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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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 2025 | Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics
09.05.2025 – 10.05.2025
Veranstaltung in englischer Lautsprache | Eintritt frei | Anmeldung erforderlich | teilweise barrierefreier Zugang: Bedarfe bitte bei Anmeldung angeben
Ob wir online sind oder nicht, es gibt kein Außerhalb des Digitalen. Das Digitale ist immer schon in uns und in unserer alltäglichen Umgebung eingewoben. Unsere Körper, Infrastrukturen und Politiken sind grundlegend mit digitalen Technologien und Praktiken verflochten. Die Tagung Digital Interventionsuntersucht die Möglichkeitsräume künstlerischer Praktiken, die darauf abzielen, emanzipatorische Räume des Digitalen zu schaffen und zu sichern oder die vielfältigen Formen von digitaler Überwachung, Ausbeutung und Unterdrückung herauszufordern. An der Schnittstelle von Kunst, Aktivismus und Hacking wird auf der Tagung die konkrete Materialität und Verkörperung des Digitalen als Ort und Mittel digitaler Interventionen analysiert.
Der Begriff „digitale Interventionen“ selbst offenbart dabei grundlegende und unlösbare Widersprüche. Denn die digitale Sphäre ist ein Raum der Zuflucht und des Widerstands, in dem Anonymität und vertrauliche Kommunikation vor Gewalt schützen. Zugleich ist der digitale Raum massiver Überwachung, Trolling und Desinformation ausgesetzt, die den Raum politischer Meinungsäußerung kapern und zersetzen. Wenn soziale Medien von der Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie bestimmt sind, das Internet vom Plattformkapitalismus strukturiert und der politische Diskurs durch Algorithmen untergraben sind, welche Praktiken und Bruchstellen bieten sich Kunstschaffenden und Aktivist*innen, um in diese Entwicklungen zu intervenieren und sie zu hinterfragen? Wann kann Komplizenschaft in Kritik umschlagen?
Mit dem Fokus auf Körper, Infrastrukturen und Politik, folgen wir der Hypothese, dass es eine zentrale Aufgabe der Künste ist, dysfunktionale Prozesse, falsche Kategorien und ideologische Reduktionen sowie die Komplizenschaft von Plattformen und Onlinediensten mit der Staatsmacht und dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex sichtbar zu machen, zu kritisieren und zu entwirren.
Die Jahrestagung 2025 des SFB Intervenierende Künste wird organisiert von der Arbeitsgruppe „Digitaler Aktivismus“ in Kooperation mit dem 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)
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.
Join us for a live Gallery Surfing session at panke.gallery with NYC-based net artist Maya Manand Berlin-based media and concept artist Aram Bartholl as they browse the web together. The artists will talk about their practices, showcase current projects, surf their favorite websites, and share their open tabs and personal desktops.
In their works, Maya and Aram explore online economies, social media, and current technologies, as well as their aesthetic, personal and societal implications. Having participated in the early developments of AI applications – from glitchy GAN-generated animations, random text generators, and face filters to the current AI models that generate sophisticated videos from single images – Aram and Maya share the experiences they have gained by using these tools and reflect on the effects they’ve had on their own artistic practices, as well as the online and offline environments they inhabit.
As both Maya and Aram have been at the forefront of bringing net art into physical spaces, they will also share insights into the curatorial formats they have developed: from Aram’s speed showsand one-night group exhibitions on phones – one of which recently happened at panke.gallery – to Maya’s sacred screenshots, taken from the phones of 20 artists and exhibited at her project space HEART in NYC.
At panke.gallery, both artists will share the space and their screens.
Come surf the net with us!
…and don’t forget to visit the gift shop on your way out.
Picture of the day at Monopol Magazin: Der große Bruder des “Cybertrucks”
“Die Zukunft ist eckig: Der “Cybertruck” von Tesla (oben) und Aram Bartholls Installation/Performance “WannaCry (Weeping Angels)” 2017 im Hyperpavilion in den Arsenale der Venedig-Biennale.” 24.11.2019
More info at the project page: “WannaCry (Weeping Angels)” 2017
Hyperpavilion 2017, Venice Biennale
(Official Extended Program)
Installation/Performance
Medium: printed carpet, tires, steel, wood, mirror glass, phone charger, four special forces performers,
Size: 14 x 8 x 2 m
Aram Bartholl
2017
http://hyperpavilion2017.com/
Curated by Philippe Riss
Produced by Fabulous Pictures
Opening: May 11, 2017, 12:00-3:00 pm
Exhitbtion dates: May 12 – Ocotber 30, 2017
Credits:
Torsten Oetken & Christian Buchmayr
Statement:
The German government is working on a new law to empower immigration offices in extraordinary ways. Asylum seekers without a passport who make their applications in Germany will be required to hand over all of their data. Immigration centers are being equipped with new forensic hardware and software to make complete copies of smart phones and other devices. Forcing immigrants to show their social media profiles is a strikingly efficient way to obtain proof of identity. A Facebook profile is seen as much harder to fake or lose than a passport. When the meta data on your Instagram pictures shows you’ve spent years in Libya, it may be hard to argue that you are actually a citizen of Syria. The difference is that asylum applications from Libya are not accepted. It is supposed to be a “safe country.”
The very basics of human rights and privacy rights don’t apply here any more. We now live in a world in which your social media profile is becoming more important than a passport. What will happen if you don’t have a Facebook account at all, or not even a smart phone?
What asylum seekers will soon have to endure in Germany is already, in a softer form, being implemented for everyone traveling to the Unites States and other countries. The border search exception empowers customs and border protection agents to search any electronic device. Increasingly, customs officers are asking travelers to show their social media profiles, passwords and to unlock their phones. In the future this process could be, very plausibly, automated at the entry-points and borders of many countries.
Social media is the perfect tool for commercial data mining and user tracking for marketing companies. And it also perfectly serves a governmental total control scenario, which is not some far-off, futuristic idea but a reality that is unfolding right now.
WannaCry (Weeping Angels) at Hyperpavilion, Venice
The installation/performance WannaCry (Weeping Angels) plays out on an 8×14 meter carpet printed with logos of more than 3000 internet marketing and user tracking companies. On the carpet, a mirror-covered, disguised, anti-riot police tank is parked. Specially-equipped security guards holding mirrored shields patrol the exhibition space and ask the visitors for their smart phone and social media profile.
“Is your phone ok? Does you Facebook still work? This is just a security measure for your safety. We had some attacks around here and just want to make sure your device is ok. … All good, thank you. Please don’t turn it off! This will help us to track any suspicious activities.”
With conversations like this, the guards cover up the fact that they are actually checking visitors’ phones (in the sense of the performance only; no data is collected). Barcodes are stuck on visitors’ phones, which are then scanned by the special unit officer. Visitors are left unsettled and wondering whether the encounter was real or part of the installation. In the context of the heavily patrolled Venice Biennale and the presence of actual armed soldiers in the Giardini, this performance works very well. The guards are present every weekend for the whole show until the end of October, 2017.
This new installation/performance produced for the Hyperpavilion Venice was inaugurated on May 11th 2017 just one day before the break out of the ransomeware virus WannaCry which led to widespread computer failures across the world. Such an uncanny correlation left me little choice but to rename the piece (formerly: Weeping Angels) with the name of the virus.
WannaCry (Weeping Angels) evokes a dark age that we are on the cusp of entering: ever-increasing surveillance, terror attack fear and cyber-war panic on a daily basis. While we chill on our fluffy carpet at home thousands of companies retrieve and process our personal data. Increasingly military-like police control the cities while government intelligence collects massive amounts of data unnoticed every day. Is it 1984 yet?
Aram Bartholl 2017
All pictures at flickr.com/photos/bartholl/albums/72157683886912096