DEMO DAY
Kunstraum LLC, Brooklyn New York, USACurator: Fernando Schrupp
Artists: Aram Bartholl, Émilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Ursula Damm, Eteam, Nathaniel Faulkner, Esther Hunziker, Eduardo Kac, Marc Lee, Claudia Maté, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Robert Myers, Andrew Nunes, Nicholas O'Brien, Alexander Reben, Daniel Temkin, Ubermorgen and Michel Winterberg
Kunstraum LLC, Brooklyn New-York
Political Campaigns - Battle of Opinion on Social Media @Kunstraum LLC, New-York
Demo Day
The title of the exhibition is a reference to Y Combinator’s biannual event where a few chosen startups pitch their ideas to the most relevant VC's (Venture Capitalist) of Silicon Valley. Lately, we seem to be submerged in the media bubble of the tech ecosystem, and tech-industry lingoes, such as growth hacking, pivot, and unicorn have become common language. We voraciously read stories about Elon Musk or Travis Kalanick, assigning them roles as heroes or villains, depending on the beat of the season.
“Demo Day” is intended as a platform for artists whose ideas are worth “pitching” in a time of rise-of-the-machine hysteria. Silicon Valley has captured our imagination, and its intention is to highjack culture. They tell us a story of code-generated disruptions improving our lives, but mostly, changing the ways we consume things. Their ultimate goal is leading the consumer into the trap of easier access to consumption. Artists are here to remind us that this story, although generally accepted, is not what history has taught us. The exponential function shaping hockey-stick-growth (graphic description of accelerating growth) is no match to the rate of creativity in which artists defy our preconceived notions of the world.
After all, the most deliberate ways that language can be repurposed, playfully re-designed as part of a metaphorical understanding used for the tech game, has its root in contemporary art and how the artists developed an understanding for meta-language as part of our vocabulary. These gestures spin back, derive and refer to pioneer works of contemporary art– rather than quoting them, the exhibition intends to display works of art that build on the conceptual approach to the digital world and tech culture.
Exhibited Artwork
TV Bot - World News as Soon as It Happens!
Network-Based Television Program, Net ArtThe net art project TV Bot is an Internet news channel which only broadcasts brand-new stories. Never more than an hour old, they are scooped from the Internet’s news flux, reformatted for a browser and given a URL. The process is automated, with no editorial hand behind the content selection which is reproduced in apparently random order as live TV streams, live radio streams, webcam images more …
Fotomuseum, Winterthur
Dock 18, Zurich
TV Bot 1.0 (2004)
Political Campaigns - Battle of Opinion on Social Media
Interactive Net-Based TV ShowIn recent months in Political Campaigns all over the world, the supporters of opposing parties have engaged in fiercely waged wars of images on social media. Elections have also long since ceased to be won on the street or in the traditional media— social networks have become the digital marketplace for political disputation. A new version of Marc Lee’s TV Bot (2004), filters the latest Twitter more …
dokKa, Karlsruhe
Port25, Mannheim
Fotomuseum, Winterthur