the pulleys. Every minute, the pulleys rotate 1730 times.
There is no output, no product nor pause. There is only friction in each rotation and the intersection of organic and industrial materials. The sculpture is juxtaposed with Mont’s protagonist’s mental state. Unlike a meditative loop, Mureb’s work produces a relentless and uninterrupted, almost hypnotic hum. It represents the futility of labour, mirroring the exhausting pace of a society obsessed with progress but stuck in repetition, enacting the "grind" of the system.
III: Rubbish Music (Kate Carr & Iain Chambers) + Beibei Wang’s live performance of Rubbish Music (Offcuts) alongside Mike Skelton’s Symphony of Waste (A Load of New Rubbish), 2026. 1h35min
Grounded in the ecological reality of Shanghai’s waste classification system, Rubbish Music + BeiBei Wang’s installation and performance of Offcuts is accompanied by a panoramic video work, A Load of New Rubbish, by Mike Skelton.
By transforming literal trash from past industrial “loops” into instruments, this installation and performance work embodies Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology - a philosophy that abandons romanticised views of nature to confront our inescapable, dark entanglement with the biosphere and its crises. This inescapable reality is mirrored locally in Shanghai’s own systemic shift from "voluntary" to "mandatory" waste management; a strict loop that inadvertently birthed the linguistic glitch and existential judgment: "What kind of rubbish are you?"[1]. Serving as the exhibition's final note, this question turns the lens back onto the viewer, asking what is left of us after the mental and mechanical loops have run their course.
[1] Rubbish Article by LinXi Li: One popular internet slang in Shanghai is "What kind of rubbish are you?" Originally, the community aunties wanted to help young people who came to throw rubbish to sort them, but due to the omission of the dialect, what should have been "what kind of rubbish are you throwing away" became "what kind of rubbish are you".
About the Artists
Pathompon Mont TESPRATEEP (b. Thailand, living in Bangkok). He graduated with a Master degree in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts in London. Mont's films have been shown at film festivals, including Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London Film Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales, Curtas Vila do Conde, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, etc., and exhibitions including “Multiple Planes”, BACC, “Biennale Jogja XV”, “Migration-Speaking Nearby” at ACC, Gwangju, “A Higher Calling”, White Space Beijing. Mont has also been developing a script for his first feature film project.
Gabriela MUREB (b. Brazil, living in Rio de Janeiro) holds a Ph.D. in Visual Arts from PPGAV / UFRJ and is a Professor in the Visual Arts – Sculpture department at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Through the construction of machines or appropriation of industrial parts, Mureb’s work addresses mutually forming relationships between body, technology and the world, acknowledging these morphological processes as sculptural ones. Her practice takes shape in sculpture, installation, video, performance and sound work, and proposes us to listen to a machine as a way of listening to the path that produced it, continuously reenacted in its movements.
Beibei WANG
Genre-defying percussionist Beibei Wang (b. China, living & working in London) is an acclaimed international virtuoso percussionist with both a Chinese and British musical education background. Beibei has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the classical music world, receiving international praise for her performances. She was listed in the top 50 Chinese musicians in the "Sound of East" project by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, as well as endorsed by the Arts Council, England receiving an Exceptional Talent visa from the British Government. Following a successful world tour, Beibei now leads a traditional Chinese percussion programme at SOAS, University of London. In 2020, Beibei was named Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. Most recently Beibei was appointed as percussion professor of the Crossover Studies Faculty at London Performing Academy of Music.
Rubbish Music (Iain Chambers and Kate Carr)
The duo behind Rubbish Music use sound to investigate the journeys, transformations and impacts of our discarded objects. Using worn out treasures, empty vessels and broken devices as an orchestra of vivid musique concrète materials they examine the worlds we make and destroy via our rubbish. From the great rubbish patches we have made in our oceans to buried dumps and sophisticated recycling plants, the objects we let go of continue in many guises without us. Decay, transformation, re-purposing and recycling are just some of the means by which everyday objects might persist and change in ways which extend beyond our relationships with them.
These journeys discarded items embark upon also create new worlds, new niches for species. From the changing habits of animals making the most of our swathes of waste, to the rise of plastic devouring bacteria, throwing away objects, and what happens to them next has profound effects. With their toolkit of rusty bells, dirty oven grills, onion skins, toilet plungers, wine bottles, nasal spray and a squeaky chicken toy, they seek to imagine some of them.
Mike SKELTON
Mike Skelton is a photographer and videographer based in London. His new video work Symphony of Waste (A Load of New Rubbish) will be exhibited as part of the Rubbish Music (Offcuts) performance at the gallery on 10 March.
