Current Events

“Temporary Ferry” Wuhan Biennale

1. October 2026 – 30. May 2027
Biennial, Wuhan Art Museum, Wuhan

“Temporary Ferry” takes Wuhan—a “transit city” —as its conceptual starting point. Rooted in its geography as a crossroads connecting nine provinces, the city serves as a hub where the flow of people, goods, and information converges and radiates outward; the city, itself, is a vast temporary ferry. Drawing on this concept, the exhibition explores how people establish connections and preserve experiences in an increasingly fluid and uncertain present, while reexamining the significance of fleeting encounters. It does not seek to wallow in nostalgia, nor does it simplistically reduce mobility to migration and wandering. Instead, it views the “ferry landing” as a relational structure that is constantly being rebuilt: an adaptive wisdom that maintains order amid change and continuously generates renewal. Temporariness is not a flaw but a condition of its operation; it is only by engaging fully—even in the knowledge of transience—that truly meaningful encounters and exchanges are realized.

The exhibition consists of four non-linear sections, corresponding to four “moments of crossing” : generation, residence, sedimentation, and farewell. The first section, “Impromptu Pier,” focuses on lightweight, temporary, and mobile spatial structures. The constructions here do not seek to be sturdy or permanent, but rather engage in an ongoing dialogue with the environment; creators interpret space as a temporary interaction between the body and the site, establishing habitable temporary anchor points amid uncertainty. The emphasis lies not on the result but on the process— action is construction.

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Language code translation

24. September 2026 – 20. August 2027
Group Show, Le Cube Garges, Paris

In the exhibition D’autres voix · langage · code · traduction (Other Voices · Language · Code · Translation), visitors encounter a multitude of languages, alphabets, and dialects, born or transformed by the generativity or virality of new technologies. These include the ones we invented: computer languages (Python, Java…), the creative and political stakes of Unicode characters, which give all our writing systems a common code, and even esoteric programming languages. Not to mention how AIs are trained to communicate, which is far from straightforward. Machines are learners, but they need supervision. There are also the modes of communication of non-human living beings, such as the scent of plants, whose signals scientists and technologists are trying to analyze by modeling them. And finally, the new modes of communication, built around images, that are emerging from the Internet and social media: memes, emojis, Italian brainrot…
With new technologies, the means (and therefore the ways) of communicating are multiplying. Translation is becoming a central condition of our experience of the world. To translate no longer means only to move from one language to another, but to navigate constantly between forms of expression. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” so much is our perception of reality shaped, in part, by the language we have at our disposal. The exhibition invites us to consider how, today, we are pushing back our own limits.

Grand Snail Tour

10. September – 11. October 2026
Group Show, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Hattingen

Artists Darsha Hewitt and Aram Bartholl transform the MÄCK Second second-hand store into an experimental laboratory for media archaeology and collective making through a series of workshops.The project takes the objects themselves as its starting point: discarded televisions, stereo systems, computers, furniture, and everyday items that tell stories of their previous lives while also carrying the potential for new futures.

Found objects from the MÄCK Second inventory are examined, modified, and recombined. Together, the participants develop a large-scale installation that reconfigures the store’s interior and transforms its inventory into an immersive landscape of sound, images, stories, and technological relics, accessible to the public during opening hours.

Situated between recycling, artistic research, and a speculative future workshop, the project creates a temporary space that invites visitors to explore the hidden potential of old things and to rediscover second-hand culture as a resource for new forms of living, making, and imagining together.

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Upcoming Events

Transformative Materialien

3. November 2026
Talk, HAW Hamburg, Hamburg

Im Panel „Digitale und transformative Materialien“ widmen wir uns gemeinsam den verschiedenen Facetten und Annäherungen an das thematische Feld. Paneldiskussion mit: Linn Schröder, Pierre Pané-Farré, Tobias Zielony und Aram Bartholl.

Hybride Räume

16. October 2026
Talk, feldfünf, Berlin

Das Panel bringt künstlerische, kuratorische und theoretische Perspektiven zusammen und diskutiert hybride Räume und die künstlerische Position als Orte der Übersetzung – zwischen Materialität und Code, zwischen Spiel und sozialem Raum, zwischen individueller Erfahrung und gemeinsamer Öffentlichkeit. Moderation: Nadine Kolodziey

 

Recent Events

Still Unstable

24. – 26. September 2026
Group Show, V2 Lab, Rotterdam

Still Unstable – 45 Years of V2_
For 45 years, V2_ has been a space where artists, researchers and technologists come together to question, explore and experiment with emerging technologies. To mark this anniversary, V2_ presents Still Unstable: a programme of exhibitions, talks, interviews and live performances exploring the hidden systems that shape technological innovation today.

Rather than looking back, Still Unstable looks ahead. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, algorithms and digital infrastructures, the programme asks what remains unseen: the labour, resources, ecologies and power structures behind contemporary technologies, and how artistic practice can make these visible.

Exhibition
24 September – 18 October 2026

The exhibition brings together works by Rosa Menkman, Aram Bartholl, Anna Ehrenstein, knowbotiq, Kaisa Molga, Morehshin Allahyari and more to be announced. Through installations, moving image and artistic research, the participating artists examine the infrastructures, relationships and systems that underpin today’s technological landscape.

Unstable Talks & Interviews
24–26 September 2026

Alongside the exhibition, Still Unstable presents three days of talks, artist talks and interviews reflecting on 45 years of media art and the challenges of contemporary technological culture.

Confirmed speakers are Andreas Broeckmann, Annet Dekker, Aram Bartholl, Anna Ehrenstein & Yara Makawei, and Marijn Bril. Interviews feature Joost Rekveld, Joana Chicau, Gökay Atabekand Rosa Menkman.

Self Storage

15. – 20. September 2026
Group Show, Espace Commines, Paris

We are made of memory, but memory itself is a fiction 

The exhibition Self Storage investigates how individuals construct identity through personal and intimate recollections, as well as through the technical and social systems that shape their traces. Memory is not an objective recording: it is an assemblage, a selective construction built from both forgetting and persistence. A memory emerges within a space shaped by desire, loss, and reconstruction. Self Storage foregrounds this subjective and unstable dimension of remembering. Diaries, family archives, obsolete technologies, and bodily reminiscences become raw materials to examine the materiality of memory and its capacity for reinvention.

Hard drives, clouds, online profi les, and social networks are gradually replacing notebooks and photo albums. This massive externalization questions the boundary between private memory and public exposure, between lived traces and standardized data. Self Storage extends this inquiry into a contemporary era where identity is stored, outsourced, and endlessly duplicated. Through the works assembled, the exhibition off ers a poetic and critical drift between real and invented memory, intimate and externalized. It prompts us to consider: What do we need to retain? What do we choose to forget? And what becomes of the “self” when it is reduced to archives, content, and imprints?

curation : Nicolas de Chérisey & Philippine de Salaberry in collaboration with Ellia gallery

participating artists:
Joël Andrianomearisoa, Maxime Antony, Marcella Barceló, Aram Bartholl, Federica Belli, Matthias Bitzer, Borgial, Victor Boyer, Amélie Caussade, Salomé Chatriot, Coucou Bébé, Nick Coutsier, Fleur Cozic, Paul Créange, Corentin Darré, Oli Epp, Léonor Fini, Nan Goldin, Gregor Hildebrandt, Ryoji Ikeda, Victoire Inchauspé, Éloïse Labarbe-Lafon, Octave Lauret, Louis Lekien, Inès Longevial, Keegan Luttrell, Shiva Lynn Burgos, Matisse Mesnil, Sabine Mirlesse, Polina Osipova, Louise des Places, Joséphine de Rohan-Chabot, Philippine de Salaberry, Tehotu, Egon Thuile, Thu-Van Tran, Louis Verret, Francesco Vezzoli, Rose Vidal, Xolo Cuintle, Kai Yoda, Yugnat999.

My Painting

10. September 2026
Workshop, HAZ, Hattingen

3D-Scanning workshop with the painting class of HAZ

After Memory

10. July 2026 – 10. September 2026
Group Show, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin

AFTER MEMORY reflects on how memory is affected by endless social media feeds, clouded storage spaces, automated data storage, and networked communication technologies. This bears both challenges and chances, as practices of remembering and forgetting are reconfigured and their competences are transferred from institutional actors to civic initiatives and individuals. In turn, the role of museums and archives is redefined, too, whose collections no longer preside over a sovereign narration of the past, but constitute shared repositories for the future.

With: Noor Abuarafeh, Heba Y. Amin, Maria Thereza Alves, Aram Bartholl, Taysir Batniji, Giselle Beiguelman, Zach Blas, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Ana Hupe, Eduardo Kac, Aline Motta, Rabih Mroué, Vanessa Amoah Opoku & Joy Weinberger und Federico Protto.

AFTER MEMORY is a project by: Nathalia Lavigne, Lisa Deml, Víctor Fancelli Capdevila

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Blog Archive for Tag: DVDdeaddrop

Home Entertainment

May 1, 2015


‘Home Entertainment’ Aram Bartholl. 2012, 31 mins. video DVD.
DVD Dead Drop vol.4 at the Museum of Moving Image, NYC
December 7, 2012–January 31, 2013
“The reign of the DVD is over, and with it the era of the extra. Before home entertainment was streamed from the cloud, movies came on DVDs that contained more than just the featured attraction. Studios added bonus content like behind-the-scenes documentaries and audio commentaries to make DVDs more desirable to consumers.
But DVDs also came with undesirable extras that were universally frustrating to captive audiences waiting for their movie to begin: unskippable content. Trailers for upcoming movies, promotional spots, and other unwanted clips all found their way immovably in front of featured attractions.
Home Entertainment is a collection of media found on DVDs from around the world that you always wanted to skip, but couldn’t: international copyright warnings, home entertainment publisher logos, studio and distributor bumpers, anti-piracy propaganda, and more. This time, however, all the clips are chaptered, so you can finally skip them.”
If you manage to watch the whole thing in one go without skipping i buy you a beer! 😉

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In the meanwhile on Instagram …

June 7, 2014

diplo+dismagazin-instagram-dvd-deaddrop
Maddecent.com fans on Instagram like very much the DVD Deaddrop install it seems. :)) and Dismagazine.com too :))))

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DOWNLOAD HERE!!

May 16, 2014

DVD-deaddrops-wallach-gallery-colombia
In case you missed the DVD Dead Drop install at the Museum of Moving Image last year visit the show Hyper-Resemblances up at Wallach gallery right now. I am showing a documentation of the DVD Dead Drop install there and you are invitved to DOWNLOAD ALL 10 DVD Volumes from a local hard drive to your computer! Quick quick, before the show is over!!
HYPER-RESEMBLANCES
at Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University NYC
April 22–June 7, 2014
curated by Alison Coplan
with: Aram Bartholl, BFFA3AE, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Petra Cortright, Aleksandra Domanović, Marisa Olson, Hito Steyerl and Ryan Trecartin.
An exhibition in three parts, Hyper-resemblances explores how both modern and contemporary artists have experimented with different notions of representation as filtered through psychological, mechanical and digital lenses. In interchanges between embodied vision and the external world across various media, the grouping of works focuses on relationships between subjectivity, image production and reality. This show examines the role of the artist in reflecting and shaping images of both the self and “society.” Through modes of conceptual self-portraiture, montage and digital mediation, these artists subjectively construct contemporary consciousness. Hyper-resemblances is curated by Alison Coplan, Heidi Hirschl, and Kathleen Langjahr.  It is the second presentation of the MODA Curates series—an annual opportunity offered by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and the MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies Program (MODA) for outstanding curatorial proposals related to students’ theses. Coined by Jacques Rancière, the term “hyper-resemblance” deftly embodies the theoretical underpinnings of each curator’s project: it refers to an image that refuses to be defined by the reality in which it resides and, rather, establishes its origin and interior identity in the pursuit of a truer vision. Alison Coplan’s REALITY FX explores how artists both create and expose constructions of reality, mediated by the digital technology with which we experience the world. These works challenge the concept of a hegemonic reality put forward by modern media industries and demonstrate how existing power dynamics can be rearranged when artistic subjectivity engages with these technologies. The artists featured here are: Aram Bartholl, BFFA3AE, Nicolas Ceccaldi, Petra Cortright, Aleksandra Domanović, Marisa Olson, Hito Steyerl and Ryan Trecartin.
The Wallach Art Gallery is located on the eighth floor of Schermerhorn Hall on Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, 116th Street and Broadway, in Manhattan. The gallery is free and open to the public from Wednesday through Saturday, 1- 5 pm. For more information, call 212-854-2877 or visit columbia.edu/cu/Wallach.
 

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VIRII – a DVD full of viruses

June 26, 2013


I always wanted to make this DVD! During deaddrops.com people warned there could be viruses on the USB drive! Yes, there could be! But now, look! Here is a DVD full of viruses (and artefacts of their history) OMG!! ;)))
VIRII
DVD Dead Drop vol. 8
at the Museum of Moving Image
June 26–July 30, 2013
by Aram Bartholl
“VIRII examines the history and aesthetics, real and imagined, of the computer virus. The volume, a full 4.7GB, includes more than 30,000 actual computer viruses in a password-protected folder, video documentation of nearly a dozen computer viruses, a selection of articles about historically significant viruses, and a gallery of virus clip art.
Viruses, software programs named for their nefarious ability to self-replicate, captured the public’s imagination in the 1980s as personal computers became widely adopted. Viruses of this era would often lie dormant until certain days, when they would activate and create a visible disturbance on screen or erase parts of a computer’s hard drive.
By contrast, today’s viruses are designed to be invisible: hijacking computer resources to send unsolicited email, mask a criminal’s tracks, wage denial-of-service attacks, or spy on the user. Once the domain of tech-savvy pranksters and mischievous hackers, today viruses serve as lucrative tools for economic fraud and weapons regularly deployed for espionage and cyber warfare.

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'Home Entertainment'

December 10, 2012


I am very pleased to announce the latest DVD vol.4  for the install at the MMI. Was fun to dig through big stacks of DVDs to make this 78 chapters video DVD. Enjoy! 🙂
‘Home Entertainment’ Aram Bartholl. 2012, 31 mins. video DVD.
DVD Dead Drop vol.4 at the Museum of Moving Image, NYC
December 7, 2012–January 31, 2013
The reign of the DVD is over, and with it the era of the extra. Before home entertainment was streamed from the cloud, movies came on DVDs that contained more than just the featured attraction. Studios added bonus content like behind-the-scenes documentaries and audio commentaries to make DVDs more desirable to consumers.
But DVDs also came with undesirable extras that were universally frustrating to captive audiences waiting for their movie to begin: unskippable content. Trailers for upcoming movies, promotional spots, and other unwanted clips all found their way immovably in front of featured attractions.
Home Entertainment is a collection of media found on DVDs from around the world that you always wanted to skip, but couldn’t: international copyright warnings, home entertainment publisher logos, studio and distributor bumpers, anti-piracy propaganda, and more. This time, however, all the clips are chaptered, so you can finally skip them.
 
 

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Let's Play Max Payne

October 26, 2012

The 3rd volume of the DVD Dead Drop is featuring massive 18 hours of Let’s play Max Payne. It ll launch next week Tuesday 30th. If you haven t got hold of ‘INSERT DISC‘ yet make sure to stop by at the museum on the weekend!
Let’s Play Max Payne
vol. 3 of the DVD Dead Drop
at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY 11106
October 30 –December 3, 2012

Eighteen hours of ‘Let’s Play’ Max Payne walkthrough videos on DVD

Three players—Tetraninja, AMF1534, and TehNevs—provide commentary while playing Max Payne 1, 2, and 3 from start to finish. Enjoy 4.5 GB and 60 video files of intense game-play action, hilarious comments, and compelling story-mode cut scenes.
The video game series Max Payne, which premiered in 2001, represents an important milestone in gaming history. Initially developed by the Finnish game studio Remedy, this third-person shooter won acclaim for its strong storyline and film noir scenarios coupled with its unique use of “bullet time” slow motion effects and advanced character controls. Through a large number of cut scenes and off-screen narration, the game tells the classic story of a revenge-driven cop in an experience at the intersection of cinema and game. In the latest title Max Payne 3, developed by Rockstar Games, the broke ex-cop Max once again causes more problems than he solves. Famous for high quality storytelling and hilarious cynical humor, Rockstar delivers another groundbreaking third-person game/film hybrid.
“Let’s Play” originated on Something Awful forums in 2006 as screen shot walkthroughs of video games before also coming to describe screen capture videos of game walkthroughs. Instead of playing a game oneself, the viewer watches someone else play, a common gesture in gaming culture. As CPUs and screen capture software became more powerful, Let’s Play developed into a widespread entertainment form. Many Let’s Play enthusiasts have attracted large numbers of subscribers on YouTube and frequently play several games for large audiences.
As Max Payne already possesses many cinematic qualities, the Let’s Play version of the game adds another layer of experience. The common third-person game perspective is heightened by a fourth person: the commenting player. Through multiple pairs of eyes, the viewer can relax and watch the action take place from a double over the shoulder view.
Aram Bartholl 2012

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INSERT DISC

September 24, 2012

We are very excited to present INSERT DISC. It was a great adventure to travel back in time to free sunken art treasures
guarded by Moore’s monster octopus on a sunken MacOS7.We hope you will enjoy this travel as we did! Get the DISC at MMI, NYC, any time, for FREE!

INSERT DISC
Selected CD-ROM art of the 90’s on DVD

September 22 – October 27, 2012
at DVD Dead Drop, Museum of Moving Image NYC
curated by Aram Bartholl & Robert Sakrowski (curatingyoutube.com)
The second DVD Dead Drop volume INSERT DISC, features several classic art CD-ROMs from the mid-90s on DVD. While the web was still in its infancy, artists from a wide range of fields explored the possibilities of interactivity and multimedia on CD-ROMs, fancy new silver discs that held an unbelievable 650 megabytes of data. Today most of these pre-web multimedia works are no longer accessible because they require legacy operating systems and software to run. INSERT DISC offers the full experience of a cutting edge, mid-90s operating system packed with stunning multimedia art. Each DVD comes with a safe-to-install virtualized Ubuntu Linux operating system running an emulated Mac OS 7.6. In addition to the historic CD-ROM art, special features include historic browsers, link lists, and more, guaranteeing a true 1995 computer experience!
artist/projects:
Anti Rom
SASS Collective: Andy Allenson, Joel Baumann, Andy Cameron, Rob LeQuesne, Luke Pendrell, Sophie Pendrell, Andy Polaine, Anthony Rogers, Nik Roope, Tom Roope, Joe Stephenson, Jason Tame
CD-Rom, 1995
Manuscript
Eric Lanz, CD-Rom 1994
Cyberflesh Girlmonster
Linda Dement, CD-Rom 1995
User Unfriendly Interface
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, first shown 1994, CD-Rom 1996
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Extra 90’s specials:
Browser collection, ‘Einblicke ins Internet’ offline Internet CD-Rom, Bookmark easter eggs & more
credits:
Andreas Broeckmann, Sandra Fauconnier, nbk Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe, Transmediale archive
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Anti Rom
1995, CD-Rom, http://www.antirom.com/
SASS Collective: Andy Allenson, Joel Baumann, Andy Cameron, Rob LeQuesne, Luke Pendrell, Sophie Pendrell, Andy Polaine, Anthony Rogers, Nik Roope, Tom Roope, Joe Stephenson, Jason Tame
self-published and funded by the Arts Council of Great Britain.
“Offering a highly interactive interface to the collected sounds and images, this work is an exploration of the limits of what the CD-ROM medium can actually handle. Andy Cameron: “Antirom offers a radical critique of the poverty of contemporary multimedia in a number of savagely ironic, absurdist and incisive satires. Antirom is specifically against the ill conceived grafting of point-and-click functions onto traditional linear forms. Antirom is for the development of a new language of representation, and new modes of spectatorship, within the new apparatus of interactivity.” http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/antirom
[ http://www.antirom.com/
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Manuscript
Eric Lanz, 1994, http://www.ericlanz.net/
CD-Rom, Macromedia Director Apple QuickTime
Production: ZKM | Institute for Visual Media, 1994.
“A text, displayed in a linear way but made out of visual characters of tools, is activated by a mouse-click on an icon and plays back a four second video sequence with the actual use of the tool. The title refers to the iconography of each letter as well as to the origin of language in so far as it is related to manufactured objects, i.e. here a page ‹written› by hand and set in motion by the user’s hand.”
Rudolf Frieling – http://at.zkm.de/node/270
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Cyberflesh Girlmonster
Linda Dement, CD-Rom 1995, http://www.lindadement.com/
Australian Network for Art and Technology, Australian Film Commission
“Donated body parts collected during Artists’ Week of the Adelaide Festival 1994 have been used to construct a computer based interactive work. About 30 women participated in the original event by scanning their chosen flesh and digitally recording a sentence or sound. Conglomerate bodies were created from the information donated. These have been animated and made interactive. When a viewer clicks on one of these monsters, the words attached to that body part could be heard or seen, another monster may appear, a digital video could play, a story or medical information about the physical state described by the story, may be displayed. The user moves relatively blindly between these. There is no menu system or clear controllable interface. The work is a macabre, comic representation of monstrous femininity from a feminist perspective that encompasses revenge, desire and violence.[…]” http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/cyberflesh-girlmonster  http://www.newmediacaucus.org/html/journal/issues/html_only/2006_spring/Sp06_Davis.htm
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User Unfriendly Interface
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski, first exhibited 1994, CD-Rom published 1996. http://lx.sysx.org/
Produced with the assistance of the Australian Film Commission
User Unfriendly Interface, CD ROM/Installation on themes of conspiracy theories, male vs female concept of space, dating services, mens issues & personality testing. 1997 Video Positive, Liverpool, UK “Since 1994 we have collaborated on a variety of new media arts projects that incorporate interactivity and play as strategies for engaging with the social and political contradictions inherent in contemporary society. Audience engagement is a vital element in our interactive artworks. We sometimes think of our work as performance art, were the artist is not physically present; the actions of the performer are programmed into the work, with the viewers’ response completing the piece. We have closely observed how viewers interact with our work, and have drawn on these observations in the creation of each subsequent piece. […]”http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=100
 
 

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Street Memories

September 18, 2012


Post about the DVD Dead Drop in EL PAIS, thx Stefano!!

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Visiting Artist

September 4, 2012


(Thx for the flowers KATSU!! 🙂

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BBC podcast – Interview

August 30, 2012


‘Art, dance and unidentifiable cities’ – bbc.co.uk/blogs/outriders
“..From walking around with paper models of over sized World of Warcraft weapons to planting giant replicas of Google map pins in real locations – Artist Aram Bartholl is interested in exploring the boundaries between offline and online worlds. He’s just completed a new work – DVD Dead Drop at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image – and so Chris asked him what he was trying to achieve through his art…”
25min podcast – Mp3 link
 
 
 

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