Decisions are the result of complex cognitive processes. Considering them collectively when they involve our shared futures makes them harder to make. But, more and more often, we include machines into such processes through algorithms qualified as decisional. Of course, it raises questions that artists know how to put into perspective. Because of the age that we are currently living in, a brief instant regarding the whole history of our planet, is decisive considering the choices available to us for a responsible development of Artificial Intelligence. Therefore, it is now that human rights are at stake, for instance, about what will emerge from the use of our personal data. The consideration of artworks coming from decisive processes connecting humans to machines could only spring us into an immediate future that still belongs to us.

Curated by Dominique Moulon & Alain Thibault

Artistic Directors: Carol Yinghua Lu, Luo Xiaoming
Curatorial Team: Huang Wenlong, Li Xiangning, Liang Chouwa, Yin Shuai, Jerome, Zhou Boya, Zhu Siyu

Our relationships with digital devices have become closer during the pandemic, maybe even closer than we would wish for. Digital technology helps us make connections and it can take the place of face-to-face encounters like a prosthesis. It expands our sensorium and creates projection surfaces for our desires. Digital helpers are increasingly tailored to our intimate human needs. But can human closeness really be relegated to a machine?  The exhibition “Me and My Machine” sheds light on the symbiosis between humans and digital machines. In both humorous and serious ways, it questions our current relationship to everyday digital tools: Where are the possibilities and limits? How are our desires satisfied and how do dependencies and impotence in the face of problems in our society manifest themselves? The exhibition invites visitors to experiment with creative digital tools, to interact with paintings and installations and to interrogate their own bodies. Visitors will be able to enter virtual worlds and be encouraged to exchange ideas about changing habits and about their experiences with delimitation and return.

The participating artists are: Ant Eye (Hanneke Klaver und Tosca Schift), Sophie de Oliveira Barata (The Alternative Limb Project), Aram Bartholl, Candoco Dance Company, Beate Gärtner, Susanna Hertrich, Tomasz Kwapien, Till Nachtmann and Stefan Silies, Johanna Reich, Becker Schmitz.

Visitors of the Bürgeramt Arnsberg are invited to have their portrait taken which in the following is run through a face recognition software. Choose an emoji, font and color to have your face ‘de-recognized’. The resulting picture is directly printed on A3+ Hahnemühle art photo paper for you to take home!

“Hypernormalisation”
Opening, Friday 30.7. 11:00-13:00
2.8.-13.8. 10:00-16:00
Historisches Rathaus Arnsberg
Organized by @kulturarnsberg thx!

Supported by:
@kultursekretariatguetersloh
#ministeriumkulturwissenschaftnrw
@stadtverwaltung_arnsberg

Credits:
thx @nadjalien for test portrait!
thx @tlsaeger for code!
thx @schw__rz for invitation design!

How to Win at Photography – Image-Making as Play explores the relationship between photography and play. It investigates the notion of image play, creating unexpected connections between the history of photography, the gamification of the visible as well as practices of image making with and within computer games.

The group exhibition How to Win at Photography includes more than forty positions from contemporary and 20th century photography. Through an assemblage of multimedia artworks and vernacular images, the exhibition questions the very meaning and function of photography today.

Are we playing with the camera or is the camera ultimately playing us? Are we really in charge or are we mere pawns in larger technical, social, cultural and economic networks? What can a playful photographer achieve on a political and socio-cultural level? Who and what is performing the act of seeing and capturing – humans, machines or a combination of both? Who is playing along? And finally, can this game be won? These are just some of the questions posed by How to Win at Photography.
The exhibition invites visitors to focus on the playful aspects of photography. The exhibition looks at artists and photographers who play with – and sometimes against – the camera, document the environments of videogames and question the notion of identity, gender and class.

With works by: Cory Arcangel, Aram Bartholl, Dorothée Elisa Baumann, Justin Berry, Julius Brauckmann, Alan Butler, Claude Cahun, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Dries Depoorter & Max Pinckers, Philipp Dorl, Constant Dullaart, Harun Farocki, Christopher Graves, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Beate Gütschow, Jon Haddock, Emily Hadrich, Florence Henri, Roc Herms, John Hilliard, Yuyi John, Rindon Johnson, Andy Kassier, Sherrie Levine, Gloria López Cleries & Sive Hamilton Helle, René Mächler, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Joan Pamboukes, Steven Pippin, Michael Reisch, Tabor Robak, Ria Patricia Röder, Lorna Ruth Galloway, Ed Ruscha, Emma Agnes Sheffer, Cindy Sherman, Guido Segni, Andrew Stine, Petra Szemán, Akihiko Taniguchi, Danielle Udogaranya, Coralie Vogelaar, Tamás Waliczky and Ai Weiwei.

In collaboration with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University.

“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.