Echoing Exhibition Views – Subjectivity in Post-Digital Times Onomatopee Factory Store

Edited by A.R. practice (Ann Richter & Agnieszka Roguski), Introduction by A.R. practice (Ann Richter & Agnieszka Roguski), Texts by Melanie Bühler, Erika Landström, Agnieszka Roguski

When the exhibition enters the digital realm, as it is increasingly happening now when the display of art and culture can be enjoyed individually behind screens, then how does the exhibition view diffuse optically, technically, and culturally? And how does this transformation echo the new understanding of subjectivity?

Echoing Exhibition Views. Subjectivity in Post-Digital Times explores the different medialities and intersubjective shifts that follow the moment of seeing a physical exhibition today. It takes the digitized exhibition view as starting point for artistic and theoretic reflections on post-digital culture, hyperreality and its relation to subjectivity. Focusing on the transformative potential of the exhibition as circulating view, this publication asks how it transfers again into a subjective mode of perspective through the artistic lens. So what is at stake when an exhibition circulates as a digital view? And how does its digital presence in turn affect and transform the subjective experience of seeing a physical exhibition?

With images from João Enxuto & Erica Love, Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, New Noveta/Yair Oelbaum, SANY, Hanna Stiegeler, Jasmin Werner, and Jonas Paul Wilisch, as well as texts by Melanie Bühler, Erika Landström, and Agnieszka Roguski, this publication gathers artists, curators, and writers who frame these questions through a variety of practices and media. It thus addresses a self-reflexive and critical approach on medium and format—understanding the exhibition as a fluid and diverse view.

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How is our view on exhibitions influenced by their digital re-/presentation on the internet? How can art affect the normalized, circulating installation views in a creative way––and articulate a subjective view in this way? And how, above all, do seemingly objective standards and subjectivity affect each other?

The publication Echoing Exhibition Views. Subjectivity in Post-Digital Times focuses on the subjectivity of the supposedly objective exhibition documentation. It is about how artists realize a kind of subjective view when they are presenting an exhibition––in terms of performative, spatial, visual or technological aspects––and how that view can broaden, reflect or criticize the standardized claim of exhibition views.

For Echoing Exhibition Views. Subjectivity in Post-Digital Times, a total of seven international artistic positions articulate their personal interpretation of the ‘installation view’. Most important is their disciplinary versatility, which provides a multifaceted and complex approach to the topic. Artistic photography, illustration, conceptual art and performance art together respond to the apparent objectivity emanating from exhibition documentation and the photographic installation view.

The medium of display always shapes the work, therefore the form of the book becomes the venue for a visual tension between specification and ambiguity. To underline the modification as a productive act, A.R. practice interfered with book production standards and used a special RGB-three-color printing technique instead of CMYK. RGB (red green blue) is the digital color range and refers to the online format. However, it will evoke experimental effects for this analogue format.

The guiding principle is the idea of transformation through various media and formats. Thus, the featured artists represent a practice in which various media and spaces are crossed; from the virtual exhibition on the internet to the actual exhibition space to the photographic image from the exhibition. All works become independent exhibition practices and works of art.

 

TABLE OF CONTENT

Editorial (A.R. practice: Ann Richter & Agnieszka Roguski)

Essays:
In Other Words, Please be True (Melanie Bühler)
Subjective Exposure (Agnieszka Roguski)
Professionalized Reenactment (Erika Landström)

Featured work:
João Enxuto & Erica Love “Anonymous Paintings” (2011–)
Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff “Schinkel Klause” (2016)
New Noveta/Yair Oelbaum “Violent Amurg” (2017)
SANY “Acting Untitled” (2009-2018)
Hanna Stiegeler “Untitled” (2015)
Jasmin Werner “Observational Games” (2016)
Jonas Paul Wilisch “the work: a series of installation views” (2016/2017)

 

BIOGRAPHIES

A.R. practice is based on the conceptual and artistic collaboration of the designer Ann Richter and the curator and writer Agnieszka Roguski. Past projects include Eine Frage der Form/Norm, an installation within the exhibition Returning to Sender 2014 at HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2014), and ON VIEW – interferences of digital and physical re-/presentations (2015), an exhibition project that took shape online and at the art institution KV––Kunstverein Leipzig.
At the core of their working method is the linkage of different practices and disciplines, which play out in thematically aligned arrangements under a socially relevant question. A.R. practice treats both designing and curating as mutual modes of thinking and doing from the very beginning of a project while traversing different types of visualities. Focussing on formats of visual display, they critically explore their ways of becoming public to create a fluid, entangled mediality. Each project can be seen as a process that aims to articulate contexts in both an analytical and creative manner. The work of A.R. practice has been widely presented in symposia and talks, such as at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen (2015), Gropius Bau in Berlin (2016), the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (2017), the TCA Transcuratorial Academy in Phnom Penh (2018), and the HSD Hochschule Düsseldorf (2019).

Ann Richter is co-founder of Studio Pandan, an agency for graphic design and art direction, which specializes in visual identities and publications. Their clients include cultural institutions and businesses such as Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, SKD Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Freie Universität Berlin, and the literature magazine Edit. She also teaches occasionally at art universities and gives talks and workshops.

Agnieszka Roguski works at the intersection of curating and research. Her PhD thesis, The Self on Display (Freie Universität Berlin), focuses on visual performances of the self under post-digital conditions. Her writing has appeared in Texte zur Kunst, Springerin, and Spike Magazine, among other publications. She teaches at different universities and worked at the WATTIS Institute San Francisco, PRAXES Center of Contemporary Art Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, Department for Cultures of the Curatorial.

 

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