Aram Bartholl – Blog

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Archive for February, 2017

Artist Talk – Bard college Berlin

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Poster_Aram Bartholl_small

On Monday, March 6th 2017 at 5:00pm, Bard College Berlin has the pleasure to host conceptual artist Aram Bartholl for a guest talk titled “Never Worry Again.” The artist will be speaking about his artistic practice as well as sharing and discussing a wide range of recent works. This talk is open to the public. Refreshments will be served afterwards.

Time: Monday, March 6, 2017 from 5:00pm
Venue: Bard College Berlin, Lecture Hall
Platanenstrasse 98a, 13156 Berlin (map)
Admission free

http://www.berlin.bard.edu/news/events/eventsview/archive/2017/february/article/march-6-never-worry-again-artist-talk-by-aram-bartholl/

Written by Aram

February 28th, 2017 at 5:59 pm

Leaving Facebook URL Generator

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leaving-facebool-url-generator-1

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Leaving Facebook URL Generator
website, html, java script
Aram Bartholl
2017

https://leaving-facebook.com/

I stumbled over this funny facebook exit page a few days ago. It is quite standard for many Internet platforms to present you a warning like this: “do you really wanna go to that link?” or “see you again soon at our great platform….”. You are leaving the walled garden but they want you to stay. In this particular case I think it is hilarious that facebook titles one of its own pages ‘leaving facebook’. People been talking about leaving facebook since years.

As a fun (and rather useless) service I offer at leaving-facebook.com for everyone to create custom ‘leaving facebook’-URLs. There has been a bit confusion and questions about what this services actually does. It is very simple. If you enter a URL in the form and hit submit facebook will present you the according exit warning page.  Follow the link, that is the idea of the WWW.

Credits: Jonas Lund

Written by Aram

February 27th, 2017 at 7:27 pm

Never Worry Again

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never-worry-again-drone-strike-aram-bartholl-1-2000

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Never Worry Again
sculpture
medium: dash button, vinyl print; size: 2,5 x 6 x 1,5 cm
Aram Bartholl
2017

Amazon Dash is an Internet connected button to make online shopping as simple as possible. The ‚click-buy‘ interface from the website becomes a real button. For each brand series Amazon offers a different button which, when pressed will result in the delivery of a single product. „Never worry again“ [to run out of soap, shampoo or chocolate etc.] was the slogan Amazon used advertise this new invention in Spring 2016.

With each button press a complicated chain of logistics and automation is triggered. A hyper optimized series of commands is issued through networks, software, robots and low wage workers to make the perfect delivery chain work. We don‘t understand in detail how all this works. Where does the product come from? Who made it? How many robots or low wage workers were involved or what is their condition? We just press a button and like magic a new consumer good appears a day later.

The current worldwide drone war works in a similar way. Drone operations are highly automated and distributed among a series of specialists with different tasks. Only very few officials get the whole picture who and why someone is attacked. The drone soldier in the bunker in nevada (or else where) who presses the button to kill certainly doesn’t know.

All we know is that these soon to be automated wars are taking place to ‘protect’ our ‚freedom‘ to consume, to make sure the people in the western world keep buying more and more products every day.

Aram Bartholl 2017

PS:
The project started with a photoshop mockup and tweet in April 2016.

 

 

Written by Aram

February 24th, 2017 at 5:01 pm