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4/4/2014

The Invisible Force Behind

Inter Media Art Institute - IMAI, Dusseldorf

curated by Renate Buschmann and Darija Šimunović

The imai foundation for video and media art presents the group exhibition The Invisible Force Behind. Materiality in Media Art on the upper floor of NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. The exhibition addresses today’s phenomenon of an increasing loss of corporeal substance due to digitisation and the simultaneous growth of our knowledge reservoir.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Michael Bielicky & Kamila B. Richter, Alexander Hahn, Gary Hill, Mader Wiermann, Van McElwee, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Lutz Mommartz, Jill Scott, Stansfield/Hooykaas, Steina, Woody Vasulka.

The selected artworks similarly question the current status as well as the future of their materials. The guiding theme of the Quadriennale Beyond Tomorrow is a challenge that media art must face at all times since technology-based artworks will invariably interrogate their own future. Their materiality is based on technologically prepared – and sometimes not locatable physically – information sources. The corporeality of the works exhibited is extended into visualisations of knowledge, and communication and projection spaces that offer the visitor intense perceptual experiences. The artists turn to digital media technologies to transport the seemingly familiar into new contexts. They use light as a carrier of information, stage synergetic experiments between art and science, and play with our perception by blending the real and the virtual spaces into one.

The exhibition assembles four expansive media art installations by Lutz Mommartz, Michael Bielicky & Kamila B. Richter, Agnes Meyer-Brandis and Jill Scott as well as selected video works from the imai archive. The reconstruction of Zweileinwandkino (Two-Screen Cinema) by Lutz Mommartz serves as the historical reference point to the era of the analogue. The film is shown on two screens facing each other so that the ultimately empty space between them, perplexingly, becomes the site of cinematic action. The newly restored Zweileinwandkino will be shown in its original version and with the singular recordings of Sigmar Polke’s performance for the first time since documenta 4 (1968).

In Why don’t we (2013/14) by Michael Bielicky & Kamila B. Richter it is the randomly selected real-time updates from the social network Twitter that govern the narrative structure of the seven-channel video projection. The tweets become intertitles, not unlike the ones in silent cinema, and are coupled with comical imagery that comments on such explosive social top-ics as surveillance, whistleblowing or Information Warfare.

The works The Electric Retina (2008) by Jill Scott and Inside the Tropospheric Laboratory (2010) by Agnes Meyer-Brandis are both the results of the artists’ intensive preoccupation with scientific and technological research. The interactive sculpture The Electric Retina allows for an examination of the basics of human sight and juxtaposes them with the latest neurobiological findings. The complex room installation Inside the Tropospheric Laboratory recreates a test laboratory that simulates cloud formations. At the same time the visitors will be confronted with the film footage that originated during scientific experiments in zero gravity Meyer-Brandis participated in. The result is an uncomfortable closeness between serious science and artistic subversion.

After nightfall the light-art projection Reflecting Light by media artists Holger Mader and Heike Wiermann will light up the Ehrenhof courtyard. The audiovisual projection will play across the big windows of the Belvedere of the Museum Kunstpalast, whose architectural elements and surroundings have been processed into virtual images, resulting in new spatial relationships. The real undergoes truly enigmatic transformations.

The exhibition will be complemented by artistic video evenings with Anna Sokolova, Gunnar Friel, Anja Vormann and Jürgen Staack (May 28th, June 11th, July 16th). In addition, a performance-lecture by Agnes Meyer-Brandis will take place on July 19th. More details to follow.

imai - inter media art institute Partner
Ehrenhof 2, 40479 Düsseldorf

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