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Unseen Amsterdam's CO-OP Sep, 2018.
Presenting an installation created in collaboration within 12 of our artists, the work deals with the significance of the collective in times of progressive individualization, virtualization and ongoing fragmentation, but also with the idea of intensity in arts and culture.
The artists submitted photographs engaging with the topic of emotionality and sentimentality against the backdrop of virtualization and the reduction to surfaces. In a second step we asked them to re-arrange the submitted material of the whole group to layered collages following the principle of “image content against individual authorship”. In the process of putting them together, the individual positions merge into the collective representation.
Westergasfabriek, Unseen Amsterdam's CO-OP 2018
September 21st - 23rd
#Artists
By doing this, we asked how emotionally affected the artists are by trading their distinctive positions for a collective statement, particularly in regard to the sentimental value of the individual works.
What does the desire for symbiosis mean in times when all our data is stored in a virtual cloud joining millions of other people’s data, where Instagram profiles reflect the attempt to stage life of high intensity, but fail and still seem “flat”? In times, where “feeling alive” means posting a picture that makes your followers believe your life is full of intense experiences. This overload, though, gets an antithesis in the center of the space: A curtain shaft which houses a water bed inside.
The visitor is invited to enter this little room to experience a break from the multiple sensory impressions and the visual overload of an art fair. A space for visual silence, an existential void. In this void, deprived of visual senses, the visitor can - while floating on the water bed - listen to a meditative audio talking about the idea of floating in a visual cloud and merging with a photographic idea of collective authorship.
