About the exhibition
If we learned one thing from the days of the lockdown and its psychological side effects - is that the notion of the virtual, as mani- fested in a new breed of online culture, is more than ever untethered from reality. For many of us, this rupture provoked radical returns to analog production processes but now with a new impetus - Environmental anxieties have reframed much of the discourse around contemporary art practice. This “return to the physical world” also suggests a return of a special kind of knowledge production that was exclusively developed in the networked cultures of the digital realm, now transferred and transformed into analog procedures.
Back in the 90s, The THING, NY became known for building the first ever international net community of artists and art-related projects. This exhibition groups its founders and many active members living in New York throughout the 90s, 00s and 10s that were part of this community. Along came a few friends and colleagues that also worked closely with THE THING.
When New York was experiencing 9-11, it produced its most dramatic change in that decade, which in turn dramatically transformed artistic practices. A similar looming time of uncertainty as it seems prevalent today produced a number of responsive strategies. The works in this exhibition are reflection of this mindset. There are also two historic works included: Peter Fend as well as Eva+Franco Mattes. Coming from aforementioned moment in time in NY, the are now indicating an uncanny actuality.
the thing is collectively counteracts the myth of the individual that has been granted new life under neo-liberalism’s fractured, #mefirst precarities. It challenges the countless unseen connections that continue to nurture and sustain life. As mystics from Rumi to Cage attest, there is nothing we aren’t connected with. We are only the sum of our relationships.
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actual corona regulations apply for a visit to the gallery
Openings
part 1 modelo para armar Gerichtstr 45 Berlin Wedding opening: Oct 20, 7:00 pm \
part 2 panke.gallery Gerichtstr. 23, Hof 5, Berlin Wedding opening: Nov 10, 7:00 pm \
part 3 /rosa Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse 35, Berlin Mitte opening: Nov 11, 7:00pm \
Artists at modelo para armar
Cory Arcangel (US/NO), Peter Fend (US), Heidrun Holzfeind (A/GER), Christoph Keller (GER), Giacomo Porfiri (I/GER), Wolfgang Staehle (GER/US)
Artists at panke.gallery
CAMP (IN), Christoph Draeger (CH/GER), Sebastian Lütgert (GER), Eva + Franco Mattes (I/US), Almagul Menlibayeva (KAZ/B), Caspar Stracke (GER/MX)
Artists at /rosa
Eva + Franco Mattes (I/US), Almagul Menlibayeva (KAZ/B), Wolfgang Staehle (GER/US) and videoloop with works by all exhibiting artists
Artists
CAMP (IN) MEMORIUS IS 5 (2022) (A live stream from Chuim Village, Mumbai)
We will remember it... as a small spherical robot-camera, perched on a tripod made up of four floors of a building in north-western Bombay, on the old border between the British and Portuguese empires. A generic early 21c security camera with a non-generic purpose: to "film", rather than to "watch". This object - we called it Memorius after the character in a Borges story that first appeared in a Buenos Aires newspaper in 1942 (who not only remembered everything, but also always knew the time)- is 5 years old today. In another 5, it will be 10. The stream from Memorius is always at "local time", intercut by images from its young memory: a gathering at CAMP, food on the table, the sky and moons, friends and birds, new buildings overwriting settlements, a popular beach, fireworks celebrating unknown events, pipe-lines and wire-crossings slowly changing the landscape but also the virtualscape. The result is a kind of context-machine in which one image provides a context for another, by thickening it in spacetime. studio.camp/.
Christoph Draeger Semantic Landscapes (2021) Four Duratrans prints, 30x44cm, Ed. of 3
As a immediate response to cascade of topics of the past year, Draeger has written the most popular notions and buzzword of the news media with a light torch in long-time exposure into the the landscape. christophdraeger.com/
Almagul Menlibayeva AI REALISM: QANTAR 2022 31 40 x40 color prints and video animation
Political Shamanism. Collaboration with AI. Neurolinquistic reconstruction
Almagul Menibayeva “bred” these image with AI neuronet using keywords from the FB short post of her friends from Kazakhstan’s silent war behind the war. Neurolinguistics research is a type of exercise of power in which the possessor influences the behavior of others without revealing the nature of the behavior that he expects from them (A.M.) almagulmenlibayeva.com/
Sebastian Luetgert: UNPROMPTED #106, excerpt (2022) Single channel video installation
Sebastian’s Lütgert’s has worked for many years on uncharted artistic approaches to archives and databases of moving image collections, as well as its related questions of copyright. From this outset he embarks into the new field of AI assisted image creations also once again in light of its continuing paradox discourse of ownership. rolux.org
Eva and Franco Mattes BEFNOED (2014-) (ongoing) Video installation with two flat screens
For BEFNOED – an acronym for By Everyone, For No One, Every Day – we provide instructions for anonymous workers to film themselves performing various acts. Because they are hired through crowdsourcing services, we do not know who or where they are, or even their motivations. The videos are shown in galleries and dispersed on obscure, peripheral or forgotten social networks around the world.
In the 90s we were obsessed with visibility, traffic logs, reaching an ever larger audience, but with the passing of time, and the advent of internet 2.0, we became more and more interested in the opposite: invisibility and disappearance, erasing data, staying anonymous, ‘unseeing’, microwaving hard-drives… 0100101110101101.org
Caspar Stracke Manufacturing Dogma (2022) Singe channel video, stitched fabric
What is the visual language, the tools and the actual imagery that far-right influencers as well as conspiracy theorists use in their respective Social Media channels? And what kind of distorted overall image (and ideology) is conjured up amongst these manifold communities of followers? What are the mechanisms that let the dissemination of false information and radical conspiracy theories on current subjects constantly evolve? This work is for the next generation that -in future times- must make sense out of their parents struggles. www.casparstracke.net
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