Current Events

material messenger

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

English, ‘material’ is both a thing and a quality. 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 Elisabeth Sonneck and Juliane Rogge. The exhibition includes works from the Schroth Collection and from invited artists:

Julieta Aranda | Aram Bartholl | Burghard | Angela de la Cruz | Spencer Finch | Abie Franklin & Daniel Hölzl | Jason Gringler | Carla Guagliardi | Vanessa Henn | Iepe | Zhanna Kadyrova | Katja Kottmann | Linda Lach | Jamie North | Anton Quiring | Ulrich Rückriem | Maarit Salolainen | Karin Sander | Nora Schattauer | David Semper | Berndnaut Smilde | Elisabeth Sonneck | Ignacio Uriarte | Christoph Weber | Beat Zoderer

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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

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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

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

Terms and Conditions

6. November 2025 – 3. February 2026
Group Show, Fundacion Telefonica, Madrid

Scroll Panic Repeat

18. – 20. September 2025
Group Show, GOGBOT festival, Enschede

GOGBOT 2025
SCROLL PANIC REPEAT
18-21 september @ ENSCHEDE
festival for art music technology

MINIMALE REVOLTE Festival

23. July 2025
Group Show, Public space, Charlottenburg, Berlin

The festival brings artistic short films into public space – presented in a mobile, seemingly
improvised exhibition object: a transport cart with pneumatic tires, stacked with various boxes,
crates and bags, all secured with colorful tension straps. Through peepholes in these containers,
passersby can watch the films on hidden tablets or smartphones.
The route leads through five locations in the district (Goslaer Platz, Mierendorffplatz,
Österreichpark, Schustehruspark, Lietzenseepark). At each stop, the “mini-museum” stays for
about one hour. The project is accompanied throughout the day by the two artists and curators
Marian Luft and Moritz Frei, who will be present to assist and engage with the audience.

Curated by Marian Luft & Moritz Frei

With:
Iván Argote, Sophia Süßmilch, Björn Melhus, Hansol Kim, Barış Çavuşoğlu, Lorna Mills, Andrew Birk, Peng Li

Public Visions

14. – 26. July 2025
Group Show, BcmA, Berlin

This exhibition brings together models by artists whose works have been realized in public spaces across the world. These small-scale forms are not mere sketches; they were once proposals, prototypes, and poetic blueprints — early traces now translated into permanent works in the city.

with: Yasmin Alt, Aram Barthol, Jessica Buhlman, Moritz Frei, Gfeller Hellsgard, Andrea Pichl, Alona Rodeh, Andrea Zaumseil, Joshua Zielinski

curated by: Jay Gard

Recent Events

Chronically Online

25. June 2025
Talk, Online, Internet

Chronically Online – imagining an internet utopia

Chronically Online is a virtual residency for emerging artists who are deeply immersed in the digital world and explore themes related to the internet and social media. Participants will develop a concept into a presentable state or further develop an existing artwork for it to be exhibited at NPAK in Yerevan, Armenia.

Concept, realization and curation by Kimia Ghetmiri
Realization and curation by Namor Votilav
Institutional organizer: NPAK
Supported by HK-Art Gallery and Verein zur Förderung des Instituts für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte e.V.

 

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)

 

Blog Archive for Tag: keepalive

Keepalive in german press

October 17, 2016

keepalive-haz-3

http://www.haz.de/Nachrichten/Der-Norden/Uebersicht/Ein-Stein-mitten-im-Wald-in-der-Lueneburger-Heide-ist-ein-WLAN-Hotspot

 
keepalive-mopo

http://www.mopo.de/news/panorama/bizarres-kunstprojekt-dieser-felsbrocken-gibt-ueber-wlan-ueberlebens-tipps-24841340

 
After a recent visit by a DPA reporter at Springhornhof museum, Neuenkirchen a series of articles about “Keepalive” came out in Germany.
More:

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DOMENICO QUARANTA: Oh, When the Internet Breaks at Some Point

May 15, 2016
An essay by Domenico Quaranta about the piece Keepalive recently published on mefsite.wordpress.com – MEDIA IN THE EXPANDED FIELD, A collaborative platform for the participants in the think tank ‘Media in the Expanded Field’, curated by Montabonel & Partners.
THX!!

DOMENICO QUARANTA: Oh, When the Internet Breaks at Some Point

keepalive-neuenkirchen-aram-bartholl-05-1000
“Walked out this morning / Don’t believe what I saw / A hundred billion bottles / Washed up on the shore / Seems I’m not alone at being alone / A hundred billion castaways / Looking for a home” The Police, “Message in a Bottle”, 1979
Back in October 2010, German artist Aram Bartholl cemented 5 USB flash drives in various locations in New York, as part of an Eyebeam residency. [1] Referring to the way, in espionage, items are passed between two individuals using a secret location and without an actual meeting, he called the project Dead Drops. The first five dead drops were empty, except for a small readme file explaining the project. A dedicated website was set up, featuring a video tutorial and a simple “how to” and inviting people to participate in the project.

In interviews, Bartholl explained that at the beginning he was just fascinated by the power of an image: a small data container plugged in the wall, in public space, and a person trying to access it with her own device. He invited people to participate by dropping files in and taking files out, installing their own dead drop and sending the GPS coordinates to Bartholl. As in many collaborative projects, he wasn’t particularly confident about people’s participation, and he believed that the project was conceptually strong enough even in the shape of a small, five-nodes network. But people liked the idea, and as I’m typing on my keyboard today, the online database features almost 1500 registered dead drops for a total storage space of 9891 gigabytes. I installed my own a while ago and I’ve noticed some others along the years, and I’ve always been fascinated by the precariousness of these tiny, rusty artifacts. I’ve never seen anybody plugging in, and probably most of them are almost empty, or out of work. But they are, still, extremely powerful as an image.

Message in a Bottle
“A Dead Drop is a naked piece of passively powered Universal Serial Bus technology embedded into the city, the only true public space. In an era of growing clouds and fancy new devices without access to local files we need to rethink the freedom and distribution of data. The Dead Drops movement is on its way for change! Free your data to the public domain in cement! Make your own Dead Drop now! Un-cloud your files today!!!” Aram Bartholl, “The Dead Drops Manifesto”, 2010 [2]
The dead drops network emerged in an age that saw a major shift in the general perception of the internet as a public space. Widespread Wi-Fi access, the massive adoption of social networking sites, and the advent of smartphones made people start to think about the internet as a new public space, with no physical boundaries and infrastructure, where data can be shared and taken easily and seamlessly. The metaphor of the cloud, already used in the Nineties to describe the internet, became more and more popular in the late 2000s, when cloud computing emerged – further reinforcing the idea of an immaterial public space and eroding the difference between public and private, local and shared. As Annet Dekker wrote in 2008:
……
READ ON FULL ESSAY HERE

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Keepalive

August 26, 2015

Full project page here!!  –> http://www.datenform.de/keepalive-eng.html

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keepalive-survival-guides-5.
 
Keepalive
Aram Bartholl 2015
permanent outdoor installation
material:  rock, steel, router, usb-key, thermoelectric generator, fire, software, PDF database
size: 100 x 110 x 90 cm
at Landart Kunstverein Springhornhof Neuenkirchen, Niedersachsen, Germany
commissioned by Center for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg
curated by Andreas Broeckmann, Leuphana Arts Program
inauguration: Sunday, August 30, 2015, 11:00 am at Springhornhof
The boulder from the region Neuenkirchen, Niedersachsen contains a thermoelectric generator which converts heat directly  into electricity. Visitors are invited to make a fire next to the boulder to power up the wifi router in the stone which then reveals a large collection of PDF survival guides.  The piratebox.cc inspired router which is NOT connected to the Internet offers the users to download the guides and upload any content they like to the stone database .  As long as the fire produces enough heat the router will stay switched on. The title Keepalive refers to a technical network condition where two network endpoints send each other ’empty’ keepalive messages to maintain the connection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keepalive   To visit the piece please arrange an appointment with Springhornhof.de.
The project “Keepalive” by Aram Bartholl was realised in the context of the research project “Art and Civic Media”, as part of the Innovation Incubator Lüneburg, a large EU project funded by the European Fund for Regional Development and the Germna State of Lower Saxony.
 
Press
http://hyperallergic.com/231483/fire-up-a-wifi-router-hidden-inside-a-rock/
Official Invitation (german)
http://springhornhof.de/aram-bartholl-keepalive/
Pictures
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bartholl/sets/72157655953293283


keepalive-flickrset
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You are warmly invited to the Keepalive opening on Sunday, 30th of August 2015
11.00 a.m. Meeting point at Kunstverein Springhornhof
Leave for Hartböhn by car (approx. 10 min) or by bicycle (approx. 20 min, rental bikes are available)
11.30 a.m.
Greeting: Prof. Dr. Martin Warnke (Chair of Art Association)
In discussion: Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana Arts Program) & Aram Bartholl
Afterwards
Food, drinks and data sharing at the campfire
__________________________________________________________________
“Keepalive” by Aram Bartholl (*1972 in Bremen) looks just like a normal rock from the outside. There is no sign that the stone, which lies inconspicuously in Lüneburger Heide on the edge of idyllic Hartböhn, contains hundreds of digital books. An internal thermoelectric generator and WiFi router must be activated by a lighting a fire under the rock before an electronic survival guide library can be accessed. Data and text can also be added by smartphone or laptop.
Media artist Aram Bartholl works with paths of knowledge and information communication that work against the developments of the digital age and question our handling of data. In this and other projects, he undermines power structures and control mechanisms in the use of internet services and data transmission, mostly through the introduction of a random, uncontrollable element.
In “Keepalive” the stone itself becomes the data medium. In a very archaic, but at the same time clandestine manner, information can be exchanged only locally — in contrast to networked servers, services and clouds worldwide, this rock is not connected to the internet. You have to get close to nature in the countryside, find the stone and make a fire to activate the data source. Anyone can do it once they have found out the exact location of the stone from either the nearby Kunstverein Springhornhof or another source.
Following the advice in the survival guides prepares you — this is the promise at least — for solo survival in the chaotic world of computer programming as much as for solo survival in the wilderness. “Keepalive” examines what “survival” really means and sounds out our true needs. The work resists the centralising forces of the Internet, raises questions about the democracy of knowledge management and ignites an autonomy backlash.” (Jennifer Bork)
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The “Keepalive” project by Aram Bartholl was created in conjunction with the research project “Art and Civic Media” as part of Innovations-Inkubators Lüneburg, a major EU project supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the State of Lower Saxony.