Slightly altered version of last fall’s solo exhibition at Lentos Museum: Space Shuttle, 1986, objects, more pictures here.

photos by Viktor Kolibàl

Utopie Gesamtkunstwerk
20.1.-20.5. 2012
21er Haus, Wien

Title of my installation (2-channel video, looking glass, We have never been Earth):

And turns and turns and I turn pages. (Und kommt nicht auf den Punkt, nicht weil es keinen Punkt gäbe, nein; nein, es gibt so viele.) “Have another shot,” the skeuomorphic whisper roared inside my ears, revealing endless fields of view, captions of geometric arrangements way beyond dimensions 3+1. It was not without rekindled enthusiasm that I thus continued reading p. 402-472: which describe footage of an automatic apparatus scanning an abandoned room full of research about Biosphere 2, and what appears to be notes for a screenplay, including the handwritten memo: Dreh?buch. All the while accompanied by melancholic sounds of robotic routines / “ÜBERSETZUNG UND VERRAT”

Once again based on “The Ninth Biospherian” (the novel, but also the eponymous film project in collab with Oliver Gemballa).
Text animation by Philipp Haupt.

It’s bilingual German/English and includes

• fabulous essays by Ursula Maria Probst, Jon McKenzie and Graham Harman
• a foreword by Stella Rollig and Sabine Schaschl
• an image spread
• and… TWO COVERS!

Cudos to the ingenious graphic design of Markus Nowak !! (Lange rede, kein Problem!)
Translations by Otmar Binder, production Nina Kirsch. Thanks!

Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
12.8.-23.10.2011

(exhibition views here!)
(catalogue: yes!)

The meteorites keep falling and other things, too.
And the kago keeps falling and the space shuttle fell two times and now the remaining shuttles fly no more.
A checklist has been on the moon, check, check, and back, and the space colonies, where heck are they?
If you want to record a drop of pitch, you need time lapse AND slow motion, because first the drop takes seven years, and then it’s down in just another, oh, moment.

Und die Bilder zittern immer. Shiver, jitter, shudder. Chatter, dither, quake, quaver, quiver, shake, tremble, usw.
Alle starren auf die grosse Uhr. Manchmal bleibt sie stehen. Aber wenn sie weiterzählt, ist bei Null der Start.
“Dann hat es die ersten (Menschen) zerissen. Und dann hat es (die Menschen) reihum zerrissen. Die einen an den inneren Widersprüchen. Die anderen zwischen den Träumen und dem äusseren Leben. Aber die Astronauten hat es zerrissen weil der O-Ring zu kalt war und sich nicht mehr dehnte. Weil der O-Ring nicht mehr dehnbar war, weil an der Küste von Florida Eiszapfen hingen, weil dann der Treibstoff ausgetreten ist.” Exhaust no good: Burnout.

Outside fire burning and inside fire burning, too.
And always the clouds, ephemeral sculptures in time and space.
A slip of tongue and there you go: Beschwörungstheorie.

KAGO KAGO KAGO BE
KAGO KAGO KAGO BE
KAGO KAGO KAGO BE
KAGO KAGO KAGO BE

Small things and big things and volatile things and forever things and all things.
1,9,8,6, and 2,0,0,3, two shuttles fell down and things called debris were collected and reconstructions in a hangar. And in between these numbers a lot of other things, too.
Und nichts ist mehr oben und nichts ist mehr unten. Und damit nichts mehr oben und unten ist, muss alles fallen. Und dann muss alles fallen. Kago Kago Kago, Kago fall zu uns.
“Verona Rupes, abyss of the abyss, steepest cliff of all!”

And I, I would be happy and honored and happy again to see you at my opening in Linz on August 11th.
In short, it’s an exhibition like a Latour Litany. Which is a beautiful term coined by Ian Bogost, referring to lists of objects, like the ones employed in Bruno Latour’s writing, for example. Like Challenger, Chernobyl, VHS-C, Waldheim, tear gas, shivering, the Berlin Wall, C. Elegans, and the smell of charred wood, for example.
“Aber man muss auch nicht alles verstehen.”

Another long list, and this one’s clear to understand: all the people involved in this exhibition, their work, help and support for what is by distorting convention labeled as “solo show”.

Thank you all!

ralo

Which roles can art projects, art spaces, self-organized academies and labs play in developing conceptions of the world that go beyond purely economic globalization? Projects from various parts of the world are invited to propose and test out other realities of life and world views, from small artistic attempts to social experimentation. Topics such as dealing with cultural differences, climate change, processes of levelling out and confusing complexities form the basis for a common space in which to rise questions.

The basis for Other Possible Worlds – Proposals on this Side of Utopia is a collection of ideas, concepts, models, terms, projects, kits and modes of acting. It is conceived as a pool for further projects in other parts of the world, it is open to further extension and it allows for varied formats. The NGBK is considered as a common and active space of inquiry for different formats like artistic contributions and installations, workshops, presentations, talks and video screenings.

Contributors: Dorothee Albrecht, Antimuseum, Maria Thereza Alves, Cedric Bomford, CCA Lagos, Leung Chi Wo, Chto delat?, Chua Chye Teck , Cybermohalla, Kiluanji Kia Henda, ExRotaprint, Huang Xiaopeng, Johanna Kandl, Hubert Lobnig, Ralo Mayer, Gabi Ngcobo, Periferry, Oda Projesi and Nadin Reschke, Åsa Sonjasdotter, The International Academy of Art Palestine, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, TkH (Walking Theory), The Public School, Yoel Diaz Vazquez, Xu Tan, Moira Zoitl

The Publication (English & German) will be published by argobooks.
Accompanying: Workshops, lectures, screenings, soundscapes
A Project by NGBK’s project group: Dorothee Albrecht, Berit Fischer, Franziska Lesák, Hubert Lobnig, Moira Zoitl

As it goes with titles, often you find out it’s a stupid title only at a late moment.
Of course the meteorites I have bought on eBay don’t give a shit about dignity or any other related concept.
I guess what I am concerned with, and this is quite literally meant, is – again in lack of a better word – the dignity of my own fascination and research about meteorites.

the forming of the solar system, dinosaurs, cult objects, modern science and the construction of nature vs society, online-economies, quasi-objetcs –
– Can this fascination with meteorites lead to something else than considerable surplus in the art and culture markets?

EIN PLANET IST EINE SAMMLUNG VON KRATERN.

I have spread around 300 grams of meteorites in the exhibition space, which is about the mass of meteoritic material that falls to earth every second.

A pdf of the accompanying illustrated (german) essay can be found here.

—–

“Hard to Sell, Good to Have”
mit Davide Balula, Alfredo Barsuglia, Bernhard Cella, Anetta Mona Chi?a & Lucia Tká?ová, Judith Fegerl, Douglas Fishbone, Nate Harrison, Zuzanna Janin, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Wim Janssen, Nicolas Jasmin, Jakob Lena Knebl, Claudia Märzendorfer, Ralo Mayer, Boris Ondreicka, Shannon Plumb, Jonathan Quinn, Rainer Prohaska, Franz Schubert, Klaus Weber

12. bis 21. November 2010
Eröffnung: 11. November 2010 um 19 Uhr

www.hardtosell.at

Palais Sturany
Schottenring 21
1010 Wien

(see also Fahim Amir’s review of the first showing at brut Wien)

From 1991 to 1993 eight people lived in a monumental greenhouse in the middle of the Arizona desert. The closed ecosystem of Biosphere 2 provided the team with oxygen and food and had been planned as a test site for future space colonies. Roni Layerson’s science fiction novel The Ninth Biospherian approaches this utopian space age ruin as dispersed collection of articles and fragments. To date, this predominantly paratactic text about an imaginary ninth crew member has practically been considered unreadable – not to speak of staging it. In their reading, Juurak and Mayer unfold the book‘s list-like excesses and place its parataxis into the big empty void. A persistent rumour has it that one instantly dies in the vacuum of outer space; yet for one or two minutes a fascinating scene can be observed.

p. 582:
If you think that this is confusing and has got no point, then what will you think about the flood of lists of data that casts its shadow on the horizon? A shadow is a 2-dimensional projection of a higher-dimensional object. The sun is more powerful than the collected array of spotlights of all theaters in the world. A perfect vacuum is less than its own ideal concept. Our emptiness is the fullfilment of an evening at brut. A suggested translation of Erfüllung is „performance“. A computer screen is a bad metaphor that we don‘t give a shit about. The etymological root of „ruin“ is the Latin word for tumbling down. That gravity is quite something. The combination of the letters M and T is an infinite potentiality of abbreviation ciphers. A text is a list of effects of being exposed to whatever you want to call it. Und eine Parataxe ist eine in sich selbst faltende Falle.

So who is this Ninth Biospherian but a final inversion of the mechanisms in Solaris, the dystopia of that dystopia? In Solaris, every crew member is haunted by its memories come alive, sent by the enigmatic planet below the space station. In The Ninth Biospherian, there is no crew left and the space station is the haunted image of planet Earth’s own replica. The eponymous figure is an evacuated ghost, a memory left in the vacuum of time, the non-echo of the past’s future.” Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future

presenting an installation at OK – Offenes Kulturhaus, entitled:

“Etwa mit geschlossenen Augen, Phosphene, Blue Arc, Haidinger-Büschel, dergleichen, Formkonstanten einer politischen Ökologie; ja, in der Art lässt sich der Gebäudekomplex darstellen, als Vorstellung. Archäologen entdeckten diese entoptischen Phänomene an den Wänden gewisser prähistorischer Höhlen. Da spricht nichts dagegen, dies auch hier zu blicken, als Widerschein der Zukunft.” (p. 217 f.) That said, serendipity has been voted the third hardest to translate word.

Which is true (“Today Translations”, 2004). Speaking of, did you know that the human enzyme production cycle runs on the amount of energy of an AA Battery? Frankenstein used way too much electricity; but he made one hell of a bricolage. And I’d like to thank Christina and Julia. Is “la suture” proper French?

[more pix]

with Cathy Busby, Kerstin von Gabain, Chan Kok Hooi, Elaine W. Ho, Ulrike Johannsen, Johann Neumeister, Ma Yongfeng, Evelyne Leblanc–Roberge, Ralo Mayer, Shen Yi Elsie, Michael Yuen, Yam Lau; curated by Ulrike Johannsen

“This is a work of art which context is unclear to the artist and the curator”, 2010

Kuratiert von Birgit Rinagl & Franz Thalmair, CONT3XT.NET

Showing a new 2-channel video installation, filmed in collaboration with Oliver Gemballa and actor Christoph Gawenda, which goes by the name of “Übersetzung und Verrat” (screen test “The Ninth Biospherian” / Geller’s trance #1).

Based on an actual screen test for “The Ninth Biospherian”, the installation takes a few steps back from the specific current research status about Biosphere 2 and introduces more general thoughts about a closed system and film-making. In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.