Current Events

Liebe auf den ersten Blick

26. October – 3. December 2024
Group Show, Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen

Die Stiftung Springhornhof wurde gegründet, um das Lebenswerk der 1998 verstorbenen Ruth Falazik weiterzuführen. Als Galeristin hat sie bereits in den 1960er Jahren aus dem historischen Spring­ hornhof einen Ort für zeitgenössische Kunst ge­ macht. Als spätere Kunstvereinsleiterin gelang es ihr, namhafte internationale Künstlerinnen und Künstler in das Heidedorf zu locken, um neue Werke im Dialog mit Natur und Landschaft zu entwickeln.

Die obere Etage gehört den Künstlerinnen und Künstlern des Ensembles von mittlerweile mehr als vierzig frei zugänglichen Skulpturen und Installa­ tionen, das vom Springhornhof stetig weiter ent­ wickelt wird. Großzügig haben sie Fotografien, Skulpturen und Objekte für den Verkauf zugunsten der Arbeit der Stiftung zur Verfügung gestellt. Die Schau führt eindrucksvoll vor Augen, welche Band­ breite künstlerischer Positionen die Neuenkirchener „Kunst­Landschaft“ mittlerweile umfasst:

Elmgreen & Dragset, Rupprecht Matthies, HAWOLI, Gabriela Albergaría, Hartmut Stielow, Mutter/Genth, Martin Reichmann, Kaori Tomita, Verena Issel, Aram Bartholl, Ulrich Eller, Harald Finke, Stefan Kern, Micha Ullman, Rolf Jörres, Timm Ulrichs, Christiane Möbus, Volker Lang, Carl Vetter, Anna Guðjónsdóttir, Will Beckers, Gisela von Bruchhausen und viele mehr.

Singularity

4. October – 15. December 2024
Group Show, C-Lab - Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Taipei

2024 Future Media FEST-Singularity Embracing the Dawn of the Singularity

In the heart of the 21st century’s digital revolution, technological advancements are reshaping human existence—our lifestyles, thought processes, and societal structures. Underpinning this transformation is the captivating concept of the Singularity, a theory both alluring and profound.

The Technological Singularity, as envisioned by mathematician and computer scientist Vernor Vinge in 1993, designates a pivotal moment when machine intelligence eclipses human intellect. This event is predicted to trigger an exponential surge in technological progress, irrevocably altering the trajectory of civilization. The academic community further understands the Singularity as an inflection point where artificial intelligence reaches a certain threshold, catalyzing a cascade of technological disruptions and an “intelligence explosion.”

Grand Snail Tour

26. September 2024 – 29. August 2025
Group Show, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Xanten Ruhrgebiet

What is the Ruhr area? An exciting metropolitan region centred around the major cities of Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg? Or a collection of scattered towns and villages from Alpen to Xanten? Or both? Does it consist of tranquil river landscapes along the Ruhr, Emscher and Lippe or is it hopelessly damaged by the scars of heavy industry? Ruhrpott, example of transformation, poverty zone – how can art open up, change and enrich this diverse region?

Urbane Künste Ruhr wants to find out and is launching the Grand Snail Tour in autumn, an artistic-performative journey through all 53 cities in the Ruhr region. Because this is an ambitious endeavour and Urbane Künste Ruhr has set itself the goal of getting to know local players, forming bonds and establishing sustainable networks, this is a three-year project.

Kick-off Grand Snail Tour in Xanten
Urbane Künste Ruhr is launching the Grand Snail Tour in autumn, an artistic-performative journey through all 53 cities in the Ruhr area. The kick-off event will take place on 26.9. in Xanten.

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Upcoming Events

Moving Image Perspectives

22. December 2024 – 30. June 2025
Group Show, Annka Kultys Gallery, London

Coinciding with its 9th anniversary, ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is delighted to announce the launch of its new digital programme Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives, which will take place over the course of a year, and elaborates on the gallery’s expertise in moving image and reaffirms its ongoing commitment to this field.

On a weekly basis, Illuminated will offer unique insights into a new media artist using film, video animation, as well as their latest technological explorations, including blockchain and advanced technologies such as AI. This project aims to showcase and contextualise diverse digital art practices, while introducing international artists and their distinctive approaches to the gallery’s audience.

The online streams will be augmented by physical presentations of digital artworks in a private home setting at the gallery founder’s loft in Shoreditch. These installations will be accompanied by regular, invitation-only dinners and carefully curated exclusive viewings for art professionals, fostering deeper connections between artists, collectors, journalists, and museum curators.

Recent Events

Graphic Matters

29. November 2024
Talk, TURF festival, Breda

On Friday 29 November 2024, we are organising an inspiring afternoon for creative makers and tech enthusiasts together with TURF. During Current Characters IV: Wired Wonders , attendees and speakers will discuss the possibilities and ethical challenges of technology in art and design.

The new event TURF highlights electronic music, art, culture and tech. On Friday 29 November during Characters IV: Wired Wonders , three idiosyncratic makers Aram Bartholl (DE), SMACK(NL) and Roos Groothuizen (NL) present their work and share their views on the role of technology in art and autonomous design. They are known for their critical and social engagement. Wired Wonders promises to be a fascinating mix of inspiration and reflection, challenging attendees to think about the impact of technological innovations on the creative process.

Breda-based collective SMACK highlights the ethical dimensions of digital culture, critically visualising the seductions of technology and algorithms; Aram Bartholl explores the boundary between the digital and physical worlds, with critical installations that make technology tangible in the public domain; and Roos Groothuizen is known for her work on digital freedom and privacy, using technology as an activist tool to create awareness about surveillance and control.

Total Screen Time

21. November 2024
Curatorial, Ithakis 28, Kypseli-Athens, Athens


Total Screen Time is a
one night group exhibition on phones! All participating artists will bring a phone with their artwork on it, which will be mounted on the walls of the exhibition space. The idea behind the show is that the audience gets to peep through the hole of the artist’s phones to immerse into the artworks. LET’S BRAINROT TOGETHER! 🧠 In a collective and liberating moment, we also ask the artists  to share their weekly screen time prior to the opening. WE ARE ALL GETTING EXPOSED LOL 🎀

participating artists:
Andreas Angelidakis, Margarita Athanasiou, Cory Arcangel, James Bridle, Constant Dullaart, Chioma Ebinama, Evoulix, Fruitgillette, Agape Harmani, Hristos Hantzis, Kathrin Hunze, 1g.00_0 (Dirk Paesmans), Karl Heinz Jeron, Anna Kalozoumi, Kakia Konstantinaki, Markella Ksilogiannopoulou, Leefwerk, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lucile Littot, Miltos Manetas, Maria Mavropoulou, Anastasis-Panagis Meletis, Tokisato Mitsuru, Eva Papamargariti, Angelo Plessas, Captain Stavros, Kosts Stafylakis, Mandy Stergiou, Alexandros Touramanis, Connor Willumsen

curated by:
Aram Bartholl, Socrates Stamatatos & Theo Triantafyllidis

curatorial statement:
Our algorithmic life has been reduced to isolation and hostility the last few years. Alone in our echo chamber we are brain rotting endlessly, while each specific algorithm is surveilling our every move and gatekeeping the process of our actions. To quote the famous philosopher and poet, Britney Spears:

“What am I to do with my life?
How am I supposed to know what’s right?
I can’t help the way I feel
But my life has been so overprotected
I tell ’em what I like, what I want, and what I don’t
But every time I do, I stand corrected
Things that I’ve been told, I can’t believe
What I hear about the world, I realize I’m overprotected.”

Meanwhile, everyone seems to be obsessed with their screen time. Some are trying to downsize it, some are accepting their ‘terminally online’ identity, some perceive it as a competition, and some—as always, simply don’t care. Enough with the heavy! We invited thirty artists to present digital works through their own personal devices, extending an intimate invitation for audiences to peer through the artist’s screen—a portal into their unique, brainrot-filled worlds. From personal and collective imagery to camp, critical takes on surveillance, viral memes, and wholesome escapism—artworks from every corner of the digital psyche are on display. This one night exhibition is about connecting, sharing in the joy of deep-frying our brains, rather than in isolation. And we think THAT’S HOT!

Kill Your Phone (with style!)

16. November 2024
Workshop, Super Duper Store, Athens

KILLYOURPHONE.COM is an open workshop format. Participants are invited to make their own signal blocking phone pouch.📶 In the pouch the phone can’t send or receive any signals. It is dead! 📵This time we are adding a cute twist 🥰 your phone is going down with style 💖

Join @arambartholl & @socratesstamatatos on 16.11.2024 from 12:00-17:00 at our beloved @super_duper_wow 🎀

Fix your phone shop

19. – 27. October 2024
Workshop, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven

Your smartphone is broken – and it’s not just a cracked screen. The problem is in the apps, the operating system, the hardware, and it affects your privacy, your health, and the health of our planet. During Dutch Design Week, visit the Fix Your Phone Shop by Waag Futurelab and learn what to do to fix it!

Killyourphone.com workshop at Fix Your Phone Shop

Blog Archive for Tag: deaddrops

#BrechtDrop

February 16, 2020

As part of a discussion panel at the Brecht Haus Berlin last thursday I made a Dead Drop in the entrance hallway. Come by visit the house and drop some files!

Die kleine Intervention: Weniger Spektakel, mehr Wirkung?

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Installation und Gespräch
Brecht-Tage 2020, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus

Mit Aram Bartholl und Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll)
Moderation Cornelius Puschke

Anhand von Aram Bartholls „Dead Drops“ (mit Live-Installation) und Projekten von Rimini Protokoll geht es um die Frage, ob die kleine, unauffällige oder parasitäre Aktionsform wirksamer ist als die skandalösen Groß-Interventionen, die ebenso schnell wieder verschwinden wie sie erschienen sind.

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Dead Drops appear on Elementary

November 3, 2016

@arambartholl dead drop on Elementary 🙂 pic.twitter.com/BslUrpBKrv

— Theodore Watson (@theowatson) https://twitter.com/theowatson/status/793612879928885248 November 2, 2016

Thanks to Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Theo Watson for pointing out the appearance of a Dead Drop in the TV show ‘Elementary‘. Cool! 🙂

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Interview – Dead Drops on Huffpo

September 1, 2016


The internet revolutionized information sharing, allowing people all over the world to post content and distribute it among networks. But as the internet has grown, surveillance on the web has exploded as well. So one artist is encouraging people to forget the cloud and share information in a totally anonymous way.
In 2010, Berlin-based media artist Aram Bartholl started “Dead Drops,” his participatory file-sharing art project, by cementing a USB drive into a brick wall in New York City.

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Save The Data

September 24, 2015

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Save the data!
27.09. –  22.11.15
Von Kunst und datenträgern
Kunstpalais Erlangen · www.kunstpalais.de
In Erlangen, der Stadt, in der mit Entwicklung des mp3-Formats die Digitalisierung einen ganz bedeutenden Entwicklungsschritt getan hat, fokussiert mit der Gruppenschau „Save the Data!“ erstmals eine Ausstellung das Zusammenspiel von bildender Kunst und verschiedenen Speichermedien.
Auf welche Weise werden die technischen Speichermedien – aktuelle und überholte – für den künstlerischen Ausdruck genutzt, und wie werden deren unterschiedliche Bedeutungsebenen miteinander verwoben? Welchen Einfluss hat die Digitalisierung auf die Bildgenerierung in den Medien Fotografie, Film und Skulptur? Inwieweit wird der Bedeutungswandel, den die Speichermedien von analog bis digital in den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten erfahren haben, durch den künstlerischen Umgang mit ihnen hinterfragt?
Schallplatten, Compact Discs und CD-ROMs, vor allem aber Musikkassetten, Disketten und VHS-Tapes verschwinden einerseits zunehmend aus dem täglichen Gebrauch –andererseits taucht solcherlei Hardware in den letzten Jahren vermehrt in Museen und Galerien auf. Als künstlerischer Werkstoff sind sie für viele Künstler zunehmend von Interesse, und auch der Betrachter freut sich über die Wiederbegegnung mit solchem zum Teil allzu vertrauten Material. Der einst gefürchtete Bandsalat, das Rattern des Filmprojektors, die Mixkassette für die Liebste oder das Bild von Regalen voller Videokassetten gehören im täglichen Leben zwar meist der Vergangenheit an, doch die damit verbundenen Gefühle zwischen Nostalgie und Zukunftseuphorie kommen umso stärker zum Tragen und werden von den Künstlern ganz gezielt eingesetzt. Der Aspekt des verborgenen Gehalts, den die gespeicherten, aber dennoch unsichtbaren Daten den Werken hinzufügen, spielt hierbei für viele eine weitere große Rolle.
Zum anderen entstehen mit Elementen des ganz zeitgenössischen Umgangs mit Dateien und Speicherstrukturen auch neue ästhetische Prototypen: so beispielsweise das Fenster im Internetbrowser oder das Raster des Bildbearbeitungsprogramms. Auch diese haben seit einiger Zeit in der künstlerischen Produktion ihren festen Platz. Vergangenheit und Zukunft werden auf diese Weise in der Schau „Save the Data!“ dicht verwoben – spannend, sinnlich wie intellektuell ansprechend und nicht zuletzt durchaus humorvoll.
with: Timo Arnall (GB), Aram Bartholl (DE), Viktoria Binschtok (RU), Gregor Hildebrandt (DE), Ronnie Yarisal und Katja Kublitz (CH und DK), Via Lewandowsky (DE), Joep van Liefland (NL), Florian Meisenberg (DE), Yuri Pattison (IE), Gebhard Sengmüller (AT)

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Dead Drops at Palais de Tokyo

June 30, 2015

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Born in Germany in 1972, Bartholl focuses on interrelations between the digital world and our physical surroundings. He obtained his degree in architecture from the University of arts in Berlin, where he lives and works. His artistic work has been shown in numerous festivals and exhibitions in museums and galleries. In 2011, five Dead Drops were part of the “Talk to me” exhibition at the MoMA in New York and a new facet of the project saw the day in 2013 with the installation of a DVD Dead Drop at Museum of the Moving Image in New York as well. Palais de Tokyo is the first French institution to welcome Dead Drops.
Cited from “Somewhere between Cyber and Real: An interview with Aram Bartholl”, by Jillian Steinhauer, 2012, http://hyperallergic.com

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more pictures on flickr
Links for all four Dead Drops:

 

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

June 18, 2015

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Dead Drops au Palais de Tokyo, à Paris

Vernissage public le lundi 22 juin à 21h

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

  1. Apporter vos oeuvres sur votre ordinateur portable lors du vernissage
  2. Téléchargez-les sur l’une des 5 dead drops placées au Palais de Tokyo
  3. Dites à tout le monde que vous exposez au Palais de Tokyo

 
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HOW TO GET YOUR ART IN THE PALAIS DE TOKYO

June 18, 2015

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DEAD DROPS at Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Public OPENING, Monday  9:00pm 2015 June 22nd

How to get your art in the Palais de Tokyo

  1. BRING YOUR ART ON A LAPTOP TO THE GRAND OPENING.
  2. UPLOAD IT TO ONE OF THE 5 DEAD DROPS IN PALAIS DE TOKYO.
  3. TELL EVERYONE YOU HAVE ART IN THE PALAIS DE TOKYO.

 
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Dead Drops on Heute news

June 3, 2015

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Dead Drops revistited!

March 19, 2015

In the past two months there has been again a lot of international press about DeadDrops. The DeadDrops project is running since November 2010, for four and a half years now. After the initial press buzz in 2010/11 the project kept spreading online with occasional press like after the Snowden releases etc. But just since the beginning of 2015 there was a lot of press all over again. It is really hard to tell how such a press wave is starting on a project which is already running for such a while but I assume after almost 5 years there is a new generation of Internet users and press people who haven’t heard about DeadDrops yet. Through some big blogs in the US it reached the south american news, spreaded there and also made it back to Europe.  I ve listed a selection of press links at the end of this post. Please also see the nice DeadDrops youtube playlist somebody made.
In Germany the recent reports about DeadDrops had a special twist. End of February the yellow press style news paper Kölner Express had a piece about a bomb making plan PDF which was supposedly found on a DeadDrop in Cologne. The local and national press picked up quickly the story and my phone kept ringing for two weeks. It is astonishing how in 2015 you still have to explain to people that it is of course not a problem to find such a PDF with illegal tutorials on the Internet. Or yes! there could be a virus on the USB drive, like there could be a virus in this blog post. But in an era of constant fear about terror the suspicious USB drive in wall was a perfect story for them. I was only waiting for the ISIS connection. But again this was a good opportunity to explain that there is no use in censoring or prohibiting encryption or anonymous communication technologies because there is illegal activities. Like back in the days the ruling class tried to banish the brand new dangerous technology ‘book printing’ which radicalized all the young people. Especially journalists should be aware how important independent, encrypted, private communication is. In fact DeadDrops is not a very efficient communication technology but a good symbol on independent, open digital communication. So while the NSA has trojans installed on all our hard drives or access to millions of sim card keys we worry about a 20 year old anarchist cook book PDF on a flash drive in a wall in cologne.  What a crazy world! :))
The actual great story about the Cologne DeadDrop is that this specific DeadDrop, which I made myself as part of a duo show with JODI at DAM Cologne in 2011, was still existing and working in 2015!! Until the police ripped it out and broke it to then hand it in at the at the LKA cyber security department to get it fixed. Of course the highlight is how the two police men are kneeling in front of the yellow banana (the gallery “certificate”) trying to understand what’s going on. In fact later the Kriminalpolizei called DAM gallery to have them explain what exactly this USB stick is about and what the DeadDrops project is etc. On the same day I made this popular tweet about the whole story.
Of course I am very happy about all the attention for DeadDrops. It is very interesting to witness how the perspective on such a project has changed over the past five years, especially since 2013. I am glad to see how this project is still going on and how it has inspired so many people over the years. Thanks to all the deaddroppers out there!! You are awesome!!
Aram Bartholl, March 2015
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LINKS:

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Full Interview at Sueddeutsche.de:

 
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Guardian:

 

More press links:

German:

 
POPULAR TWEET


https://twitter.com/arambartholl/status/570195342253277185

 

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Dead Drops YouTube playlist

March 13, 2015


The Youtube user #USBdeaddrop made an effort to collect all videos dealing with DeadDrops in one or the other way. The result is this beautiful playlist of news reports, tutorials, documentations and more. There are whole lot of clips I haven t even seen before. So cool!! Thx!!

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