| | | | Arwina Afsharnejad and Daria Kozlova Yellow Prince That Casted Long Shadows, 2023 (ongoing) Video installation. 7 min | | | Seen By #19: Hyperstition | | | | 6 May – 18 June 2023 | | Curated by Marlena von Wedel.
A special presentation of the Kunstbibliothek - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in cooperation with the Universität der Künste Berlin | | | | | | | | | | Lilith Tyrell (KSE) Tannhäuser Gate: C-Beams Glittering in the Dark, 2021 Series of 4 photographs, inkjet print Courtesy the artist and Koob Sassen Enterprises, London | | | | The exhibition explores the experimental philosophical concept of hyperstition and makes it the starting point for new artistic works by young artists on speculative themes in photography and video.
Hyperstition refers to ideas whose expression releases such vibrations that they ultimately realise themselves, similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The term was first coined in the 1990s by the interdisciplinary collective Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) in the UK, whose members published their findings mainly on blogs on the internet. Hyperstition is a neologism made up of the English words 'hyper' and 'superstition'. Unlike superstition - a fiction that remains fictitious - hyperstition is a fiction that makes itself real. An example of hyperstition is virtual economic speculation, which has become a reality-constituting force in capitalism.
We live in a complex system of feedback cycles: power supply systems, logistics chains, financial markets, neo-extractivist expansion... Confronted with governance models that are unable to initiate the necessary systemic change, younger generations often find thinking about the future difficult and paralysing. This exhibition is inspired by the idea that imagining the future fictitiously offers a better decoding of one's present than looking at the past. | | | | | | Marie Salcedo Horn Learning from stones - walking through the post-mining landscape Grünhaus, 2023 Multimedia installation | | | | 11 artists are showing 9 works, some of which were created for this exhibition project. Among other things, they deal with new and old thought games from science fiction and digitality, such as our relationship to artificial intelligence and computer simulations or, for example, the glitch as a feminist digital utopia. Online and offline, places are visited on different time levels and linked non-linearly like time capsules; imagined through dream time travel or collective artistic processes. Light plays a recurring role both in the creation of the photographic works and as a media-theoretical consideration of the relationship between photography and temporality. In terms of content, the individual works touch on common interests such as the unveiling of relationship complexes, the visualisation of algorithms, examinations of new technologies, internet, mysticism and alchemy. The works shown move between prophetic curiosity and archival interest in the contemporary. Realising that images and documentary no longer show reality, but rather something that could be, we are concerned with the relationship between propositions and things.
In the run-up to the exhibition, joint working sessions were held. The collective exhibition process began with a systemic constellation, a method from the coaching and therapy field that is suitable for visualising and dealing with conflicts in relationship systems. In addition to classic scenarios such as family, constellations can also be done on larger, abstract systems. This insight constellation work can be placed on different time levels such as past, present or future.
The exhibition was thus preceded by a hyperstitional working method: the group-therapeutic experiment served as a collective exercise and was at the same time an attempt to reflect the exhibition topic in the format. Thus, one’s own art projects as well as the entire exhibition project were mapped in the constellation, in the now as well as at a certain point in the future: on the day of the opening. | | | | | | Sophia Hallmann Lilium Radiantes, 2023 Multimedia installation | | | | Conversations that developed from these sessions revolved around the artworks, but also around the numerous layers of meaning around the exhibition. The individual systems in which the exhibition is embedded were critically examined: We are in Berlin in a former military casino, just across the street from the Bahnhof Zoo subculture milieu. The museum is also home to the photographic work of Helmut Newton, whose art excites an international audience, but at the same time can be identified with androcentric world perspectives and patriarchal structures. The exhibition in the room next door "Flashes of Memory: Photography during the Holocaust" illuminates the darkest chapter of German history. These reflections have been incorporated into the works. An integral part of the exhibition is an open resting space, which picks up on important references and concepts as a collectively designed temporary library. It opens up possibilities for dialogue and provides a vocabulary for positioning oneself in this world.
"Seen By #18" is part of the "Seen By" exhibition series, a joint project presented at the Museum für Fotografie (Museum of Photography) and organized by the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library), Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Its aim is to rethink curatorial and artistic strategies for working with contemporary photography.
Further information: www.smb.museum/seenby | | | | | | Bailey Keogh Bunny’s Big Adventure, 2023 Video, 3 min., 8 sec. | | | | unsubscribe here Newsletter was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com
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