[rohrpost] Solo Show & Book Launch, [DAM] Berlin, Jan 27

[Aram Bartholl]

Aram Bartholl
*Reply All*

January 27th, 7–9 pm
[DAM] Berlin
Neue Jakobstr. 6/7, 10179 Berlin

Opening + Book-Release
Aram Bartholl – The Speed Book, Gestalten-Verlag, 2012
Performance "How to Vacuum Form" by Aram Bartholl

19:30 Uhr: Book launch of Bartholl's first monograph Aram Bartholl – The 
Speed Book, which will be published by Gestalten Verlag. The publisher, 
art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta gives the introduction.

Exhibition: January 28th – March 10th 2012


http://dam-berlin.de/mlExhibitions-pa-showpage-pid-3.html
https://shop.gestalten.com/aram-bartholl.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/287533097962364/

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Gallery [DAM]Berlin presents Berlin based artist Aram Bartholl (*1972, 
Bremen) in his first solo exhibition, whose works create a dynamic 
tension between online- and real-life. In 2011 Bartholl was partaking in 
exhibitions by MoMA, Pace Gallery New York and [DAM]Cologne.

His pieces are cutting-edge – not just product of observation, but 
formed by thought-provoking impulses that Aram gives and by the 
subsequent independent existence of the artworks created by the user. 
His interventions in public space, his readymade-like installations and 
sculptures are based on a do-it-yourself-culture with regard to personal 
creation and responsibility as well as the Internet's popular icons with 
whom Bartholl confronts us in reality. But Aram Bartholl's artworks are 
not to be seen as entirely digital: they deal too much with space, are 
too haptic in their approach, and the awareness of potential political 
influence is too intense – his pieces push out of gallery and museum 
surroundings into the city space, into society.

Things, that seem to be trivial parts of the internet, irritate the 
viewer as soon as they confront him in the physical world: In Are you 
human? a CAPTCHA-code, used by web services to differentiate between 
human request and automated scripts, is applied in aluminium form onto 
murals and gallery walls. A screen with illuminating pixels turns out to 
be a hand crafted object operated by a candle. In a subtle but accurate 
way Bartholl reveals discourses concerning the power of a digitally 
affected world, e.g. in his successful, often quoted project Dead Drops, 
consisting of USB-sticks, mured into city walls, that refuse data 
exchange via the internet structures established by big global companies.

'Everything develops extremely fast on the net. I have the urge to 
create something that deals with the topic, but that endures anyway,' 
says Aram Bartholl about this de-digitalisation of the digital. Where 
media art, urban intervention and interactive performance meet he asks 
basic sociocritical questions, thinks about our cultural memory. The 
rapid development of the digital age is slowed down in his artworks, it 
is liberated of its technological appeal and exposed for intentional 
examination. For example his new project Dust: Bartholl wants to convey 
the worlds most played computer game landscape from Counter Strike – a 
virtual space, a place seen by millions of people that is fixed in their 
visual memory even though they were never able to really 'enter' it – 
into an accessible 1:1 model made of concrete.

With the performance and installation shown at the exhibition for the 
first time, Bartholl, who is active in net political circles like the 
Chaos Computer Club, turns towards the symptom of an already existing 
frontier crossing of digital and analogue world: The Anonymous-movement 
and its characteristic comic-inspired Guy-Fawkes-masks, that are its 
distinctive mark and protection of identity. They have gained huge media 
presence thanks to the civil movement Occupy Wallstreet as well. The 
Anonymous-movement pushes forward the idea of a free, net-based 
information- and creativity-collective – a kind of global brain, that 
develops political capacity to act without hierarchic organisation and 
without determined identity.

The exhibition 'Aram Bartholl. Reply All' is part of the associate 
programme of Transmediale 2012.

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ARAM BARTHOLL
The Speed Book
Perceptive and entertaining investigations of digital culture.

Publisher: gestalten
Editor: Domenico Quaranta
Design: Manuel Bürger

Release Date: January 2012
Format: 21,6 x 28 cm
Features: 268 pages, full color, hardcover
Language: English
https://shop.gestalten.com/aram-bartholl.html

With essays by:

Josephine Bosma,
Jonah Brucker-Cohen,
Jon Cates,
Lindsay Howard,
Alessandro Ludovico,
Evan Roth,
Bruce Sterling,
Brad Troemel

About This Book

Aram Bartholl’s work explores the power structures, the social systems, 
the cultural innovations, the inner dynamics, the languages, and the 
products that are shaping our age. This first comprehensive monograph 
offers entry to an oeuvre in which space and cyberspace mingle and 
mangle each other, a realm that uses as little technology as possible 
while still speaking a digital language.

Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book features savvy experiments with 
transitions from the virtual to the physical: USB sticks embedded into 
walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google's red 
map markers positioned in public spaces; portraits generated from search 
results. An introduction by editor Domenico Quaranta as well as essays 
by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, art critics, and fellow 
artists guide readers through a wonderfully skewed version of reality 
under the influence of the internet, something Sterling refers to as 
Bartholl’s "self-created twilight zone."

More About This Book

For a growing number of people, virtual activities on the internet are 
becoming more significant than the lives they actually lead in the real 
world. Others are skeptical or even alarmed by the seemingly inevitable 
technological developments in our digital age. In his work, Aram 
Bartholl investigates this dichotomy and the blurred dynamics in between 
with a playfully ironic ingenuity.
This first comprehensive monograph offers entry to Bartholl’s 
entertaining art in which space and cyberspace mingle and mangle each 
other—a realm that uses as little technology as possible while still 
speaking a digital language.

Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book features savvy experiments with 
transitions from the virtual to the physical: USB sticks embedded into 
walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google's red 
map markers positioned in public spaces; portraits generated from search 
results. An introduction by editor Domenico Quaranta as well as essays 
by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, art critics, and fellow 
artists guide readers through a wonderfully skewed version of our 
society under the influence of the internet, something Sterling refers 
to as Bartholl’s "self-created twilight zone."

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Aram Bartholl
Ackerstr. 38
10115 Berlin
landline: +493060980161
mobile: +491791036178
skype: agoasi
bartholl at datenform.de
www.datenform.de