UNLEASHED UTOPIAS - Exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin

UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse

Marlene Bart, Theatrum Radix, 2022

Rebecca Merlic, Glitchbodies, 2022-ongoing

Mohsen Hazrati, FÃL PROJECT [NONE-AI], 2023

Lauren Moffatt, Local Binaries, 2022/23

Anan Fries, Posthuman Wombs, 2022

Opening: September 8, 2023, 7 pm

Award Ceremony: September 15, 2023, 7 pm

At: Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

Artists: Marlene Bart, Anan Fries, Mohsen Hazrati, Rebecca Merlic, Lauren Moffatt

Curator: Dr. Tina Sauerlaender

The notion of a better world is closely tied to utopia as a theme. The term literally describes a wonderful place that does not exist. It means that the design for an ideal society is a criticism of the current situation. Utopias are based on questions such as: What happens if we change a couple of rules? How can we live well together? Thus, utopias also inherently have great potential for societal change and visions for a better future.

In this exhibition, the grant winners of the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin show how we might be able to deploy new technologies for a more just, multifaceted, and personal coexistence. They are alert to the changes in values and norms currently going on in society and link their speculations to topical debates. With the help of virtual reality and site-specific installations, the artists create accessible, immersive, experiential utopias. They critically speculate upon artificial intelligence, 3D scanning, animation techniques, research in scientific fields, or the metaverse.

Marlene Bart works with digitized natural history artifacts, bringing them to life in virtual worlds and producing a new perspective of our concept of nature. Anan Fries renounces the division between nature and technology to overcome the boundaries between biological genders, creating a world in which all bodies could be pregnant. Rebecca Merlic celebrates the liberation of binary identities, physical transformation, and the diversity of human individuality. Mohsen Hazrati combines figures from Iranian myths and soothsaying traditions with forms of artificial intelligence, altered by the artist to provide us with cryptic advice for our futures. Lauren Moffatt looks at the interior human, gathering data from it via artificial intelligence and combining it with painting to create a multilayered, intimate landscape.

The artists’ unleashed utopias rattle not only societal norms but also the purely profit-oriented use of new technologies. With their radical speculations, they open up new perspectives of our lives, our coexistence. Through their visions, they reinforce the values such as openness, diversity, and tolerance that should characterize our society now and in the future. And it is precisely in that where utopia lies.

The exhibition UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse, produced by the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin, will be on display from September 9 through November 5, 2023, at the Haus am Lützowplatz. 

More information

EVOLVING KINETICS at Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen

Nicolas Sassoon, Prophets - Tanaga, 2023

EVOLVING KINETICS. Transformations of Kinetic Art in the Post-Digital Age

With works by: Kim Asendorf (DE), Banz & Bowinkel (DE), Armin Keplinger (DE), Rosa Menkmann (NL), Nicolas Sassoon (FR), Studio Above&Below (Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden) (UK), Robert Seidel (DE)

Curated by: Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Opening: March 10, 2023, 7 pm

Duration: March 10 – May 21, 2023

At: Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen

With digital media such as smartphones, tablets, or VR glasses, new possibilities of artistic practice and art experience arise. The digital work is subject to its own technical rules – independent of physical laws such as gravity. This leads to a new frame for art.

The artists in the exhibition investigate, expand, and change the (traditional) form of kinetic art by incorporating the digital. The works float freely in space, create an immersive environment, and break the rigid structures of the physical site. The focus is on the moment of movement. In the interrelation between work and technology, new dimensions of dynamics open up and are developed in a new way. Kim Asendorf, Rosa Menkman and Armin Keplinger create immersive spaces, which they digitally extend and are related to Op-Art. Their installations overcome the spatial limitations of the museum and thereby create a new form of reality. Banz & Bowinkel, on the other hand, present minimalist sculptures that, as virtual augmentations, make it possible to experience an immediate interrelationship between the digital and analog worlds. In a similar vein, Robert Seidel and Studio Above&Below place their immaterial works in the physical space, allowing a new perspective on kinetic sculpture. In contrast, Nicolas Sassoons's works dynamize the solid form of various volcanic blocks. He juxtaposes the organic material with the technological matter, creating an abstract moment of movement.

What unites all the works in the exhibition is the elemental role of the viewer in the process of the work’s emergence. Without the visitor, the kinetic moment – and thus the work itself – cannot unfold. Thus, the visitors are invited and called upon to put on the VR glasses, take the tablets in their hands, and actively enter the individual rooms in order to discover the different digital worlds.  EVOLVING KINETICS creates an experiential space of contemporary, digital art that enters into a dialogue with the collection of Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen.

Full exhibition text and more information about each artwork you will find here.

Accompanying Program:

Curator’s tour: April 14, 2023

Further events of the accompanying program will be announced on the website of Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen.

Valentina Peri curates DATA DATING DESIRE at Mo.Ca Brescia

DATA DATING DESIRE
Opening on September 23, 6 pm
September 23 - December 4, 2022
Mo.Ca, Brescia, Italy

Artists: !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Adam Basanta, Jonas Blume, Marco Cadioli, Elisa Giardina Papa, Tom Galle, John Yuyi & Moises Sanabria, Dani Ploeger, Molly Soda.

Curator: Valentina Peri

First time in Italy!
After Paris, London, Tel Aviv, Brussels and Geneva, a new iteration of my exhibition goes to Brescia, in the historical setting of Palazzo Martinengo Colleoni, a baroque building in the heart of the city.

DATA DATING DESIRE attempts to explore new directions in contemporary romance and map the unprecedented connections between desire, emotion, technology and economy in the post-pandemic world.

PROGRAM
Opening - September 23 from 6 to 9:30 pm
Sound Performance by Adam Basanta - September 23 at 7 pm
Talk "Love, Desire, Technology" - September 28 at 5 pm
Curator tour - October 1st at 5 pm

Produced and Promoted by Mo.Ca
Co-promoted by Fondazione Brescia Musei and Comune di Brescia
In collaboration with Avisco

More info about the exhibition and the program

SEED SYSTEMS - Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

SEED SYSTEMS

Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

Initiated by STYLY

Curated by Miriam Arbus (Sky Fine Foods) and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Artists: Alison Bennett (AUS) | Nicholas Delap (UK) | Matthew D. Gantt (US) | Mohsen Hazrati (IRN/DE) | Nadine Kolodziey (DE) | Lauren Moffatt (AUS/DE)

In cooperation with SOMA Berlin and Radiance

At: SOMA 300 Berlin, Eylauer Strasse 9, 10965 Berlin (DE) and online via STYLY

Duration: September 10 - 30, 2022

Opening: September 9, 2022, 6 - 10 pm

Closing event: September 30, 2022, 12-6 pm

Accompanying Event Schedule tba on Instagram >>> Follow @stylyglobal @peertospace @skyfinefoods @radiance_vr

In the age of the extractivist Anthropocene, nature is dominated by human impact. We built capitalistic structures by extracting and selling natural resources for our own benefit. The dramatic increase in CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution and the devastating effects of human activities on the global environment have profoundly changed the Earth system. Escalating climate disasters like wildfires, floodings or frost call for a change in overall behavior. The resulting environmental precarity underlines the need for new, innovative visions for the future. 

Following the idea of neo-ecologies, virtual technologies provoke new states of being, illustrating concepts for our future. Reformulating approaches to environmental questions, interactive Expanded Realities (XR) immerse us into speculative ecosystems. Divergent futures emerge as a digital garden, where growth is as inevitable as decay. The tensions of human impact are deeply rooted within the exploration of possibilities. In this discourse, humans’ inevitable depletion of resources is the critical object of consideration. 

Grappling with these topics, the XR art exhibition Seed Systems emerges as a collaborative cultivation emerges as. Six international artists use augmented and virtual realities to explore speculative approaches to future human-nature relationships, forming a spatial and sonic occurrence of growth and foliage. They unite their expertise in virtual world-building and plant knowledge, shaping alternative ecologies and biologies. The artworks create networks and systems of seeds as future concepts for environments. Activated in XR through computer-generated images (CGI), animation, point clouds and interactions, the digital biosphere – nourished by visions – grows as a space for meeting and reflection. In this speculative approach, new possibilities for action, care-taking, and reciprocity flourish, visualizing a necessary change in perspective.

 Alison Bennett considers Australian native flowers as celestial encounters by exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through today’s possibilities of expanded photography. Nicholas Delap examines histories of folklore and the nettle plant – a mysterious and overlooked plant whose medicinal qualities make it one of the most potent and widely available healing tools. Matthew D. Gantt interconnects responsive sound elements with the visual, engaging with Brian Eno’s notion of generative electronic music as bottom-up gardening – emergent structures flourish with no predicated finale. Mohsen Hazrati creates a virtual bioluminescence with a metaphorical approach to understanding wine as an alternative source of energy, which he considers in the context of Irianian culture. Nadine Kolodziey explores how to plant something digital and intangible in a physical space, while playfully questioning future interactions within our technologized environment. Lauren Moffatt establishes cycles of flourishing and decay in nature, examining how different virtual and physical ecosystems become linked by human movement and behavior.

Inspired by gardens that carefully construct spaces of experience and interaction, the exhibition considers how new media can be used to reimagine ecological systems and facilitate mindful, inclusive futures. Planting seeds of reflection and growth raises the question of what we can do at a small scale to initiate patterns for the greater system. Should this practice be considered rebellious, productive or promising? Can this artistic activism really contribute to a positive development of our planet’s ecology? How can the influence of humankind change for the better? 

SKIN DEEP - Solo Show of Jonas Blume, curated by Tina Sauerlaender

SKIN DEEP

Solo Exhibition of Jonas Blume

Jonas Blume, Yes. (Double David), 2022, installation, two Dibond color prints behind acrylic glass, 80 x 180 cm

Curated by Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

At SCOPE BLN, Lübecker Str. 43, 10559 Berlin

April 29 – May 27, 2022

Friday, April 29, 6 – 22 pm: Opening

Skin defines the boundaries of our physical bodies and constitutes the interface for interaction with the world. Artist Jonas Blume uses his skin as medium to reflect on the relationship between reality and image worlds. In his works, skin appears in a liminal state oscillating between flat surface texture and three-dimensional volume, as a membrane between physical state and mediated hyperreality. Based on photographs, Jonas Blume transfers his skin to a variety of mediums and materials to create an enhanced human physicality. In his images, videos, sculptures, and installations he distorts, extends, rearranges, and liquifies his appearance. Blume’s works herald the new age of body consciousness transforming bodies into consumable images. Skin becomes a political canvas because it constitutes the inalienable individual capital that everyone may maximally exploit to generate visibility within the attention economy.

Accompanying Program: 

Thursday, May 5, 17:30 - 19:30h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present

Afterwards 20 - 22h: LIGHT YEAR 85 screening >> Urban Algorithms - videos by Dennis Rudolph, Daniel Molnar, Jung Soo Cho, Vasilena Gankovska and Anne Glassner, curated by Boris Kostadinov

Monday, May 9, 6 pm CEST (online, in English): Artist Talk of Jonas Blume with Dr. Stephan Schwingeler, professor for Media Studies at HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts, author of the book Kunstwerk Computerspiel – Digitale Spiele als künstlerisches Material (transcript, 2014) - (Registration by email via tina@peertospace.eu)

Sunday, May 15, 14 - 16h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present

Friday May 20, 18h: Curator’s Tour and Artist Talk with Jonas Blume and Tina Sauerlaender 

Friday, May, 27, 16 – 20 h: Finissage

Gloria Aino Grzywatz curates HORIZONS

Horizons

Exhibition of the Eastern European Network Program @ Akademie Schloss Solitude
Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz

Works by the artists: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, András Blazsek, Krasimira Butseva, Barbara Gryka, Jasmina Hanf & Karolina Kaltschnee, Luana Lojić

Digital opening event on Thursday, December 9, 2021, 7:30 – 8:15 pm CET (via Zoom)

Please register with: register@akademie-solitude.de

»Horizons« is an open-format exhibition series which gives revealing insights into the artistic productions of fellowship holders of the Akademie Schloss Solitude. The first part of this new exhibition series is dedicated to Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Eastern European network, which focuses on an exchange with independent art scenes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland and Hungary.The open format is intended to make artistic creative processes visible and give both fellowship holders and visitors the opportunity to exchange ideas. All visitors are warmly invited to familiarize themselves with new artistic perspectives and broaden their horizons.

Mara-Johanna Kölmel curates The End Begins At The Leaf

The End Begins at the Leaf brings Antonio Tarsis' and Anderson Borba's work into artistic dialogue. Curated by peer to space associate director Mara-Johanna Kölmel, the show invites visitors to dive into an immersive environment that begins and ends at a leaf.

Image © João Atala

Systematic deforestation alongside illicit mining operations in the Amazon pose a major threat to Brazil’s complex ecosystems. With the current administration supporting deforestation and mining in areas formally protected by law, land has been stripped of vegetation, waterways have been polluted, and the protection of human rights and the environment have been undermined. The works in the exhibition approach this devastating constellation through a poetic reflection on materials and processes that relate to these disputed territories.

The leaf serves as an aesthetic departure point and thinking device through which contested issues are teased out. The End Begins at the Leaf thereby explores larger interrelations that range from the exploitation of land and people to the transformation of natural resources into commodities and their circulation in a global market economy. Is this how the end begins?

Presented by Akademie Schloss Solitude, Mauro Mattei & BeAdvisors

Venue: 9 French Place, Shoreditch, London, E1 6JB

Exhibition Info: 09 December, 2021 - 15 January, 2022

Private View: 09 December, 5-9pm

Opening hours: Tues. to Frid. 2pm-6pm and Sat./Sun. 12pm-6pm / Closed:  23 - 26 Dec & 31 Dec - 2 Jan.

Public Programme: Sunday, December 12, 2021

3pm: Artists and curator-led exhibition tour of The End Begins at the Leaf
4pm: Panel discussion: Choreographies of Transformation - The rainforest and beyond 

Please register here

SWIPE RIGHT! Data Dating Desire curated by Valentina Peri

SWIPE RIGHT! Data Dating Desire

Curated by: Valentina Peri

Venue: iMAL Brussels

Running until: Oct 22, 2021 - Jan 9, 2022

With works by !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Adam Basanta, Crosslucid, Dries Depoorter, Elisa Giardina Papa, Tom Galle, John Yuyi & Moises Sanabria, Noemi Iglesias, Lancel/Maat, Joana Moll, Ingo Niermann & The Army Of Love, Eva Ostrowska, Dani Ploeger, Addie Wagenknecht & Pablo Garcia

What does it mean to love in the digital age? How are digital interfaces reshaping our personal relationships? What do new technologies imply for the future of the romantic sphere? How do screens affect our sexual intimacy and our desire for connection?

In terms of romance and intimacy, Internet and smartphones have generated new complexities that we are still trying to figure out. All these phenomena became hot-button in March 2020, when a global pandemic placed millions of people under total lockdown, enforcing to reconfigure most of social activities online and in a technology-mediated form. From online working to online partying, humans all over the planet tried to play with the discontents of social distancing, and to live the no-contact reality as the new normal.

This forced self-isolation and touch-less condition proved to be a significant driver for many people to move their romantic lives into the digital realm, inspiring new ways of courting, dating and catching, for both confirmed and novice users.

By bringing together the work of several international artists, the exhibition SWIPE RIGHT! Data, Dating, Desire attempts to explore new directions in contemporary romance and map the unprecedented connections between desire, emotion, technology, and economy in the post-pandemic world.

Further Information

Installationshots, 2021 by Isabelle Arthuis

SPACELAB – Into the Unknown

Borghildur Indrida, SPACELAB - Into the Unknown, 2021

Artist: Borghildur Indrida

Curators: Gloria Aino Grzywatz and Peggy Schoenegge

Opening: June 4, 2021, 7-10 pm CEST

Artist Talk (InstaLive): June 10, 2021, 7 pm

Finissage: June 12, 2021, 7 pm

June 4 – 12, 2021 at Hošek Contemporary

The exhibition SPACELAB – Into the Unknown represents the starting point of the artistic project Artist on the Moon. Reflecting our role as humans within the solar system, Borghildur Indrida plans to be the first artist to fly to the moon, realizing an artistic performance in space.

The moon has always been an object of international interest. Since the 1950s, various countries have raced to land missiles and crews in order to be the first to gather information about the distant luminary. Major nations such as the United States, the former Soviet Union or China succeeded and explored small areas of the moon. As a symbol of conquest, they raised flags and removed moon rocks, asserting territorial claims.

These claims of power illustrate imperialist structures, which Borghildur Indrida explores and questions. Flying to the moon herself, the artist rejects nationalized interplanetary relations reminiscent of a colonial past. As an act of national disempowerment, she looks for a way of restitution by bringing back the moon stones to where they belong. In this process, patriarchal patterns within space exploration also become visible, which she deconstructs in equal measure. Borghildur Indrida occupies the supposedly male domain as a female artist and reinterprets it as an artistic space, breaking up structures of power.

SPACELAB - Into the Unknown creates a laboratory situation, which allows a comprehensive scientific consideration of Borghildur Indrida’s project. In a site-specific installation at the ship hold of Hošek Contemporary, visitors are immersed into the artistic discourse. The artist confronts us with fundamental questions of systems of power and ownership interests. What claims are being made in relation to unmanned territories? What hierarchies and systems emerge? How can women assert themselves within patriarchal structures? In the artist's peaceful gesture of restitution, the complexity and insanity of nationalized power relations clarify and remind us of our position in the solar system. With the gaze toward and the journey to the moon, the focus of our being is directed to the essential – an equalized, respectful and participatory society without exploitation.

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Resonant Realities - VR Art Exhibition curated by Tina Sauerlaender

RESONANT REALITIES

Exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin

Featuring the works of the grant recipients: Banz & Bowinkel, Evelyn Bencicova, Patricia Detmering, Armin Keplinger and Lauren Moffatt

April 16 – June 6, 2021 at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

Each individual perceives the world through different lenses. Our personal views determine our impressions of our surroundings. Communication and exchange enable the possibility of encountering and understanding other outlooks. This act can be understood as a resonance of various realities. By putting one's own perspective in relation to another’s, it is possible to expand our own. In the best case, this process may create an open and empathetic coexistence within our society.

In the exhibition space, we interact with virtual reality artworks that here form a digital resonance of the physical world. We encounter virtual beings, observe interpersonal exchanges, and witness arrangements among artificial intelligence. The digital works resonate in the exhibition space in corresponding site-specific installations. The contrast between the physical and computer-generated worlds reveals the divergent parameters that apply to each location. Depending on the environment and one’s own viewpoint, the objects appear in variants and communication follows a different set of rules.

The artistic works reveal a deeper understanding of the digital realm and present technology as a human product which is inextricably linked to our values and norms. Our engagement with these works unlocks the possibility of questioning our relationship to culture, to our fellow human beings, and to the machines and technologies that surround us. This process consequently prompts a reexamination of our thoughts and actions.

Curated by: Tina Sauerlaender (Artistic Director)

More information: vrkunst.dkb.de

Online Events and Timeslot booking: hal-berlin.de

Image credits: Patricia Detmering, Aporia, 2020 / Evelyn Bencicova, Arielle Esther, Joris Demnard (Ikonospace), Artificial Tears, 2019 / Lauren Moffatt, Image Technology Echoes, 2020 / Banz & Bowinkel, Poly Mesh, 2020 / Armin Keplinger, THE ND-Serial, 2020/2021

Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by Mara-Johanna Koelmel

Online-Exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by peer to space Associate Director & Curator Mara-Johanna Koelmel for Akademie Schloss Solitude.

With Nora Al-Badri, Johanna Bruckner, Rasheedah Phillips (Black Quantum Futurism), Jan Nikolai Nelles, Miriam Simun, Natasha Tontey

On view: Technische Sammlungen Dresden and Online

The physical opening at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden will be set according to the Saxon Corona Protection Ordinance. Currently, the Technische Sammlungen Dresden are closed.

Online-Opening March 4th at 7 PM. More information here.

The online exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters brings together the works of six artists and former Akademie Schloss Solitude fellows. Their contributions question and critically engage with heteronormative worldviews around consciousness research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self-experience.

Like a networked mind, the show unfolds amid several nodes of access by expanding from its own online space to the show Mind Over Matter at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden. As such, the works explore the concerns of the exhibition curated by Netzwerk Medien Kunst Dresden from a speculative, feminist, and decolonial point of view.

In dialogue with Mind over Matter, the artistic interventions speak about mechanisms of power, exclusion, and oppression encoded into the very concepts underpinning digital technologies. Yet they equally mobilize the digital medium to propose alternative visions for shared futures that are not exclusively white or Western.

The artists of Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters probe the power of a collective intelligence that reaches from the enhanced to the monstrous, the ancestral to the futurist, the molecular to the planetary, and from the human to the non-human. With creativity and visionary fuel, they unlock the digital realm as a space that comes with response-ability – the ability to respond to its architectures of power and to think with, to care for those it chooses to forget, erase, and leave behind.

***

Online Space by parmon

Design by Stephan Thiel and Anne Lippert
Exhibition architecture by Atelier Adhoc Arhitectura (George Marinescu & Maria Daria Oancea)

The hybrid exhibition project Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters is part of the exhibition Mind over Matter of the Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden and takes place in cooperation with Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Supported by: The Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and the Ministry of Research, Science and the Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Cooperation partner: Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden of friendsofDresdenContemporaryArt e.V. (DCA) in cooperation with the  Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude

HOME IS WHERE HEART IS - New Iteration of PARS PRO TOTO

Home Is Where Heart Is

(Online from July 1 until September 30, 2020)

Works by Stephanie Comilang, Sarah Iris Mang, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan

Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, Complicated Happiness, video, still, 2020

Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz

The second iteration of Pars Pro Toto considers home in the age of globalized migration. The stories told by the artists Stephanie Comilang, Rosalia Namsai Engchuan and Sarah Iris Mang disclose different motivations for leaving their countries and handling living abroad. Some are migrant laborers, leaving behind their families for seven to ten months. Some must find a new home far away. Some are challenging the stereotypes of their migrant background. They all speak about the repercussions on their own identity and on the feeling of home. Hoping for better living conditions abroad, humans are often times stranded in intermediate worlds, unable to move forward or backward. In their thoughts and feelings, home exists as a place of longing and security. Home becomes the utopia of a better life carried in your heart. Home Is Where Heart Is shows that feeling home need not be coupled to one place and how living abroad can affect individual lives.

peertospace.eu/parsprototo

Group Show Colliding Humans On How We Communicate Online

COLLIDING HUMANS. Social Interaction on the Internet

Artists: Jonas Blume, Manja Ebert, Aron Lesnik, Lauren Moffatt

Curated by Tina Sauerlaender and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Organized by medienkunst e.V. – Verein für zeitgenössische Kunst mit neuen Medien

Opening: September 27, 2019, 7 pm  

Duration: September 28 to October 6, 2019

Artist Talk: October 2, 2019, 7 pm

(With the curator Peggy Schoenegge and the artists Jonas Blume, Manja Ebert and Aron Lesnik)

At: Raum für drastische Maßnahmen, Oderstraße 34, 10247 Berlin, Germany

"Good relationships make us happier and healthier." That is the conclusion of two Harvard studies that spent 75 years researching with over 600 people what makes people really happy. But what happens to our relationships when we communicate mostly over the Internet?

Online communication bridges physical distances and connects us. We can easily send messages across continents and get an answer within a few seconds. However, the physical vis-à-vis is missing. The other's body, facial expressions and gestures are no longer part of interpersonal exchange. We are alone with the screen while interacting socially. Like a mirror, the screen echoes us back at ourselves. We share our space only with our own view of the world, while that of others remains out of sight. This one-sided perception can lead to a loss of empathy and—in the end—to disrespectful, hateful comments. As soon as we publish personal information on the Internet, we are exposed to the scrutiny of others, and on the other hand we are free to scrutinize in return.  

Read the full text here.

The participating artists are members of medienkunst e.V.

In cooperation with Raum für drastische Maßnahmen and medienkunst e.V.

Image credits: Lauren Moffatt, The Tulpamancer, 2019, immersive video installation (detail) // Jonas Blume, Rhythm Zero Los Santos, 2019, video still // Aron Lesnik, ISOLATION, 2018, video still // Manja Ebert, sleepingsquad, 2016, video sculpture // All images © the artists

RADIOSANDS - exhibition curated by Tina Sauerlaender

RADIOSANDS - Installation by Thom Kubli

August 23 - September 1, 2019 at Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

We live in a filter bubble online. Algorithms sort through the daily flood of information so that we can select fragments to build our reality. Just as grains of sand, we assemble the pieces until they make sense as a whole. The installation Radiosands reflects the generation, distribution and perception of information in the digital age.

Thom Kubli, Radiosands, HeK Basel, 2019, Image © Aya Imamura

Radiosands is comprised of sixteen identical radios specifically designed for the installation. They float upon delicate pedestals as if on radio waves through the space. The audio fragments emitted from the radios are based on search results algorithms found in analog FM radio frequencies in the area. The search terms were predefined by the artist. They refer to political entities, emotions as well as perception and reflect life in today’s society. Like Facebook’s algorithms, they select information to be heard on the radios in real time. Audio excerpts from various broadcasts come together simultaneously in the exhibition and create a spatial installation of sound. Sentence fragments from different sources form new meanings together. The installations of Radiosands are always site-specific, because the events taking place in the surroundings are transmitted via radio into the exhibition space.

Radio or Internet—despite the medium, all information is repetitively filtered until the receivers perceive it. The starting point is the intention of the senders, who decide on the content, formulation and channel. The selection of the medium, its range and distribution determine how visible the information will be to specific groups. The recipients’ selective perception and cultural imprint makes them more open to some information than to others. Out of the fragments they receive, they generate a meaningful narration of our reality.

How many building blocks do we actually need to make our reality convincing? And how truthful is it? These questions are reminiscent of world building in science fiction and fantasy literature. It describes the construction of an imaginary, holistic cosmos with many single components necessary for a consistent, credible world. The end product is what the artist Thom Kubli calls “granular reality.” In novels as in reality, it is important that we embed these small pieces of information in a narrative both coherent and consistent to make it ring true. We may then forget the single parts and see only the big picture, like sand on the beach. 

The exhibition Radiosands at the Haus am Lützowplatz is curated by Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space).
The project is a collaboration between Thom Kubli with the research team of Dr. Sven Hirsch the Institute for Applied Simulation at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Artistic Idea, Composition: Thom Kubli
Research Direction ZHAW: Dr. Sven Hirsch
Computer Language: Dr. Manuel Gil, Dr. Martin Schüle
Audio analysis: Prof. Dr. Thilo Stadelmann, Daniel Wassmer, Tobias Schlatter
Programming: Lydia Ickler, Norman Juchler
Technology and mechatronics: Florian Guist, Marek Olkusz
Assistant: Christian Maximilian Blasius

 With the helpful support of:  Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Hasler Stiftung, Migros Kulturprozent, ZHAW (Zurich University of Applied Sciences), HeK Basel and Haus am Lützowplatz.

Special thanks to Speechmatics for making the Speech Recognition Engine available.

VR art exhibition on Speculative Species at Espronceda, Barcelona

SPECULATIVE SPECIES - VR Art in the Age of the Anthropocene

Artists: Bianca Kennedy & The Swan Collective (DE), Juan Le Parc (ARG/FR), Jakob Kudsk Steensen (DK/US), Lara Torrance (UK/US)

Curators: Tina Sauerlaender & Peggy Schoenegge (DE) and Erandy Vergara (MX/CAN)

At: Espronceda, Center for Art & Culture, Carrer D'Espronceda 326 Nave 4,5 & 10
08027 Barcelona, Spain

Opening & Artist Talk & Panel Discussion: June 20, 2019, 7 pm

Duration: June 20 to 29, 2019

In the course of industrialisation, urbanisation and technolisation, human’s impact on the environment is increasing. The use and destruction of nature and its resources impairs the ecosystem, causing damage such as the hole in the ozone layer, climate change, the endangerment and extinction of various species. New procedures make it even possible to change DNA, which equally affects the whole system. All these human interventions inevitably affect global ecology and its creatures. Mankind has never been perceived as such an influencing factor for the environment. Today’s scientists and thinkers propose a new epoch, the Anthropocene, that describes and deals with the man-made changes, speaking from a geology of humankind.

Art as a mirror of current affairs also deals with these issues and uses new technologies such as VR. Using the possibilities of the virtual space as a room for experiments, artists reflect and speculate on characteristics and future developments of this new era of human interference with the environment and its creatures. They ask about the development of flora and fauna and how living conditions of different terrestrial species change. What kind of interrelation between humans and their environment will occur? The artists engage with the interconnections between humans and their fellow living creatures today and in speculative futuristic settings. This discussion/debate/speculative approach is transferred into the virtual space, in which the visitor immerses into.

Bianca Kennedy and The Swan Collective propose insects as alternative nutrition causing future genetic modifications. Juan Le Parc reveals an ancient temple built with meat products as a theatrical animal tragedy to discuss the duality of mass consumption and religious symbolism. With RE-ANIMATED Jakob Kudsk Steensen resurrects an extinct bird from recordings of its mating call in a world inhabited by algorithmically grown digital plants. Lara Torrance draws attention to endangered species in New England by placing their glassy versions into the virtual space.

Invited by the Goethe-Institut and Studio XX in Montréal, Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender developed the concept of their exhibition series Critical Approaches in Virtual Reality Art where this exhibition is part of. This series combines the passion and expertise of two curators: Erandy Vergara's engagement with postcolonial and feminist perspectives on media art and theory (Mexico/Montreal) and Tina Sauerlaender's curatorial engagement with digital technologies and Virtual Reality (Berlin). Together with peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge, they curate the exhibition SPECULATIVE SPECIES.

Image: Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Re-Animated, 2018, screenshot of VR experience © the artist

So Far, Still So Close during Gallery Weekend Berlin 2019

Nikita Shalenny, The Bridge, 2017 // Yu Hong, She’s Already Gone, 2017 // Courtesy of Khora Contemporary

So Far, Still So Close - A VR Art Exhibiton

Yu Hong & Nikita Shalenny 

April 26th - 28th, 2019

peer to space’s director Tina Sauerlaender curates together with George Vitale (Synthesis Gallery) the exhibition So Far, Still So Close. This is the first collaboration between Khora Contemporary (Copenhagen, Denmark), Radiance VR (co-founded by Sauerlaender) and Synthesis Gallery (Berlin, Germany). 

Both artists, Yu Hong and Nikita Shalenny, in their artistic practice deal with the altering passage of time. In Hong’s ‘She’s Already Gone’, the narrative follows differing timelines as the life and aging of the protagonist moves forward while history goes backwards. Nikita Shalenny’s work is mentally extended to infinity. The bridge and the horizon are set between two places. The horizon disappears within space, yet the strong conviction that there is a better world beyond the horizon lives on. Both artists create drawings and paintings by hand that are later transferred into the virtual space to become animated artworks. The visible brush strokes add a layer of physicality to the virtual world.

Opening reception:  April 26th 2019, 6-9pm
Private view: April 26th 2019, 5pm (by invitation only)
Exhibition dates: April 26th - April 28th 2019, 1am-7pm
At: Synthesis Gallery, Kopernikusstrasse 14, 10245 Berlin, Germany

Group Show on New Media Art at Goethe Media Space, Toronto

TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE II - Transmediations in the Digital Age

Commissioned & presented by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Co-presented with Hot Docs, Images Festival & Digifest

Artists: Jonas Blume (DE), Manja Ebert (DE), Ornella Fieres (DE), Aron Lesnik (DE), Lorna Mills (CAN), Sarah Oh-Mock (DE), Julia Charlotte Richter (DE), Anna Ridler (UK), The Swan Collective (DE), Tina Wilke (DE).

Curated by Tina Sauerländer (peer to space)

Opening & Artist Talk: Friday, March 22, 2019, 6:30 pm

Goethe Media Space, 100 University Ave, North Tower, 2nd floor, Toronto, Canada

Jonas Blume, Predictive Biography, 2018 © the artist

Ornella Fieres, As if we are passing through tunnels, Video (Still), 2017 © the artist

Sarah Oh-Mock, You Want It Darker, Video (Still), 2017/18 © the artist

Tina Wilke, GLOCAL, Argentina / Bolivia, 2012-2018, Video (Still) © the artist

Aron Lesnik, IMITATIO, Video (Still), 2018 © the artist

The Swan Collective, Here We Are - A Turing Torture, 2018, VR Experience (Still), 2018 © the artists

Julia Charlotte Richter, Das kleine Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood), Video (Still), 2011 © the artist

Touching From A Distance presents recent digital art works immersed into the book shelves and media hardware at the Goethe Media Space. All works deal with transmediation, the process of translating information between different co-existing media–analog or digital, written or visual. The concept of transmediation reflects our daily internet routine, as we stay connected via intangible yet visible information. The band Joy Division praised the effect of music conveyed through the radio with their 1979 song Transmission: “Touching from a distance...sound, that's all we need to synchronise.” Today, digital data reaches and connects us as we post images, create short videos, or use emojis.

The 10 featured works build bridges between literature, language, digital art or VR. Ornella Fieres explores the transitions between analog and digital imagery; Anna Ridler transforms Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher into an AI animation based on the artist’s drawings; Aron Lesnik creates uncanny animations of people talking about the advantages of reading.

The exhibition is the 2nd version of TOUCHING FROM A DISTANCE, organized by medienkunstverein.com and Literaturhaus Berlin, curated by Manja Ebert, Tina Sauerländer and Peggy Schoenegge in 2018.

The exhibition includes a world premiere by Lorna Mills as well as 6 North American and 3 Canadian premieres.

Duration: Fri, 03/22/2019 - Thu, 05/23/2019

More information

SPECULATIVE CULTURES - A Virtual Reality Exhibition

Matias Brunacci, Virtualshamanism, VR experience, 2018

Artists:  Morehshin Allahyari (IRN/US), Scott Benesiinaabandan (CAN), Matias Brunacci (ARG/DE), Yu Hong (CHN), Francois Knoetze (ZAF), Erin Ko (US) & Jamie Martinez (COL/US)
Curators: Tina Sauerlaender & Peggy Schoenegge (DE), and Erandy Vergara (MX/CA)
At: Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design at The New School , 2 West 13th St, Ground Floor, New York, USA
Opening: February 7, 2019, 6- 8 pm
Artists' Tour: February 8, 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Duration: February 7, 2019 - April 14, 2019.

Cultures have never existed in a set state. They are all in constant flux brought about by social, economic, and technological developments. The global flow of people forges change, adaptation of norms and the creation of new forms for human societies, religions, rituals, or spoken languages. These processes of change lead to the adoption of new tools or practices and therefore can be considered as engine for progress, growth, and innovation. The new tools of the digital age offer new possibilities for cultures to exist, evolve, and consolidate. Virtual Reality allows artists to speculate about new manifestations of cultural expressions within the conditions of the digital realm. Independent of physical surroundings, new spaces spring into existence. Through their works, the artists shape their hopes and desires into virtual environments representing imagined cultures. Their speculative virtual worlds create different perspectives on established narratives and traditions, as well as images and symbols. The artists’ projects thereby open possibilities for leaving accustomed views and familiar structures behind and exploring different notions of one’s own personal surroundings and conditions of human existence.

This show is part of the exhibition series Critical Approaches in Virtual Reality Art, which was developed by Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut and Studio XX in Montréal. This series brings together Erandy Vergara's engagement with postcolonial and feminist perspectives on media art and theory and Tina Sauerlaender's curatorial engagement with digital technologies and Virtual Reality.  

Presented in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada in New York.

Inside Out > Solo Show Of Tatjana Schülke

peer to space’s curator Peggy Schoenegge curates Tatjana Schülke’s solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Dahlem. The exhibition Inside Out shows 15 recent works, which illustrate the artist's experimentation with different materials. In addition to the relationship between material, form and surface, the tension between internal and external effects is elementary.

The exhibition takes place from January 18th to April 8th 2019.

Further information

THIS COULD BE YOU – Disembodiment in Virtual Reality Art

THIS COULD BE YOU – Disembodiment in Virtual Reality Art

With: Claire Hentschker (US), Jessy Jetpacks (ARE/ UK), Martina Menegon (IT/AUT), Zeesy Powers (US)

Curated by: Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

At: Overkill Festival, The Netherlands

From: November 23rd to 25th, 2018

Today we communicate via several digital applications, and present our identity on the Internet. Social VR enables us to meet our friends’ avatars in a virtual space independently from our body’s actual place. Thus being evocative of the plot of the Sci-Fi movie Matrix (1999), in which the physical body stays in a bunk while the consciousness acts in a virtual place.

Martina Menegon, All Around Me Are Familiar Faces, artistic VR experience, still, 2018

In 1991, Hans Moravec wrote in his essay The Universal Robot that the human body is disused and won’t be necessary in our future anymore. He said it would be possible to download one’s consciousness to a computer. By transferring the mind to a technological medium the body would becomes insignificant. As a result human beings would not be embodied and their existence would not depend on biological mortality anymore. Consequently human beings would become immortal.

With recent technological progress Moravec’s idea no longer seems completely absurd. Virtual Reality (VR) as a technological and artistic medium enables users to experience disembodiment. The exhibition THIS COULD BE YOU. Disembodiment in Virtual Reality is dedicated to the feeling of incorporeality. The title refers to Zeesy Powers’ eponymous VR artwork, in which the user inhabits the body of an old woman. Over the course of time the body of the old woman becomes the body of the user. Entering a virtual world allow users to immerse themselves in a completely different place without a physical body. There, users can be everyone and everything. Feeling present in the virtual space, makes them forget about their bodies in reality.

VR experiences implicate future living scenarios but also reflect the current state of our society and its relation to technology. Claire Hentschker shows a deserted world without any humans. While reflecting the presence, her work gives an impression of what a disembodied future of formerly inhabited places could look like. Jessy Jetpacks plays with the re-embodiment in the virtual room and questions wether our bodies have a memory and if such an experience has consequences. Martina Menegon and Zeesy Powers also confront the users with bodies that are not theirs. While Menegon provides her 3D scanned face as a mask-like object, the users interact with; Powers mirrors the user as a 90 years old woman. By doing so, they create a vision of what life with an immaterial body could be like and what it might or might not feel like.

THIS COULD BE YOU. Disembodiment in Virtual Reality is part of the Overkill Festival 2018 in Enschede (NL). The festival regroups art, games, movies and performances and opens a new discourse.

The artistic VR experiences are presented in cooperation with Radiance VR.

Link to the Facebook Event

Website of Overkill Festival