Current Events

From Cosmos to Commons: Between Stars and Signals

21. June – 17. August 2025
Group Show, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg

Participating artists: Aram Bartholl, Zach Blas, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Charles & Ray Eames, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Timo Nasseri, Norbert Pape & Simon Speiser, Trevor Paglen, Katie Paterson, Marie Pietsch, Agnieszka Polska, Jana Schumacher, Hoda Tawakol.

How do we navigate a world in which our actions have a planetary impact? In our post-global era, we cannot see ourselves merely as inhabitants of the Earth. Essentially, we are geological actors whose economic, ecological and political decisions leave profound marks on the globe. From this perspective, the Earth can be viewed as a dynamic system within a much larger cosmic structure.

The group exhibition Between Stars and Signals at the Kunsthaus Hamburg focuses on the bigger picture and spans an arc from humanity’s early understanding of the world and its orientation on the stars all the way to the planetary paradigm and modern technologies such as GPS. The participating artists have engaged in the topic of physical movement through space and time along with its philosophical and social implication. The works on view, spanning video, wall and spatial installations, reflect complex relationships between humans, nature and the cosmos – and make us think. For the question remains whether the digital transformation will lead to a deeper cosmic consciousness or whether it will distance us even further from our immediate experience of the world.

From the Cosmos to the Commons marks the beginning of the five-year programme conceived by City Curator Joanna Warsza. In 2025, it includes exhibitions at the Planetarium Hamburg, Stadtpark, the Kunsthaus Hamburg and a symposium at the Warburg Haus. Since 2024, the project City Curator Hamburg has been hosted by Kunsthaus Hamburg.

Curated by Anna Nowak

Zuses Früchte

12. June – 10. July 2025
Group Show, Hofgrün, Berlin

Outdoor exhibition in the yard where Konrad Zuse did built his first computer.

with:  Aram Bartholl, Florian Bettsteller, Per Christian Brown, Freda Heyden, Mathias Hornung, Sebastian Kusenberg, Anna Luebben, Linou Meyer, Jason Reizner, Cyrill Tobias, Darko Velazquez

Hofgrün,
Methfesselstr. 10-12
10965 Berlin

Moving Image Perspectives

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

ANNKA KULTYS GALLERY is pleased to present Greetings From Germany! (2024), a single-channel video by German artist Aram Bartholl, a poignant critique of police activities on the streets of Berlin, underscoring the potential of art to confront and illuminate complex truths. This presentation is part of Illuminated: Moving Image Perspectives, the gallery digital programme, which will take place over the course of a year, and offer unique insights into new media artists using film, video animation, as well as their latest technological explorations, including blockchain and advanced technologies such as AI.

Aram Bartholl’s, video Greetings from Germany! (2024), uses the technology of AI as a space of opportunities to explore disturbing policies around modern urban policing. The ironic title belies a serious underlying message about police activity on the streets of Berlin — a reminder that art can be a powerful tool to consider truth more fully.

For this work Bartholl chose a single image from a recording of an anti-war demonstration in Berlin where police were involved. Using this single frame, Greetings from Germany! presents six alternative realities generated by different AI video systems. The unfolding events are unsettling, playing with notions of certainty. It is difficult to know precisely what is happening as figures morph into one another. Lines are blurred between police, demonstrators and bystanders and precisely what is happening – one figure appears to dance. As the video is shot from the point of view of the audience, (reminiscent of smartphone streaming), the work gives the impression of the viewer being a witness to events unfolding. This creates a sense of immediacy, yet questions of veracity soon arise. The use of a variety of video generators shows how each of these commercial AI models give a slightly different angle to the ambiguous narrative. Shockingly, however, in the final shot, the ambiguity disappears as the viewer is confronted by a distressing clip of found footage of the incident.

This work is about holding a mirror to society, making visible aspects of public policy that might be easily overlooked or disregarded. By using one of the major tools of contemporary society – AI, Bartholl here encourages the viewer to look again, reconsider definitions of what constitutes the real, and catalyse conversations around critical issues.

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

material messenger

29. June – 14. September 2025
Group Show, RAUM SCHROTH im Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest

The exhibition at RAUM SCHROTH presents international works and artistic concepts that focus on the material itself and explore its elementary nature, characteristics and behaviour. These reflections include, in particular, possibilities of the material that run counter to customary uses, as well as surprising properties that the material does not usually display. The basic material is extremely diverse, ranging from solid substances that are also used to produce goods, to vegetable and ephemeral elements – the reference to the surrounding space, to change and transience is inextricably linked to the concept of material. This opens up the broad field of meanings that are gained in the artistic transformation of the material and which in turn interweave it with existential, everyday and social experiences and concepts.

material messenger is curated by berlin-based artist Elisabeth Sonneck and Juliane Rogge, curator at Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst (Conceptual Art Foundation). A programme of musical performances, lectures and talks is being planned to accompany the exhibition.

Recent Events

Echokammer

20. – 22. June 2025
Group Show, Fasskeller, Berlin

mit: Aram Bartholl, Hannah Hallermann, Verena Issel, Anne Mundo, Finja Sander, Moritz Stumm / Stefan Neuberger,Philip Topolovac, Viron Erol Vert
kuratiert von Dirk Teschner

Der Ursprung des Begriffs Echokammer findet sich in der analogen Tontechnik als architektonischer Bestandteil eines Tonstudios und dient der Erzeugung oder Verstärkung des Halls. Ein starker Hall (Nachhall) entsteht mit acht oder mehr Sekunden in Kirchen. Echo ist ein verstärkter Nachhall mit darüber hinausgehenden Zeiten.

Außerhalb von Ton und Hall verweist der Begriff Echokammer auf einen Raum, in dem Aussagen verstärkt und Störgeräusche, etwa anders lautende Meinungen, geschluckt werden. Der Großteil der Menschen neigt dazu, sich mit Gleichgesinnten zu umgeben, um sich gegenseitig in einem geschlossenen Raum in der eigenen Position zu verstärken. In einer Echokammer rezipieren Mediennutzer hauptsächlich Informationen, die ihre eigenen Ansichten unterstützen. Mit Argumenten, die ihre Meinung in Frage stellen, setzen sie sich dagegen kaum auseinander. Dadurch entstehen geschlossene Netzwerke. Die Folge ist eine Verschärfung der politischen Debatte, ohne Hall ins fremde Tal. Die Suche nach einem gemeinsamen Klang kann aber nur außerhalb der engen Kammern gelingen.

Loops Series

22. May 2025
Talk, New Practice in Art and Technology, MA Design & Computation TU Berlin, Berlin

Loops is the public event series of New Practice in cooperation with the Berlin University Alliance exploring current questions facing our society at the intersection of art, science and technology in a unique discursive format. Afterwards, the Bar provides a space for exchange between guests, researchers, students and the public.

This session welcomes Aram Bartholl, a seminal voice in contemporary media art whose work interrogates the blurred threshold between digital systems and physical life. Merging conceptual art, hacker culture, and urban intervention, Bartholl’s installations and performances expose the hidden infrastructures of the internet while playfully reanimating digital symbols into everyday public space.

Jahrestagung Intervenierende Künste

9. – 10. May 2025
Talk, Hau 2, Berlin

Annual Conference 2025 | Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics
May 09, 2025 – May 10, 2025

Being online or not, there is no outside of “the digital”. The digital is always already inside us and dispersed throughout our everyday environments. Our bodies, infrastructures and politics are fundamentally intertwined with digital technologies and practices. The conference Digital Interventions investigates the potential of artistic practices that aim at either creating and safeguarding emancipatory spaces of the digital or challenging and countering the many forms of digital surveillance, exploitation and repression. Looking at the interstices between art, activism and hacking, the concrete materiality and embodied nature of the digital is analyzed as both the site and the means of digital interventions.
The term “digital interventions” itself is wrapped in fundamental and irresolvable contradictions. The digital sphere is a space of refuge and resistance as anonymity and privacy of communication provide shelter from oppressive violence. And yet, at the same time, the digital sphere is subject to massive surveillance, trolling and disinformation that capture and undermine political expression. With social media participation governed by the attention economy, the internet structured by platform capitalism, and political discourse undermined by algorithms – what are the practices and where are the breaches for artists and activists to intervene and challenge these developments? How can complicity be turned into criticality?
Focusing on bodies, infrastructures and politics we follow the hypothesis that it is a core task of the arts to make visible, critique and disentangle dysfunctional processes, false categories and ideological reductions as well as the complicity of platforms and online services with state power and the military-industrial complex.

It is organized by the working group “Digital Activism” in cooperation with HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Programm:

Freitag, 9. Mai 2025
HAU 2
18:00 – 18.30 Begrüßung/Einführung
Sarah Reimann (HAU Hebbel am Ufer)
Karin Gludovatz (Sprecherin SFB 1512)
Simon Teune und Iryna Kovalenko (Tagungsorganisation SFB 1512)

18:30 – 19:45 Keynote
Aria Dean: Labor, Art, and the Vernacular Aesthetic Online
Introduction: Brigitte WeingartWechsel ins HAU 3

21:00 – 21:45 Performance
Claudix Vanesix: Non-Fuckable Tokens (NFTs)
21:45 – 22:30 Artist Talk mit Claudix VanesixFür den Besuch der Abendveranstaltung von Claudix Vanesix: Non-Fuckable Tokens (NFTs) ist der Kauf einer Eintrittskarte erforderlich.

Samstag, 10. Mai 2025
HAU 209:30 – 10.00 Einführung
Florian Schlittgen und Naomi Boyce (Tagungsorganisation SFB 1512)10:00 – 11:00 Keynote
Brigitte Weingart: The (Micro-)Politics of Meme Culture
Introduction: Matthias Warstat

11:00 – 11:15 Pause

11:15 – 12:30 Roundtable
Aram Bartholl, Jean Peters und Şirin Fulya Erensoy: Art Challenging Digital Repression
Facilitation: Simon Teune

12:30 – 14:00 Lunch Break and Workshop
Kill Your Phone mit Aram Bartholl (Workshop 1) ODER Shrink Your Files mit Matthias Grotkopp (Workshop 2)14:00 – 15:15 Roundtable
Pekka Kallioniemi und Muriel Fischer: Desinformation (and) War
Facilitation: Florian Schlittgen und Iryna Kovalenko

15:15 – 15:45 Pause

15:45 – 16:45 Lecture Performance
Azadeh Ganjeh: Not a Body for Burial
Introduction: Matthias Grotkopp16:45 – 17:00 Pause

17:00 – 18:00 Keynote
Joana Moll: Follow the Body: Materiality and Resistance in the Age of Data Extraction
Introduction: Matthias Grotkopp18:00 – 19:00 Abschlussdiskussion
Facilitation: Margarita Tsomou19:00 – 20:30 Pause (Abendessen nicht inklusive)

 

Critical Art vs. Prank Politics – creative tactics for post-moral paradigms

8. May 2025
Talk, hosted by V2 Lab, Online

Online-symposium, Thursday 8 May 2025, 15:00-17:30 CET, organized by Dani Ploeger

Contributors:
Aram Bartholl, Francis Hunger, Nora Nora O’Murchú, Dani Ploeger, Hito Steyerl, Florian Weigl

In February, Benjamin Netanyahu presented a gold plated pager device to Donald Trump, in reference of last year’s Mossad attack on suspected Hezbollah members, using explosive pagers. Not only did this gift mark another step in a seemingly escalating sequence of official glorifications of acts of state-sanctioned violence that are legally questionable at best (the United Nations Human Rights Office denounced the attack as a “terrifying violation of international law”). Its form also suggests that representatives of nation states in the Global North are shifting their previous focus on keeping up the appearances of an enlightened moral high-ground towards a strategy of prank-like utterances that blatantly display a politics of obscene violence that accompanies globalized power.

The hyperbolic representation and aestheticization of political transgression to expose the perverse implications and undercurrents of hegemonic power have long been a prominent tactic in critical art  practices. Now that this approach has been co-opted by the representatives of power themselves, thus normalizing the public display of violent excesses, what artistic and critical tactics – if any – might still have the potential to raise moral concerns and motivate resistance?

Critical Art vs. Prank Politics is a one-day online symposium organized by Dani Ploeger, Professor of Performance and Technology at the University of Music and Theatre Munich in collaboration with  V2_Lab for the unstable media.

Blog Archive for Tag: google portrait

Jean-Paul Sartre en Libération

October 28, 2013


During the fiac art fair the newspaper Libération had a special edition (October 24, 2013)  in which all pictures where replaced by pictures of art pieces. Ususally Liberation features every day on their last page a portrait of a person. I had the honor to draw the Jean Paul Sartre portrait for this special edition…
Aram Bartholl, «Portrait Google de Jean-Paul Sartre», 2013, fusain, 1m x 1m. Courtesy XPO GALLERY, Paris.
La 40e édition de la FIAC coïncide avec les 40 ans de Libération. Il fallait à cette occasion lier la création contemporaine à l’histoire du quotidien fondé en 1973 sous l’égide de Sartre.
L’artiste allemand Aram Bartholl signe un hommage à l’auteur des Mots, sans en écrire un seul. Ce QR code tracé au fusain, une fois scanné sur un smartphone, renvoie automatiquement vers les dix premières pages Google de la recherche «Jean-Paul Sartre». Aussitôt archivé et sans cesse actualisé, le visage du philosophe est sanctuarisé par l’information.
Alexis Jakubowicz et Jean-Brice Moutout Fondateurs de NonPrintingCharacter
http://www.liberation.fr/culture/2013/10/23/aram-bartholl_941821

Google Portrait: Kate Middleton

February 26, 2013


Google Portrait: Kate Middleton
Charcoal on Paper
100 x 100 cm
Aram Bartholl, 2013
On display at DAM Berlin at Art13 London  March 1-3 2013

Good by Kate! Was cool hanging out! :))
 
 

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Google portraits at ‘Reply All’

February 10, 2012


3 new Google Portraits currently on show at ‘Reply All’ [DAM] Berlin

Petra Cortright – eng., ink on paper, 80 x 80 cm

Vera Molnar – eng., ink on paper, 80 x 80 cm

Olia Lialina – eng., ink on paper, 80 x 80 cm
 

Pieces at Pace

September 21, 2011


Google Portrait series at ‘Social Media’ Pace gallery NYC, Sept. 2011, 70 x 70 cm, edding, edding, char coal, stamp ink, all on paper

Are You Human? series at ‘Social Media’ Pace gallery NYC, Sept. 2011, dimension variable, up to 100 x 45 cm, 3 mm aluminum anodized, laser cut

‘Social Media’

September 5, 2011

I’ll show new work from the ‘Google Portrait’ series and ‘Are you human?’ series at ‘Social Media’, Pace Gallery, opening mid September… CU there!


“Social Media”
The Pace Gallery & Pace/McGill
510 West 25th Street, NYC
from September 16 through October 15, 2011.

Opening, on Thursday, September 15 from 6–8 p.m.
SOCIAL MEDIA
September 16 – October 15, 2011
Video stills from I Love Your Work, 2011, by Jonathan Harris
NEW YORK, August 22, 2011—The Pace Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery and the MFA Photography, Video
and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts are pleased to present Social Media. The
exhibition focuses on contemporary artists exploring public platforms for communication and social networks
through an aesthetic and conceptual lens. In an era of increasingly omnipresent new technologies, Social Media
examines the impact of these systems as they transform human expression, interaction, and perception. The
exhibition will feature works by Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, David Byrne, Jonathan Harris, Robert
Heinecken, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Sep Kamvar and Penelope Umbrico
.

Art Amsterdam

May 27, 2010


The Google Portraits Series is currently on display at Art Amsterdam 26.-30. of May represented by Multiple Gallery XX (via Walter thx!)

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4 Google self-portraits

November 12, 2009

g-portraits-9
A Google Portrait is a drawing which contains the Google URL search string of the portrayed person in encoded form. Any camera smart phone is capable to decode the matrix-code with the help of barcode reader like software. The result points the mobile phone browser to a a search on the portrayed person’s name at Google…
full text and more pictures on Google Portrait series project page.
4 Google self-portraits commissioned by Microwave Festival, Hong Kong , 2009
‘Aram Bartholl’, search german
75 x 75 cm, transparent paper, edding 850
‘Aram Bartholl’, search english
75 x 75 cm, transparent paper, edding 750
‘Aram Bartholl’, search chinese
75 x 75 cm, transparent paper stamp, stamp ink
‘Aram Bartholl’, search korean
75 x 75 cm, transparent paperpastel chalk

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“Nature Transformer”

November 12, 2009

Web
I am showing 4 new self-portraits of the ‘Google portrait series‘ commissioned by Microwave at the project room exhibition, Microwave festival, Hong Kong. Visitors are invited to draw their own Google self-portrait in a drop-in workshop during the festival.
“Nature Transformer”
Microwave festival
,
Hong Kong

13.11.-11.12.2009
Participating Artists:
Aram Bartholl / Germany
Petko Dourmana / Bulgaria
Tiffany Holmes / USA
Colin Ives / Canada
Natalie Jeremijenko / USA
Akio Kamisato, Satoshi Shibata, Takehisa Mashimo / Japan
Kult / Singapore
Joao Vasco / Hong Kong
Victoria Vesna / USA

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More Google Portraits

June 21, 2007


Being busy with my new project Google Portrait Series I found this nice drawing by MIT student Ben Dalton who did an analysis on portraiture in general and related to internet development.

“I decided to produce a portrait sketch based on a google search. Google only provides an outline of an individual if their name is very well know on the web, or it is unusual. I chose the ‘guru’ and web celebrity Jacob Nielsen, who’s website useit.com provides his thoughts on design and usability.

In searching for someone’s name, text that uses the persons full name is retrieved. This tends to result in formal descriptuions of the individual. I wanted to contrast a style that used distraction and detail with the stark refined simplicity of google and Jacob’s own design style.

By picking out words, and reforming them into my own phrases I have tried to alter the meaning of the search results to reflect my own interpretations and bias. This form of artistic sketching and wordplay has been explored by an artist who took a whole book, drew on each page (highlighting new phrases to produce a new narrative), and republishing the book (Unfortunately I cannot remember the details of this project to link to it).

Below is the final sketch. i couldn’t help putting a recognisable face in there (after much debate). I think it would be enhanced with the addition of colour wash, coffee cup stains or colour pencil marks.”

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New Project: “Google Portrait Series”

June 20, 2007


Finally I have this new project online. I am using the same technique as in the Tagging project but on a different and very appropriate topic.

“A Google Portrait is an interactive painting which contains the Google search string of the portrayed person in encoded form. Every java enabled camera phone is capable to decode the “Semacode” called 2D-code by taking a picture of the portrait. The result leads the mobile phone browser to Google doing a search on the portrayed person’s name…”

read on at project page Google Portrait Series

Thx to Daniel, my first victim. 😉

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