Berlin, 19:30, Feb 2, 2018, https://transmediale.de Ruth Catlow: Finance is the coordination of large amounts of money and capital. Destruction of indigenous lifestyles, replaced by capitalism. We are all indigenous. Brett Scott (Book: Heretics guide to Finance) worked in finance as an “undercover anthropologist”. Zachary Formwalt: Representation of stock exchange building architecture. Existing stock exchanges,…
Berlin, Feb 2, 2018, https://transmediale.de/ Matteo Pasquinelli moderated the discussion / keynote lecture of Jonathan Beller. I value Beller for his work on the cinematic mode of production: the thesis, that media “consumers” are actually not consumers at all but cognitive workers creating value through the allocation of their quantifiable attention. In his talk, Beller…
Cologne, October 21 – November 25, 2017, http://brauchbarkeit.space Jörg Obergfell spent some time in Japan in a residency in Aomori and he was fascinated by the non-architecture of sheds used to store agricultural equipment. He documented the sheds in photography. Each shed was photographed in the spring and in the winter. There was a medium…
Kassel, Germany, June 10 – September 17, 2017, http://www.documenta14.de At first sight Documenta 14 appeared as very “political”. There were a lot of works seemingly addressing political topics, criticizing capitalism and its inherent relationship. At first sight, that is. After spending some time walking around, this first impression gave way to another reading. I felt…
Berlin, 8pm, February 4, 2017, http://spektrumberlin.de Spektrum is a space specializing in the intersection of art, science and community as its tagline says. At street level, one enters through a laid back and comfortably designed lounge area with sofas, chairs, a bar and dim lighting. At the back side is a medium-sized room with a…
Berlin, November 17, 2016 – February 26, 2017, http://www.discursus.info/ The two rooms of the gallery (front and back) were each given to one of the artists. It felt like a double solo show with two spatially separate gallery zones. Each of the works was quite different. Peter Vink’s large scale installation in the front room…
Berlin, January 20 – February 11, 2017, http://www.nonberlin.com The exhibition, curated by Ido Shin, contained 4 video-based artworks by 4 artists: Akim, Chan Sook Choi, Fabian Bechtle and Konrad Mühe. The title of the show remained a bit mysterious. I connected “dual use” in my mind with materials, appliances or infrastructure that serves more than…
Berlin, February 2 – March 5, 2017, http://www.transmediale.de This was a very nice new media art exhibition. Everything was perfectly set up, with theatrical spot lighting in a dimly lit spacious hall. There was a perfect balance of different media, as well as artwork sizes. There were some screens with videos, but not too many,…
Berlin, 6pm-8pm, February 5, 2017, https://2017.transmediale.de Johannes Paul Raether was talking first. His artwork Protektor.x.x has been also part of the transmediale exhibition. All his thought seem to be channeled through the set of colorful clown-like alter ego performances, where he addresses the questions of gender and biotechnology. He talked about witches preventing a rationalization…
Berlin, February 04, 2017, http://transmediale.de First the three panelists each had 10-15 minute presentations, followed by a longer discussion, all moderated by Krystian Woznicki. Jutta Weber talked about technology, the fact that technology is not neutral. She talked about databases and their never-ending-list-like structure that is very different from the narrative storytelling inherent in prior,…