On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the Kunsthalle Osnabrück is showing Aram Bartholl’s most comprehensive solo exhibition to date. Aram Bartholl is one of the pioneers in Germany who deals with socially relevant conflicts of digitality and automation through art. Originally coming from the field of architecture, he uses his performative interventions, sculptures and workshops to question our current media behaviour as well as the public economies that are linked to social networks, online platforms or digital distribution strategies. He puts socially relevant topics such as surveillance, data security or dependency on technology up for discussion by transferring the gaps, contradictions or absurdities of our digital everyday life into spatial settings.

For the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Aram Bartholl transformed the Kunsthalle´s church space into a walk-in recycling yard for electronic waste. The scenery is illuminated by three sculptures hanging from the ceiling, reminiscent of chandeliers that are made from recycled televisions. The result is a sensual as well as functional installation of complementary exhibition parts that invite us to reflect on the cycles, consequences and future perspectives of our daily consumption of media and goods. The walk-through parcours made of piled up electronic waste makes the amount of recycled material of our belongings visible and creates a unique environment for a diverse art mediation programme  including workshops, plena by local climate activists, repair cafés, excursions, lectures and film screenings. Oversized QR codes on the church walls frame the setting and raise critical questions about our handling of energy resources, raw materials and labour rights in the digital society. Opposing the electronic waste, the exhibition contains a 30-metre-long DHL Packstation, which is put into operation during the exhibition period. Osnabrück citizens and visitors are able to pick up their parcels at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück and drop them off in the respective lockers.

Curators: Anna Jehle and Juliane Schickedanz
Curators public programme: Louisa Behr, Joscha Heinrichs, Anna Holms and Christel Schulte.

Funded by the Stiftung Niedersachsen (Foundation of Lower Saxony) and the Niedersächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur (Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture). The VGH Stiftung (VGH Foundation) is funding the accompanying exhibition’s art mediation programme. With the kind support of Deutsche Post AG, Lerec Elektrorecycling GmbH and Osnabrücker ServiceBetrieb.

Credits:

Curated by: Anna Jehle, Juliane Schickedanz (duo team, directors of Kunsthalle)
Curatorial assistance: Anna Holms
Public Programming: Aram Bartholl, Louisa Behr, Joscha Heinrichs, Anna Holms, Christel Schulte
Installation team: Norbert Hillebrand, Timo Katz, Andreas Zelle
Exhibition office: Natali Märtin
Visitor service: Frank Berger, Ulla Brinkmann, Harcharan Gill, Sina Lichtenberg, Kaan Ege Önal, Josef Wegmann
Finances: Viktoria Puskar
Janitor: Wilfried Wienstroer
Janitorial assistance: Frank Berger
PR: Kristina Helena Pavićević
Art mediation and education: Christel Schulte

“Dust” part of the New Viewings exhibition series.

New Viewings is an experimental exhibition platform, a utopian space, a generator which invites curators and artists to develop projects free from limitations. Visitors get an overview of current discourses, curators and artist positions. Browsing through the ongoing carousel of shows and works you can discover and buy from upcoming and established artists as well as commission new projects. New Viewings was founded by Galerie Barbara Thumm. Although this project was inspired as a response to the pandemic lockdown, New Viewings has matured into its own destination. New Viewings has become a pioneering platform which explores new modes of gallery presentation and new ways to create market access. It has created a diverse network of artistic positions and ideas. The gallery has invited curators to host a series of four solo shows. A virtual gallery space was provided as a blank canvas to the artists, inviting them to experiment, to test new ideas. It is an opportunity to the artists to create a presentation of their work that would either be impossible due to resource constraints, gallery spaces or even strategic confines as determined by expectations of that artist’s oeuvre.

SFMOMA: snap+share
transmitting photographs from mail art to social networks
March 30–August 4, 2019
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/snap/

The exhibition snap+share gives visitors a new way to visualize — and experience — how photographs have become so ubiquitous in our daily lives. Whether through early examples of 1960s and ’70s mail art, physical piles of pictures uploaded to the Internet over a 24-hour period, or a working refrigerator that allows participatory meme-making, visitors can trace the evolution of sharing photographs.

Spanning the history of mail art to social networks, the show presents a variety of artists working in various media, from framed paper-based art to immersive installations. Some of these artists include On Kawara, Ray Johnson, Moyra Davey, Erik Kessels, Corinne Vionnet, and David Horvitz. Exploring how networks are created through the act of sending images out into the world, this exhibition reveals just how those networks have changed in the age of the Internet.

curated by Clement Cheroux
with: Thomas Bachler, Ray Johnson, Aram Bartholl, On Kawara, Joseph Beuys, Erik Kessels , Moyra Davey, William Larson, Jan Dibbets, Eva and Franco Mattes, Walker Evans, Peter Miller, Jeff Guess, Ken Ohara, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Stephen Shore, Kate Hollenbach, Endre Tót, David Horvitz, Corinne Vionnet

3 V
site specific installation · aluminium, acrylic glass, thermoelectric generator, electronics, LEDs, tea candles, steel chain

An otherwise closed pedestrian tunnel leading to Münster Palace is open to the public during Skulptur Projekte. Five candle-powered LED chandeliers light up the dark concrete tunnel. Each chandelier consists of ten LED tea-candle reading lamps mounted on an aluminum ring. With the help of the thermoelectric effect, the heat of the candles is converted directly into 3V electricity to power the LED lamps. The bright and cold LED light contrasts with the warm flicker of classic candlelight. Twice a day (every five hours), a guard replaces the melted candles. 3V is one of three works which were commissioned and produced by Skulptur Projekte Münster. Each of these different site-specific works incorporates thermoelectric technology.

5 V
site specific installation · campfire, wood, steel, thermoelectric generator, cables, electronics

Skulptur Projekte visitors are invited to charge their phones over a campfire at the Pumpenhaus Münster. In the tradition of stick bread making (Germany) and cooking sausages over the flames, custom-made charger sticks produce 5V electricity
with the help of the thermoelectric effect of the heat of the fire—enough to charge the average smartphone. As long as the thermo generator attached to the end of the stick is exposed to the flames, it generates power. Phones can be plugged into the sticks via a multi-plug charging cable. Visitors gather around the warmth of the fire, charge their phones, and have a chat. 5V is one of three works which were commissioned and produced by Skulptur Projekte Münster.

12 V
site specific installation · router, camping stove, thermoelectric generator, cable, electronics, software, database

A standard home router hangs parasitically right next to commercial mobile phone antennas on the Münster TV tower. Vistors are invited to connect to this router with their phones. The router serves no Internet connectinon but offers a large database of PDF tutorials on ‘How to live an offline life’. A thermo generator sitting on a small camping stove nearby provides 12-volt electricity to power the router, which is connected via a 70-meter long orange cable. While Deutsche Telekom maintains one of its three large data centers right next to the TV tower, the site-specific installation 12V is totally independent of power lines or Internet connection. Users can download and also upload files. Connections cannot be traced or monitored by third parties on the Internet. The tower, a retro-looking building for long-range TV broadcasts before the Internet, becomes a historic sculpture in itself.

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

For its new exhibition, the Avant Galerie Vossen brings together some twenty artists around the theme of the Rectangle. With this exhibition, the gallery continues to forge links between traditional practices and digital forms. *Black Rectangle* brings together painting, sculpture, installation, and new technologies.

A legendary motif
In the Lascaux caves, beneath the deer and bison we’ve known since childhood, researcher Stanislas Dehaene uncovered something unexpected: a black rectangle beneath the painting of the deer. The first geometric shape drawn by humankind. A minimal yet decisive sign—the beginning of symbolic thought, according to the researcher; this ability to create symbols is what makes us human; we are symbolic beings. Several millennia later, the black rectangle is still there, more than ever. It has multiplied; it covers our phone screens and our digital interfaces. The black rectangle censors, protects, hides. It is the form of imposed silence as much as it is of minimalist art. It is the browser window and the redaction bar. And it covers the walls of the Avant Galerie Vossen.

The black rectangle—poetic, humorous, political, algorithmic…
In the exhibition, the black rectangle takes on a poetic form for painters and sculptors. It is a humorous form for Apolline Régent when she plays with the legacy of the painter Malevich. It is a political form when Enora Denis finds it in facial recognition patents, masking the faces that feed the algorithms. It is an algorithmic form when Olivain Porry programs an AI to lie to other AIs and other humans. It is a physical form, rooted in the street, when Aram Bartholl seals a USB drive into the wall on Rue Chapon. It is fabric and sound when Cécile Babiole weaves electrical cables as one would weave wool.

In collaboration with Galerie Placido, 41 rue Chapon, 75003 Paris

With:

Clarisse AÏN, Jean-Michel ALBEROLA, Cécile BABIOLE, Robbie BARRAT, Ronan BARROT, Aram BARTHOLL, Louise BELIN, Ross BLECKNER, Benoit de BRETTES, CÉSAR, Mattia CUTTINI, Judith DEGOULET, Enora DENIS, David GUEZ, Grégoire HESPEL, Denis LAGET, Takesada MATSUTANI, Albertine MEUNIER, Hélène MILAKIS, PIERRE EDOUARD, Piero PIZZI CANNELLA, Olivain PORRY, Michel POTAGE, Apolline RÉGENT, Park SEO-BO, James SIENA, u2p050, Bernar VENET

Unfinished Reality
China-Europe Media:Art: Exchange Exhibition

Producer: Huang Liping
Academic Director: Lu Hong
Curators: Echo Can Luo, Hong Mei

Aram Bartholl
Tian Xiaolei
Shu Da
Fei Jun
Joel Baumann
Hou Shuai
Melissa E. Logan
Lin Xin
Wang Yezi
UBERMORGEN
Rosa Menkman
Xu Yan
Jero van Nieuwkoop
UNITIDE
Elko Braas
Vreneli Harborth

By occupying nearly a third of our waking hours, screens are profoundly reshaping the contours of our relationships with others. In response, numerous journalistic and academic discourses echo concerns about the digital migration of our social lives: the idea frequently arises that the socio-technical systems at work in this migration are making us more resistant to diversity.

Our intention is to nuance this concern by acknowledging a foundational aspect of the internet—its original design to facilitate the virtuous and unprecedented emergence of communities of specific interests, often far more specialized than what our traditional offline social circles can accommodate. This utopia inevitably carries a tension between, on the one hand, the benefits of more efficient and far-reaching sociability, and on the other, the widely discussed risks of a social life limited to alters who are most similar to ourselves.

Curated by Aurélie Clémente-Ruiz, director of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and Camille Roth, a researcher at CNRS in social sciences.

With: Nicolas Bailleul, Aram Bartholl, Léa Belloousovitch, Neïl Beloufa, Sophie Calle, Paola Ciarska, Laurent Grasso, Juliette Green, Ben Grosser, Özgür Kar, Béatrice Lartigue, Lauren Lee MacCarthy, Katherine Longly, Randa Maroufi, Magalie Mobetie, Martine Neddam, Philippe Parreno, Françoise Pétrovitch, Valentina Peri, Marilou Poncin, Jeanne Suspuglas

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

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