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| David Blandy: Ice. GB 2015. HD video, mp4. 1:04 min. Edition 6/20. ARS17+ Online Art. Kiasma. |
ARS 17 – Hello World!
31 Mar 2017 – 10 Sep 2017 / 14 Jan 2018
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki
Curated by director Leevi Haapala with chief curator Marja Sakari and curators Kati Kivinen, Patrik Nyberg, and Jari-Pekka Vanhala.
Exhibition architecture: Sun Effects.
The ARS exhibitions are a series of major surveys of international contemporary art, organised since 1961. ARS17 is the ninth in the series, and the fourth in Kiasma.
The book to the exhibition:
ARS17 Hello World! Taide internetin jälkeen / Art after the Internet. Edited by Leevi Haapala, Eija Aarnio and Jari-Pekka Vanhala. Graphic design: Laura Rautaheimo. Nykytaiteen museon julkaisuja 156 / 2017. Bilingual (Finnish / English). Fully illustrated with a complete and professional catalogue of the works on display. 256 p.
AA: ARS exhibitions have been an exciting feature in the Finnish art scene since 1961. I have been following them since I was a schoolboy in 1969 when trends exhibited included pop art, kinetic art, and minimalism.
The art world has kept expanding and exploding into many new directions, but Leevi Haapala and his team have decided to focus on art in the age of the internet. This exhibition is wild and mind-boggling, and the full experience includes besides displays in museum rooms also net art on the website, online performances and special screenings at the Kiasma theatre. Among the mottoes is "the internet as the collective unconscious of our time".
The amorphous and protean quality of the internet makes it a difficult beast to catch, but the Kiasma team has been determined in embarking on this intrepid adventure. The works caught are brand new.
On the second floor Reija Meriläinen's Survivor is a 3D video game with Kiasma itself as the playground. Tuomas A. Laitinen's Receptor (Cyborg Agency) is a video installation representing a cyberpunk monster octopus. Rachel Ross's virtual reality space Alembic Cache Passes (Time-Snark) takes us inside the explosion of consumer culture in Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point.
Juha van Ingen has created a millennium computer loop called ASLAP (AS Long As Possible). Artie Vierkant's Material Support is an installation of everchanging works, a display of the concept of change itself. Jon Rafman's sculptures on a rabbit mounting a pig and a deer devouring a gorilla are sculptures made of high density foam and acrylic paint. In this context the monstrous sculptures seem like a comment on the insatiable internet.
On the third floor we witness visions of devastation in computer world. Julia Varela's X/5.0000, an installation of crumpled "dead screens" from her series called Hijacked, is a startlingly black vision of digital death. Nina Canell's Brief Syllables / Thin Vowels is a sculpture created of sliced cables.
There are also media critical works. Melanie Gilligan's The Common Sense is an installation of television sets reflecting on a culture of ubiquitous surveillance. Jacolby Satterwhite's video and print hybrids En plein air: Music of Objective Romance: Track #1, Healing in My House and Genesis Region One are a gluttonous vortex of games, dance videos, and fantasy imagery. Jaakko Pallasvuo turns a satirical look onto the art world itself in his How to video and wall painting series.
On the other hand, new horizons arise. Katja Novitskova's Dawn Mission cycle is an attempt at a graphic demonstration of phenomena that are beyond visual perception such as light itself or cells. Charles Richardson's video and sculpture hybrid Headbone seeks a connection between the virtual world and ancient tribalism. Nandita Kumar's eLEMenT: EARTH, pOLymORpHic hUMansCApE, and The Unwanted Ecology are fascinating, original and unique sculptures in glass bottles juxtaposing obsolete circuits and rare weeds.
An antithesis to all the virtual reality displays is Aude Pariset's Greenhouses installation cycle featuring live mealworms, a work of bio-art. The Conqueror Worm? These worms seem able to digest anything. Of another live art display only the performance space exists for the moment. A performance in livestream of LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner's #ALONETOGETHER will later take place.
Ryan Trecartin's Temple Time is an hour-long video where the characters try to make sense of a narrative whose logical chain has become broken.
Anna Uddenberg's Savage cycle of sculptures is created of fiberglass, aqua resin, synthetic hair, spray filler, and suitcases. The poses of the sculptures of bending females border on pornography, but they turn into a satire of objectification.
Andrey Bogush's Proposal for Image Placement (Stretched, Curtain) is a huge display of a recycled image found on the net. It gains a hallucinatory quality in the giant curtain format.
On the fourth floor, in the multi-room work Ribbons, we meet the virtual avatar of the artist Ed Atkins lying naked on the floor, singing "Erbarme Dich, mein Gott" from St. Matthew's Passion by J. S. Bach. In his Counting #1 & #2 we see severed heads bouncing down stairs. Cécile B. Evans's video What the Heart Wants is another exploration into virtual identity in cyberworld.
On the fifth floor, Ilja Karilampi's Capital City is an installation turning a Kiasma space into a protean virtual space.
Hito Steyerl's video installation Factory of the Sun creates light from dancing movements. His How Not to Be Seen is based on US Air Force calibration targets. The question of ubiquitous surveillance is at the bottom of this work.
A collection of several works by Yung Jake, "born in the internet", brings the ARS17 tour to an end. Yung Jake who only exists in the third person presents us questions about authorship, authenticity and originality in an age of recycling.
This exhibition exceeds the limits of reception, which is also a hallmark of the digital age: the sense of being overwhelmed, bombarded by data. While we are trying to make sense of our life via art, art itself is morphing into something that is not easily caught in museum spaces. ARS17 is a valiant and necessary venture for our time.
Leevi Haapala in his introduction observes an interesting affinity between the millennial digital natives and the art of the 1980s.
Also among my first impressions was a déjà vu feeling from the 1980s. That was the decade of the digital breakthrough, the invention of the World Wide Web, and the launching of virtual reality. Music videos, splatter movies, rap / hip hop / graffiti, and transgender images grew into prominence. The barrage of visual messages was seen as an issue to be dealt with.
The 1980s was also a decade of a breakthrough of video art as an important movement. I am a bit surprised to meet 1980s style low tech video approach in contemporary art. In commercial first run cinemas of today we have gleaming digital projection, amazing in its hyperrealistic (and perhaps unworldly) brilliance and sharpness. But ARS artists seem to volunteer for lower visual definition.
The 1980s was also the breakthough decade of cyberpunk. In the cinema that meant works such as Scanners, Blade Runner, Videodrome, Electric Dreams, and Weird Science. Cyberpunk is still a keyword in the ARS exhibition.
I keep thinking even further back. Some of the revelations of my first ARS exhibition in 1969 are still relevant in the current one, including pop art and the new way of looking at selfhood which back then was most blatantly represented by Andy Warhol, the grandfather of the selfie.
And while we are commemorating the centenary of WWI I am contemplating the end of art as it had been known till then, the end of the beautiful and the sublime, and the birth of something new for which we still have no solid aesthetic concepts. The Museum of Contemporary Art is based on the divide between modern (modernistic) art and contemporary art, but for me we are also still living in the age of Duchamp whose reincarnation was Warhol.
ARS17 makes us think of the ubiquity of the cyberworld, the virtual existence of art, and the fragility and the transience of the computer world. Key works of the 1990s cannot be accessed anymore such as CD-ROM's by Marita Liulia or Chris Marker (Immemory). They were inseparable from their now obsolete technology.
We are now living in a world of digital technology, soon to be replaced by quantum technology. We need to store digital art in our memories because there is no guarantee that it will survive to the next generation in any other way.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OFFICIAL KIASMA PRESENTATIONS OF THE ARS17 EXHIBITION, INCLUDING A LIST OF THE ARTWORKS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: OFFICIAL KIASMA PRESENTATIONS OF THE ARS17 EXHIBITION, INCLUDING A LIST OF THE ARTWORKS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS:
The Kiasma press release: ARS17 – Hello World!, is a survey of contemporary art focusing on the global digital revolution and its impact on our culture and economy, as well as human identity and behaviour. The exhibition in Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki brings together 35 artists from 13 countries representing three generations, from the ‘60s to the ‘80s. The ARS17+ Online Art website at arsplus.fi showcases a selection of new net art as part of the ARS17 exhibition at Kiasma.
Many of the artists featured in the exhibition are post-internet millennials, who are digital natives more or less from the moment they are born. For them, the physical and virtual worlds are inseparable components of the same merged reality. In their world, digital technology is not an end itself, but a tool for creating, sharing and experiencing.
What can art tell us about life in the digital age? This question forms the thematic catalyst of the ARS17 exhibition. Each ARS exhibition has traditionally taken up a cultural or societal topic for in-depth analysis. This time the theme we are investigating is the digital revolution, though not from a technology-driven perspective, but rather from a human-interest angle, focusing on behaviours, feelings, desires and communities. In our daily lives, digital services and platforms have become tools for connecting people and for delivering streamlined, personalized services. Meanwhile, our consumer habits, relationships and personal interests have become more public and visible than ever before. The internet has become a state of mind, both on a personal and collective level.
For today’s artists, ‘embracing the future’ is not about chasing trends, but more about making choices that will affect tomorrow. One of the core goals of ARS17 is to deepen our critical self-understanding of digital culture in relation to how art is presented, and also to foster an inter-disciplinary approach in bringing art into a wider arena of debate on our digital future.
Many interwoven themes are raised by the works in the exhibition. These themes include human relationship with animate objects, technology and energy production; the connection between the physical and virtual worlds; self-image as shaped by social media; and where we are headed in the future, whether in the direction of techno-utopias or frightening dystopian visions. Some of the works depict the internet as the great collective unconscious of our time. The exhibition also highlights the new aesthetics of the digital age and the experimental use of brand aesthetics in the post-capitalist era.
The ARS17+ Online Art is a collection of online art that can be enjoyed anytime, anywhere, via personal mobile device if the user so desires. Some of the pieces in the online collection add an extra dimension to an accompanying physical work in the exhibition.
While celebrating the centenary of Finland’s independence in 2017, as part of the official ‘Finland 100 Years’ programme, ARS17 also emphasises the importance of looking forward, focuing on the shaping of the next 100 years. ARS17 includes over 50 artists in three programmes: ARS17 – the main exhibition; ARS17 + Online Art – a newly launched platform to present works online, to extend the experience beyond the museum walls; and ARS17 at Kiasma Theatre – a new programme exploring the issues of digital transformation on the present and future of live art, including guest performances and four Finnish premieres.
ARS17 artists:
Ed Atkins (1982, Great Britain), Andrey Bogush (1987, Russia), Nina Canell (1979, Sweden), Cécile B. Evans (1983, USA), Lizzie Fitch & Ryan Trecartin (1981, USA & 1981, USA), Melanie Gilligan (1979, Canada), Juha van Ingen (1963, Finland), Yung Jake (2011, Internet), Ilja Karilampi (1983, Sweden), Nandita Kumar (1981, Mauritius), Tuomas A. Laitinen (1976, Finland), LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner: Shia LaBeouf (1986, USA), Nastja Säde Rönkkö (1985, Finland), Luke Turner (1982, Great Britain), Reija Meriläinen (1987, Finland), Katja Novitskova (1984, Estonia), Jaakko Pallasvuo (1987, Finland), Aude Pariset (1983, France), Jon Rafman (1981, Canada), Charles Richardson (1979, Great Britain), Rachel Rossin (1987, USA), Jacolby Satterwhite (1986, USA), Hito Steyerl (1966, Germany), Anna Uddenberg (1982, Sweden), Julia Varela (1986, Spain), Artie Vierkant (1986, USA).
ARS17+ Online Art artists: David Blandy (1976, Great Britain), Ed Fornieles (1983, Great Britain), Juha van Ingen (1963, Finland), Rachel Maclean (1987, Great Britain), Florian Meisenberg (1980, Germany), Reija Meriläinen (1987, Finland), Pink Twins Juha Vehviläinen & Vesa Vehviläinen (1978 & 1974, Finland), Angelo Plessas (1974, Greece), Jon Rafman (1981, Canada), Tuomo Rainio (1983, Finland), Charles Richardson (1979, Great Britain), Jarkko Räsänen (1984, Finland), Axel Straschnoy (1978, Argentina), Jenna Sutela (1983, Finland), Amalia Ulman (1989, Argentina).
ARS17 is curated by Dr. Leevi Haapala, the Director of Kiasma, with curatorial team including Chief Curator Marja Sakari along with curators Kati Kivinen, Patrik Nyberg and Jari-Pekka Vanhala. ARS17+ Online Art is produced under the direction of Chief Curator of collections Arja Miller along with curators Eija Aarnio and Milja Liimatainen. The commissioned works by Angelo Plessas and Jenna Sutela were curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, a London-based curator who specialises in online art. Kiasma Theatre’s program is curated by producer Mikael Aaltonen.
The exhibition architecture is by Sun Effects Oy.
The ARS17 publication contains presentations about every artist featured in the show, as well as essays by Maaike Bleeker, Omar Kholeif, Christiane Paul and Leevi Haapala. The bilingual book (Finnish / English) has been edited by Eija Aarnio and Jari-Pekka Vanhala.
Survivor
2017
Video game installation
This 3D video game takes you on an adventure through Kiasma’s galleries. Museum visitors can play the game using the controls attached to the seat.
The work reflects on the power dynamics at play in our everyday social encounters. It is inspired by the TV reality show Survivor, a survival contest that takes complex group power plays to the extreme. Finding one’s role and place in the community is a challenge we all face in daily environments such as school.
Jon Rafman
Several works
2016
Open Heart Warrior
L’Avalée des avalés (The Swallower Swallowed: Rabbit/Pig)
L’Avalée des avalés (The Swallower Swallowed, Deer/Gorilla)
Sculptures and video installation (13:30 min)
This ensemble of two sculptures and a video installation reflects on human needs and desires in relation to digitality. The sculptures portray images of vorarephilia, the erotic desire to eat another person or creature, to be eaten, or to observe this process. Jon Rafman associates the compulsion to swallow with our voracious appetite for consuming digital media.
View the work from the comfort of the relaxation chair. The video splices together beautiful natural scenery with dark images inspired by the gaming world. The soundtrack combines a calm voice instructing us to relax with a nightmarish ambiance. The artist suggests that immersive gaming can induce a momentary out-of-body experience in the same way as a mindfulness exercise.
Jon Rafman
Born in Canada in 1981
Based in Montreal
Tuomas A. Laitinen
Receptor
2017
Video installation, (12 min)
The video installation looks at the ways technology is a go-between in human-to-human interaction, both mental and physical. We use touch screens made of rare earth minerals and we use robots to perform surgical procedures that require extreme precision.
A different world of tactile sensation is represented by the octopus, which is able to use each of its tentacles to perform complex tasks independently, as each tentacle has its own autonomous nervous system. The text and speech in the installation is AI-generated. They are produced by an algorithm that has been taught to use language through feeds of experimental literature.
Co-produced with AVEK and Kiasma.
Tuomas A. Laitinen
Born in Finland in 1976
Based in Helsinki
Rachel Rossin
Alembic Cache Passes (Time-snark)
2016
VR video
The video piece by Rachel Ross is viewed with a VR headset. The viewer’s movements on the marble base in the gallery affect the course of events. In the opening scene, the video ushers the viewer into a smoking house. The viewer’s movements inside the house trigger an extraordinary chain reaction. The work was inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point (1970), which concludes with a similar scene of entropic dissolution.
Rachel Rossin
Born in the USA in 1987
Based in New York
Juha van Ingen
ASLAP (AS Long As Possible)
2015
1000 year long animated GIF loop, computer, photographs, prints
ASLAP is a 1000-year-long GIF-animation consisting of 48 140 288 frames displaying nothing but ascending numbers starting from 1. Each frame is displayed for roughly 10 minutes. When 1000 years are up, the loop returns to the start and begins again. ASLAP embraces the utopian idea of an eternal artwork.
The computer running the animation is on display in a glass cabinet. The other cabinet contains a stack of printouts of the animation code for the duration of the exhibition. On the wall there is a photograph of the animation’s first and last frames and the date that GIF animation (Graphic Interchange Format) was invented.
ASLAP has been purchased for Kiasma’s collections. The museum has committed itself to keeping the work running for as long as possible.
Juha van Ingen
Born in Finland in 1963
Based in Helsinki
Artie Vierkant
Material Support
2016
Installation, UV prints
The labyrinthine installation is part of an ongoing series. The artist photographs the work in its exhibition setting, digitally edits this image, and then incorporates the printout as part of his next installation. The walls constructed here in Kiasma will thus become part of his next installations in a never-ending cycle of images.
Artie Vierkant’s focus of interest is on encounters between immaterial digital objects and the tangible, physical world. He incorporates manipulated image files as part of a wall which in turn reassembles the shape of the exhibition space.
Artie Vierkant
Born in the USA in 1986
Based in New York
Julia Varela
X/5.000
2015–16
Folded plasma screens
The crumpled plasma screens strewn across the floor are dead, save for the faint reflections in their shiny, black surfaces.
The work was partly inspired by an internet video of terrorists erecting screens in the Iraqi city of Mosul for the purpose of screening Isis propaganda. The installation ‘hijacks’ the screens and renders them useless. The artist is intrigued by the ways people express social grievances through inanimate objects.
Julia Varela
Born in Spain in 1986
Based in London & Madrid
Nina Canell
Several works
2014, 2016
Brief Syllables / Thin Vowels (2014)
Attenuate Attenuate (2016)
Sculptures, Wall piece
The sculptures in the room display sliced and unspooled electricity and communication cables that have been dug up from underground. The thin net on the wall is made of copper.
Nina Canell is interested in the dissonance between functional materials and their immaterial connotations. She sees subterranean cables as forming an underground network of capital, labour and knowledge, or as a kind of extension of the human nervous system. In the wireless age, the materiality of the cables seems almost anachronistic.
Nina Canell
Born in Sweden in 1979
Based in Berlin
Katja Novitskova
Dawn Mission
2014, 2016
Parts:
Light Potential (unfolded protein) (2016)
Mars Potential (sunrise) (2016)
Light Potential (camels at night) (2016)
Approximation (gecko) (2016)
Dodoli de Luxe Grey (2014)
Installation
The works are three-dimensional versions of images found on the web. The sculptures portray proteins, cells, planets and light – things we cannot see with the naked eye due to their microscopic size or vast distance.
Katja Novitskova charts the limits of human perception while commenting on the impossibility of remaining invisible in this era of ever-growing surveillance. Data is constantly being collected and registered by all manner of devices from drones to electronic microscopes.
Katja Novitskova
Born in Estonia in 1984
Based in Berlin & Amsterdam
Charles Richardson
Headbone
2015
Sculptures and video (8:02 min)
The first element encountered in this multi-part work is a surprising medley of sculptural objects. Stepping closer, we hear the Afro-American spiritual song Dem Bones listing the basic elements of the human skeleton from head to toe. The video depicts two hollow figures created with a 3D photo scanner.
Charles Richardson explores how we construct our identities with devices, appendages and possessions, which rule us even in the virtual world. This idea is underlined by the floral-print sofa and the pregnant belly which appear both in the video and as physical objects in the space.
View six short videos by Charles Richardson: arsplus.fi
Charles Richardson
Born in the UK in 1979
Based in Leek, Staffordshire
Aude Pariset
Greenhouses
2016
Parts:
Flower Maiden (Ecoveg)
Stallion Dad
Green Nuclear Family nº 1
Green Nuclear Family nº 2
Leçon de Vie (Bio Qualität)
Mother Cougar
Ménage Garbage Patch 1
Ménage Garbage Patch 2
Promession® #1
Promession® #2
Petite SUV I
Petite SUV II
Installation
The boxes on the floor are inhabited by mealworms, which are used for producing fertilizers by means of vermicomposting. The worms can digest and biodegrade Styrofoam.
The mealworms are cared for daily. Their boxes are cleaned and the lighting and humidity are adjusted by museum personnel.
The works on the wall are made of the artist’s home-produced bio-plastic. Her repurposed luxury images of equestrian sports and high-end leisure pursuits address the themes of recycling, consumerism and the transience of matter.
Aude Pariset
Born in France in 1983
Based in Berlin
Melanie Gilligan
The Common Sense
2014
5 LED TVs, powder-coated steel tubes, HD video (5 x 6:50 min)
The video consists of multiple short episodes. In their sci-fi world, feelings and sensations can be sent and received between people via a transmitter called ‘The Patch’.
Technology forges a more empathetic society, yet also serves as a powerful surveillance device and a highly addictive immersive entertainment experience provider. With this work, the artist interrogates how technological innovations shape our minds, our behaviour and our bodies.
Melanie Gilligan
Born in Canada in 1979
Based in New York
Jacolby Satterwhite
Several works
2015, 2016
En plein air: Music of Objective Romance: Track #1 Healing in My House (2016)
Genesis Region One (2015)
Wallpaper, HD video (9:27 min)
The large print on the wall and the video in the adjacent room together depict a digital fantasy universe. Jacolby Satterwhite weaves together imagery from gay clubs, music videos and computer games. The male figure dancing and moving in the video is the artist himself.
Satterwhite borrows various dance styles such as vogue, which integrates angular movements with model-like poses. Some of the pictorial and audio material is borrowed from drawings and songs recorded on cassette tape by the artist’s mother, Patricia Satterwhite.
Jacolby Satterwhite
Born in the USA in 1986
Based in New York
LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner
#ALONETOGETHER
2017
Performance, installation and livestream
The performance begins on April 12, 2017.
#ALONETOGETHER weaves a virtual link between Kiasma’s visitors and the three artists. LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner will spend a month in three remote cabins somewhere in Finnish Lapland, entirely cut off from other people. A video link to this small cabin in the gallery is their only point of contact with the outside world.
Inside the cabin you can speak directly with the artists, and they can communicate with you – but not with each other – by text.
After their month in isolation, a document of their digital encounters will be on display inside the cabin for the remainder of the exhibition.
Shia LaBeouf
Born in the USA in 1986
Based in Los Angeles
Nastja Säde Rönkkö
Born in Finland in 1985
Based in Helsinki
Luke Turner
Born in the UK in 1982
Based in London
Jaakko Pallasvuo
How to /
2011
How to / Craft (2:43 min)
How to / Critique (2:22 min)
How to / Internet (4:45 min)
How to / Location (2:04 min)
How to / Orientation (2:06 min)
Video and wall painting
The videos offer advice on how to succeed in the international artworld, emulating the style of DIY ‘how to’ videos. The slogans describe what kind of art you should display and what kind of information to disclose about yourself.
The piece takes an ironic dig at contemporary art fads and ‘look at me’ tactics. The mural behind the video screens was painted by the artist for ARS17.
Jaakko Pallasvuo
Born in Finland in 1987
Based in Helsinki
Nandita Kumar
Several works
2012, 2013, 2016
eLEMenT: EARTH (2012)
pOLymORpHic hUMansCApE (2013)
The Unwanted Ecology (2016)
Sculptures
The artist has constructed interactive dioramas inside three glass bottles, combining PCB boards and electronic components with images of plants and details of urban environments. The works visualize a future where nature and technology are in synch. Nandita Kumar raises questions about the human-nature connection and sustainable development.
eLEMenT: EARTH: This soundscape in the bottle emits the sound of the Big Bang, the patter of rain, the howl of the wind, whale mating calls and birdsongs. The PCB boards emitting the sounds form part of a tangle of ornamental vegetation. The circuitry is charged partly by a tree in the bottle that is constructed of solar cells. The work reacts to movement around it, producing high-pitched electronic sounds that mirror human activity and our carbon imprinting on Earth.
pOLymORpHic hUMansCApE: The tiny LCD screens in this interactive piece portray scenes of urban life. The screens react to movement, switching from restful scenes of nature to images of uncontrolled urban sprawl. The artist is intrigued by how urban environments shape our consciousness. She highlights India’s mega-metropoles, where uncontrolled urbanization is exceeding sustainable limits, resulting in slums and impacting negatively on our wellbeing.
The Unwanted Ecology: The work is based on weeds collected by the artist around her studio in Goa, India. Each weed in the bottle produces a sound at a particular frequency. A plant is deemed a ‘weed’ if it is unwanted and grows in the wrong place. Many weeds have medicinal properties that have been forgotten in contemporary society. The book accompanying the bottle contains information about the medical application of various weed plants.
Nandita Kumar
Born in Mauritius in 1981
Based in Mumbai & Auckland
Ryan Trecartin
Temple Time
2016
HD video (54:32 min)
Shot in an abandoned Masonic temple in Los Angeles, the work unfolds like a horror-tinged group expedition movie. The temple serves as a wilderness substitute for the characters, who build makeshift campsites as they go.
Behaving like they are part of a quasi-documentary or reality TV show, they navigate a fragmented narrative. There is no logical order to the events: the past and the future are anticipated simultaneously.
Ryan Trecartin
Born in the USA in 1981
Based in Los Angeles
Anna Uddenberg
Several works
2016
Savage #5 (cozy crotch)
Savage #6 (dirty raver)
Savage #7 (zero g)
Swirl Lounge
Sculptures
The sculpted figures lock their thighs onto suitcases as if they’re riding a mechanical bull, performing established notions of being wild and sexy. One of the figures droops off a glassy bar top.
“I’m fascinated by outdated architectural ideas about what the future looks like – spaces like duty-free zones, with reflective surfaces, glass and chrome,” Anna Uddenberg says. “As exhausted as they might be, they still have such a strong emotional impact.”
Anna Uddenberg
Born in Sweden in 1982
Based in Berlin
Andrey Bogush
Proposal for image placement (stretched, curtain)
2017
Installation
The print on the vinyl drape is based on an image found by the artist on Tumblr. Andrey Bogush explores image placement by plucking a web image from its original source, duplicating it and then transplanting it in a new environment. The distorted, pixelated image highlights the manipulability of digital files.
In his choice of materials and technique, Bogush strives for a neutral, impersonal impression: his work could be mistaken for a corporate commodity.
Andrey Bogush
Born in Russia in 1987
Based in Helsinki & Milan
Ed Atkins
Ribbons
2014
Three-channel HD video (13:19 min)
Ribbons is a video piece installed across three rooms of the gallery. A solitary, nude male figure demands empathetic connection by singing and addressing us directly. In his attempts to connect, he sings Randy Newman’s I Think It’s Going to Rain Today, Henry Purcell’s 17th century drinking round, ‘Tis Women Makes Us Love and an aria from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. According to the artist, the emotional sincerity of the songs is at distinct odds with the character’s intractable artifice.
Ed Atkins reflects on technologies that seek to achieve realism and a human connection. He sees this piece as illustrating the disconnect that occurs when the desired bond is not achieved: true intimacy perhaps remains an irreplaceable fundament of communication and identification. The figure is animated by the movements and voice of the artist himself, using motion capture technologies.
Ed Atkins
Born in the UK in 1982
Based in Berlin
Ed Atkins
Counting #1 & #2
2014
HD video (13:19 min)
The animated severed heads keep bouncing down the stairs over and over again. Counting 1 and 2 are synchronized with the video piece Ribbons in the adjacent rooms, acting – according to the artist – like a “metronome” or aesthetic primer for the main work in the other rooms. Ed Atkins regards the loop as a signature mode of contemporary presentation.
Cécile B. Evans
What the Heart Wants
2016
HD video (41:05 min)
The video examines what it could mean to be ”a person” in the future and how machines shape how we are ”human”.
HYPER, a powerful new system and the narrator of the video, has achieved this ultimate goal of personhood. In her future-turned-now she is joined by a range of other protagonists: an immortal cell, a memory from 1972 that has outlived the humans who would have remembered it, lab children with their robot caregiver, and a workers’ collective comprised entirely of disembodied ears.
Cécile B. Evans
Born in the USA & in Belgium in 1983
Based in London
Ilja Karilampi
Pääkaupunki
2016
Capital City
Installation
The artist has transformed Kiasma’s Panorama Space into a hybrid office lounge-cum-nightclub, the mood of which changes at different times of the day. Come evening, the daylight switches to nightclub-style neon lights. The ultraviolet light then reveals the hidden texts painted on the walls.
Ilja Karilampi freely combines styles and emblems borrowed from popular culture. His work teems with band and product logos and references to DJs and celebrities. His installations are often inspired by real, existing places, such as executive suites, backstage lounges or suburban kiosks.
Ilja Karilampi
Born in Sweden in 1983
Based in Berlin
Hito Steyerl
Factory of the Sun
2015
Video installation (23:00 min)
The video depicts a factory that manufactures light by harnessing the movements of dancers. The work weaves together the imagery of video games, news reportage and internet dance videos. It looks like a video game, but is unplayable – a twist the artist sees as mirroring our digitized world.
The grid schematics of the video and viewing space suggest a motion capture studio in which human movement can be recorded and converted into digital data.
Another video installation by the same artist is also featured in the show: How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV Fil
Hito Steyerl’s video installations probe issues related to the media, technology and the global circulation of images. What is the meaning of this world in which everything is watched and filmed? Steyerl addresses these burning topics through her particular brand of quirky humour.
Hito Steyerl
Born in Germany in 1966
Based in Berlin
Hito Steyerl
How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV Fil
2013
Video installation (15:52 min)
The video teaches five lessons on how to stay invisible from prying eyes and cameras. The piece comments on the difficulty of evading surveillance, while also alluding to the cultural invisibility of women. The video was filmed in the California desert, where the US Air Force painted calibration targets in the 1950s and 1960s. The title refers to a popular sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus imitating a purported British government film explaining the importance of not being seen.
Another video installation by the same artist is also featured in the show: Factory of the Sun
Hito Steyerl’s video installations probe issues related to the media, technology and the global circulation of images. What is the meaning of this world in which everything is watched and filmed? Steyerl addresses these burning topics through her particular brand of quirky humour.
Hito Steyerl
Born in Germany in 1966
Based in Berlin
Yung Jake
Several works
2017
Jake the Dog
Tails
Filburt
Catdog™
i don’t have a title for this yet
i don’t have a title for this yet either
Untitled (Stool)
Untitled (Stool)
Untitled (Bench)
Beer Jimmy (Free style) (2:43 min)
Paintings, videos, seating
Yung Jake portrays commercial products familiar from advertisements. His paintings resemble digitally manipulated imagery and street art, using spray paint to twist and distort. Jake originally achieved acclaim for his YouTube rap videos. In his own words, he was born in the internet in 2011.
Feel free sit on the stools and the bench, but please do not climb on stage!
Yung Jake
Born in 2011, internet
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