Screening: Monte Carlo Method

Dora Budor and Noah Barker’s collaborative practice stems from their shared interest in cartographies of power and desire, where the pursuit of economic progress intersects with psychological resonance.

As a prologue to the premiere of their new collaborative video work Monte Carlo Method in November 2026 at n.b.k., Budor’s video work Lifelike (2024) and Barker’s series Juniper (2026) will be juxtaposed in June at the n.b.k. Showroom.

The works are characteristic of their collaborative creative process—they address states of instability and convey a sense of one’s own psychophysical infrastructure.

Lifelike (2024) by Dora Budor articulates the ongoing abstraction of contemporary life. Filmed in and around Hudson Yards in New York, the video work examines the largest and most expensive private real estate project in U.S. history, which opened in 2019. A vibrating sex toy attached to the iPhone camera prevents a clear view of the surroundings and suggests arousal, numbness, and overstimulation. The work’s pace is determined by the term “stuplimity,” coined by the American cultural theorist Sianne Ngai, which describes a feeling of extreme exhaustion resulting from the convergence of boredom (stupor) and awe (sublimity).

Juniper (2026) by Noah Barker refers to the nuclear weapons test of the same name conducted in the Pacific. The video stills of the explosion, printed on blotting paper, simultaneously allude to the method of administration of the hallucinogenic substance LSD as well as to experiments with the drug that took place in the context of both the counterculture and military endeavors during the Cold War. The works on paper also evoke a strip of film from an experimental flicker film and draw a parallel to filmically induced states of intoxication.

Budor and Barker’s new video work Monte Carlo Method (2026) is based on a mathematical model for estimating possible outcomes of uncertain events. The method of the same name, which has its origins in the so-called Manhattan Project and is central to financial forecasting, structures the film, which examines a city and a century built on chance.

Dora Budor (*Croatia) and Noah Barker (*California) live in New York. Their collaborative video works have been shown at, among others: mumok, Vienna (2025); MoMA PS1, New York (2024); Simian, Copenhagen (2023); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2022).

Screening: Monte Carlo Method
Friday, November 13, 2026, 7 p.m. (Premiere)
Saturday, November 14, 12–6 p.m., and Sunday, November 15, 2026, 12–6 p.m.
Curator: Lidiya Anastasova

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