Laufende Termine

„Temporary Ferry“ Wuhan Biennale

1. Oktober 2026 – 30. Mai 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.

Bilder

Language code translation

24. September 2026 – 20. August 2027
Gruppenausstellung, 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. Oktober 2026
Gruppenausstellung, 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.

?>

Kommende Termine

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. Oktober 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

 

Vergangene Termine

Still Unstable

24. – 26. September 2026
Gruppenausstellung, 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
Gruppenausstellung, 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. Juli 2026 – 10. September 2026
Gruppenausstellung, 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

Bilder

Blog Archiv für Schlagwort: deaddrops

#BrechtDrop

Februar 16, 2020

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

Die kleine Intervention: Weniger Spektakel, mehr Wirkung?

Do 13.02.19:30
Installation und Gespräch
Brecht-Tage 2020, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus

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

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

Tags: +

Dead Drops appear on Elementary

November 3, 2016

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

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

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

Tags: +

Interview – Dead Drops on Huffpo

September 1, 2016


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

Tags:

Save The Data

September 24, 2015

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

Tags:

Dead Drops at Palais de Tokyo

Juni 30, 2015

dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-02
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-05
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-28

Dead Drops

at Palais de Tokyo, Paris
24/06/2015 – 13/09/2015
Intervention on the building.
Four Dead Drops are installed in different places of the museum. Visitors are invited to bring a laptop to connect to them.
“From the very beginning, I always encouraged people to leave their art on there. Especially for the MoMA dead drops, I made this blog post like, ‘If you want to be able to claim you had art in the MoMA, you can just go now and put something on there‘.” Aram Bartholl
Dead Drops is a participative project started in 2010 by German multi-media artist Aram Bartholl. A dead drop or dead letter box is a term from the field of espionage and designates a method used to transmit information or items at a secret location. This anonymous peer to peer file-sharing network is based on USB keys cemented into a wall or other support in public space. The GPS coordinates of the site are then posted on the Dead Drops website. Each dead drop is installed empty except for a simple text file explaining the project. Users are invited to share documents, pics, digital works, films or whatever suits their fancy. A  computer with a USB port is the only thing needed to connect to the not interconnected network. After having installed and referenced the first five dead drops in New York and on the web, Bartholl’s project unexpectedly took off, spreading internationally. As of May 2015, over 1520 Dead Drops had been submitted to deaddrops.com. Aside from its crazy concept, the project tries to rematerialise the dematerialised world of computers. Following the revelations by Edward Snowden, at a time when clouds and the debate on internet censorship and privacy have become hot topics, this project is now more then ever front and center on the political stage.

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

dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-22
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-10
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-16
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-19
dead-drops-palais-de-tokyo-paris-26
deaddrops-palais-thunmbn1
more pictures on flickr
Links for all four Dead Drops:

https://deaddrops.com/db/?page=view&id=1759
https://deaddrops.com/db/?page=view&id=1760
https://deaddrops.com/db/?page=view&id=1768
https://deaddrops.com/db/?page=view&id=1758

 

Tags: + + +

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

Juni 18, 2015

Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here
Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here-2
Dead Drops au Palais de Tokyo, à Paris

Vernissage public le lundi 22 juin à 21h

Comment exposer au Palais de Tokyo ?

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

 
Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here-3

Tags: +

HOW TO GET YOUR ART IN THE PALAIS DE TOKYO

Juni 18, 2015

Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here
Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here-2
DEAD DROPS at Palais de Tokyo, Paris

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

How to get your art in the Palais de Tokyo

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

 
Palais_de_Tokyo_1_dead-drops-your-art-here-3
 
 

Tags: +

Dead Drops on Heute news

Juni 3, 2015

Tags:

Dead Drops revistited!

März 19, 2015

In the past two months there has been again a lot of international press about DeadDrops. The DeadDrops project is running since November 2010, for four and a half years now. After the initial press buzz in 2010/11 the project kept spreading online with occasional press like after the Snowden releases etc. But just since the beginning of 2015 there was a lot of press all over again. It is really hard to tell how such a press wave is starting on a project which is already running for such a while but I assume after almost 5 years there is a new generation of Internet users and press people who haven’t heard about DeadDrops yet. Through some big blogs in the US it reached the south american news, spreaded there and also made it back to Europe.  I ve listed a selection of press links at the end of this post. Please also see the nice DeadDrops youtube playlist somebody made.
In Germany the recent reports about DeadDrops had a special twist. End of February the yellow press style news paper Kölner Express had a piece about a bomb making plan PDF which was supposedly found on a DeadDrop in Cologne. The local and national press picked up quickly the story and my phone kept ringing for two weeks. It is astonishing how in 2015 you still have to explain to people that it is of course not a problem to find such a PDF with illegal tutorials on the Internet. Or yes! there could be a virus on the USB drive, like there could be a virus in this blog post. But in an era of constant fear about terror the suspicious USB drive in wall was a perfect story for them. I was only waiting for the ISIS connection. But again this was a good opportunity to explain that there is no use in censoring or prohibiting encryption or anonymous communication technologies because there is illegal activities. Like back in the days the ruling class tried to banish the brand new dangerous technology ‚book printing‘ which radicalized all the young people. Especially journalists should be aware how important independent, encrypted, private communication is. In fact DeadDrops is not a very efficient communication technology but a good symbol on independent, open digital communication. So while the NSA has trojans installed on all our hard drives or access to millions of sim card keys we worry about a 20 year old anarchist cook book PDF on a flash drive in a wall in cologne.  What a crazy world! :))
The actual great story about the Cologne DeadDrop is that this specific DeadDrop, which I made myself as part of a duo show with JODI at DAM Cologne in 2011, was still existing and working in 2015!! Until the police ripped it out and broke it to then hand it in at the at the LKA cyber security department to get it fixed. Of course the highlight is how the two police men are kneeling in front of the yellow banana (the gallery „certificate“) trying to understand what’s going on. In fact later the Kriminalpolizei called DAM gallery to have them explain what exactly this USB stick is about and what the DeadDrops project is etc. On the same day I made this popular tweet about the whole story.
Of course I am very happy about all the attention for DeadDrops. It is very interesting to witness how the perspective on such a project has changed over the past five years, especially since 2013. I am glad to see how this project is still going on and how it has inspired so many people over the years. Thanks to all the deaddroppers out there!! You are awesome!!
Aram Bartholl, March 2015
presse-dd-epxress-1
presse-dd-epxress-2
LINKS:

DD-presse-sueddeutsche
Full Interview at Sueddeutsche.de:

 
DD-presse-guardian
Guardian:

 

More press links:

German:

 
POPULAR TWEET


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

 

Tags:

Dead Drops YouTube playlist

März 13, 2015


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

Tags:
Archive