Berlin Biennale 9, Educational Memes and Erwin Wurm

So, it’s been a slightly packed two weeks, with an intense five-day trip to Berlin surrounded by the creation of a new work alongside the usual film watching and video game escapism that occurs within my life away from London.

The new work that I’ve created is centred around memes and an essay from 1995 written by Clifford Stoll, titled, Why the Internet Will Fail. In the essay, and a book published in the same year titled Silicon Snake Oil, Stoll talks about why the internet won’t be a beneficial tool in the future, that it’ll be full of ‘unfiltered data’ and that teachers will never be replaced by computers. Of course, in the subsequent years he was deemed to be incredibly wrong, as the internet grew into what it is today. In some sense however, a lot of the things he did write about are very similar ‘issues’ (to some these are ‘issues’ to others they are the only reason that they frequent the internet so regularly) that plague the network today; everyone’s voice being heard amounting to a deluge of information that can never be sifted through, regular anonymous harassment, etc.

After reading this article, and some of the book, I decided to visualise the writing using memes. A meme is usually an image accompanied by lines of text, typically humorous, that is subsequently copied and shared over the internet, until it becomes a well-known meme and slowly dies out and is no longer used regularly. The images used are often derogatory, or not; it all depends on the meme. Using memes to illustrate the essay makes fun of Stoll and the ideas that he had about the internet whilst simultaneously demonstrating that he was right in some parts of his argument, that the internet has become a breeding ground for hate and abuse. In the video work, after every few words another meme flashes up on the screen with the word that has just been spoken embedded in some way within the meme. All the memes are different, with no repeated meme, all sourced from Google Image searches, ranging from the most popular memes to the obscure ones that are created for a small circle of friends. After editing all the memes together, I decided to stretch them all, filling the screen rather than keeping them at their original size, making the memes even more pixelated and ugly than before.

I also chose to harness a voice generator from the internet, making the voice anonymous, as well as creating some ambiguity as to who is actually talking. Is it an autonomous website, talking about all the hate that it sees every day, or simply a middle aged man ranting about a tool he doesn’t understand yet?

Stoll’s most important point seems to be centred around education, how teachers won’t be replaced by computers as electronics can’t give users the human contact that they crave. Thus, I chose to take the title of the piece directly from the text, with the line Who Needs Teachers When You've Got A Computer-Aided Education? I’m still considering how to display this work, maybe in a school environment, like a lecture theatre or something? I may wait until going back to uni in order to use the lecture theatre there to project and photograph the work; it’s all about that ‘in situ’ photograph. We will see. For now you can see the work on my website here: www.bobbicknell-knight.com/#/who-needs-teachers-when-youve-got-a-computeraided-education/

Apart from that I’ve finally begun to write my no screen contract that I’ve been talking about doing for months now. It’s slowly becoming a thing, researching all the different types of screens so if people were to use the document they couldn’t find any loopholes in the contract. I still need to think of how long the contract will last for, or if the user would set their own length of non-screen based time. I’m also anxious to make it an actual legally binding document, so may want to contact an actual lawyer at some point? Yet again, we will see…

Oh and I heard back from a festival called RETHink Art Digital Festival that’s happening in Crete in September, my film Rules of Engagement will be being shown at some point. So if you happen to be in Greece next month, check it out: en.rethinkartfestival.com/artists.html

I also have a new ‘show’ in Berlin in conjunction with The Institute of Fictional Exhibitions Art Foundation. Follow this link to the press release: www.ifeaf.org/Bob-Bicknell-Knight

isthisit? has been going pretty well, with last week’s show #15 containing three works, with two of the pieces functioning as vignettes to Agnieszka Zimolag's video work 'Phantom Surface'. The film, seeking to blur various barriers between the real and the virtual, feels incredibly clinical and considered, almost too perfect. This constructed ‘hyper-reality’ that Zimolag introduces the viewer to is contrasted by Laila Majid’s endless gif of a tongue, ‘wibblewoBBbble sllurrrRrRpy prrrRRobe’. This short repetitive visceral experience brings Zimolag's work back to ‘our’ reality, reminding you that everything isn’t quite so overly produced in ’real life’, and quite literally connects Levan Amashukeli’s painting ‘Automatic Reality’ to the virtual assemblage. A work that contains elements of fantasy blended with reality whilst exploring the artists’ memory shadows, the watery reds of the painting attempt to function in contrast with the mixture of greys and blacks within Zimolag's video as well as complimenting the pinks of Majid’s tongue. Each piece is severely dominated by Zimolag's soundtrack, a darkly ambient soundscape that opens up another point of interpretation for both Amashukeli’s and Majid’s work, adding an overarching experience to the micro exhibition. You can see the work here: http://isthis.wixsite.com/isthisit/15

This week’s exhibition, #16, had the overarching theme of relationships, with Taylor Ellis’ digital assemblage I still look at your profile being the centre of attention, focusing on a relationship that was ended in real life, with the subsequent ‘internet stalking’ being facilitated, and somewhat encouraged, by social media websites. It has a very DIY aesthetic, with the choice to transform the text bubbles into text boxes an incredibly deliberate one, forcing you to actually observe what’s going on within the collage rather than dismissing the messages as mere offhanded text messages sent over I messenger. This was complimented by Seren Metcalfe’s video work Empathy for inanimate objects where she manipulates a concrete block in order to portray how one feels when they’re in an unrewarding relationship; giving everything but gaining nothing. Concrete blocks are also used in buildings and structures all over the world, providing the foundations, walls and floors of the rooms that we inhabit on a daily basis. Having a relationship with a given space leads me onto Adam Saunders performance work Gesture 1.1. Using software usually associated with live projections at music events, Saunders utilises 3D motion tracking programs to control music by making small, gestural movements with his body. Each artist seems to be looking at the different relationships that puncture their daily lives, Ellis with a defunct lover, Metcalfe with the very rooms she inhabits and Saunders with his own bodily actions. See the videos here: http://isthis.wixsite.com/isthisit

I also started a ‘curatorial notes’ section on the website, publishing why I’ve put certain works together. Very minimal thoughts from me that you can check out here, pretty much all lifted from this blog: http://isthis.wixsite.com/isthisit/curatorial

Now, Berlin. The trip was focussed on the 9^th Biennale curated by DIS magazine; an amazing collective that run an online magazine, puts on exhibitions and now curates biennale’s. The biennale was happening in five different venues around Berlin, from the KW Institute for Contemporary Art to a sightseeing boat ride that traverses the Spree River, forcing you to take in the art that’s around you. Instead of going through each individual venue, I’m simply going to talk about the work that I liked, which was basically everything. There were a few non-biennale related exhibitions that I also went to, but I’ll get to that later.

So, one of my favourite works was a newly commissioned video installation by Cécile B. Evans called What the Heart Wants. I’ve enjoyed her work for a while, incredibly well created animations accompanied by long monologues posing various questions to the characters within the video as well as the viewer within themselves. In this new piece you were given the chance to walk onto a dimly lit catwalk, suspended in water, with various sculptural works emerging from the water accompanied by a huge projection screen, reflecting against the black water’s surface. That in itself is impressive, alongside the 40-minute video that is the centre of this installation, featuring various different animations interspersed and intertwined with clips from real life. I can’t really do the piece any justice by describing it, all I can do is state how impressive and considered the whole thing was and tell you to go and see for yourself.

Another favourite piece was by Jon Rafman, obviously. He had a few sculptures on display, alongside a new VR commission. The sculptures consisted of various animals attempting to swallow one another. These are okay, not that amazing, but I guess one has to make money somehow. It’s one of those things that’s interesting for about a minute, and then you are bored, and there is nothing more to see. The VR experience on the other hand, that was quite awesome. As opposed to the piece that I saw at the Zabludowicz Collection many many months ago, this work was a little more interactive, rather than being guided through a space you were able to walk around, exploring the various environments that the computer took you to. You start off overlooking Pariser Platz, a very basic replica of the space that you just left behind when you put on the goggles. Many things happen after that. A truly ‘fuck me’ moment was when the floor collapsed below me and I began a long fall into the ocean, watching the sun slowly setting as my legs slightly bent in anticipation of the impact. This is what I want from a true VR experience. With these works I only ever want to go once, to me going a second time would take away from the magic of the whole experience, allowing you to poke holes in the journey; nobody wants that. Overall I was impressed, although I want to see more interactive experiences from Rafman in the future as he continues to experiment with the technology, rather than simply being led down a corridor.

The sightseeing boat tour was an interesting experience. The whole boat had been turned into an installation by Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic, made to look like the set of a Cronenberg film, which was fine, but a very 90s future aesthetic that’s been heavily overused in the past few years. We get it, cables look cool. ‘Below deck’ you’re presented with the staple of any Korakrit Arunanondchai installation; the pillows, alongside an obscure video work featuring drone shots and repetitive music. I do like his videos, simply for how well filmed they are, although this one seemed a little obvious, especially as it was being accompanied by the sheer amount of unneeded wiring and general crap that had been stuck to the boat. I did however, love the idea of forcing someone to experience a piece of work; you can’t walk away from a piece when you’re on a boat. I definitely want to use this at some point in the future, be it by simply having people sign a form saying that they have to stay in a room for a certain amount of time, or something similar. The fact that you’re taking part in something, rather than being the sole individual, definitely has something to do with it, alongside transportation… Having a video piece on a rollercoaster for example would be quite interesting, or, obviously, a plane. Or on the toilet; places where you know people will spend a certain amount of time in. Anyway, it was a good experience to have, art on a boat.

Will Benedict had an interesting video piece to accompany a song by the Detroit based band Wolf Eyes. The music was piercing, with the video consisting of an interview with an alien on a television talk show. The piece was being shown in an office, which was very interesting. I don’t think I’ve actually seen a work displayed in an actual office before… Or maybe I have?

Simon Denny had a bunch of work on show alongside Linda Kantchev, a postage stamp designer. The first work one encountered was a didactic video explaining what Bitcoin is, how it’s used, etc, with all the computer generated graphs that one usually sees in these types of videos. You then come across three different assemblages, trade fair like booths focusing on three real companies at the forefront of digital monetary platforms; beginning with the corporate entities and ending with the more anarchist start-ups. Denny continues to display massive amounts of research exquisitely, his work is always very thought out and considered; as always I’m a big fan.

Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin had two video installations, shown in a stylized concept bar and an aerobic/children’s play area. As always, they were incredibly long, incredibly crazed tableaus centred around longwinded monologues reflecting to the camera, a constant spew of information about very little; welcome to the internet. At this point the duo seem to have such a huge amount of money, each time I see a new work of theirs it’s even more crazy than the last; where do they go from here? I’m excited, if a little bit frightened, to look into their future. I find it hard to think of any other artwork that’s more of a brain fuck than their video experiences.

GUAN Xiao’s totem assemblages are always fun to see, even though I’m probably a little fed up of seeing spray painted objects randomly thrown together, like a 60s pop art sculpture. They’re okay, I think I’d just like to see something new from her, rather than endless repetitions of the same thing.

Camille Henrot had a disappointing installation on show called Office of Unreplied Emails, various spam emails alongside hand written replies printed onto silicon lined the gallery floor, accompanied by a bunch of terrible paintings displayed on make shift easels. I understand why the paintings 11 Animals that Mate 4 Life were situated beside the emails, but it just wasn’t needed, the emails within themselves were interesting enough. I think the downfall of having created an amazing video work in the past, Grosse Fatigue, everything that you do after that will automatically be compared to it. Obvious, but still a shame.

Yngve Holen’s Window Seat sculptural works were being shown in one of the spaces. This set of glass blown windows take on the designs of talismans sold in countless tourism shops all over the world, protecting against the ‘evil eye’. Shaped into the classic portholes of a Boeing 787 they serve as windows to the world of global mobility with themes surrounding economics and tourism. They were pretty and attractive to look at, with a vaguely clever underlying narrative.

Ooooh, Josh Kline’s video work Crying Games, a particular favourite of mine, was accompanied by Mission Accomplished, basically tons of cat litter. Using face-substitution software, various actors take on the faces of political figures whose ideas, policies, and military campaigns defined the 2000s, with the violent repercussions continuing to echo through our own time. The various figures on the screen repeat the same two-word sentence over and over again, ‘I’m sorry’, whilst crying and holding themselves, rocking back and forth. It’s incredibly humorous whilst simultaneously managing to be incredibly distressing. Whilst you’re watching these actors in jump suits crying, you’re standing on cat litter, absorbing their tears and general crap spewing from their mouths, as of course it’s all bullshit. Really brilliant work.

Shawn Maximo’s contribution to the biennale was turning a toilet into an information space, creating a room where the real and the virtual collide, complete with working taps and toilet. At the very least it was an interesting way to use the space.

Seeing Trevor Paglen’s Autonomy Cube is always fun, hooking up to the anonymous network through your phone. The work will probably never really get old for me.

The giant Ewaipanoma (Rihanna) in the courtyard of the KW Institute by Juan Sebastián Peláez was fun to see, but not really that interesting, more spectacle than anything in particular.

Part of a series of works by Adrien Piper Everything #5.1 is a timeless piece of work. Part of the gallery wall is removed in the shape of a gravestone, a piece of glass is inserted into where the wall once was, turning the outer wall of the room into a work within itself. It’s a clever piece of work, that continues to work after its creation over ten years ago.

Josephine Pryde’s The New Media Express is a lot more spectacle than any real substance, but that’s okay because it’s a miniature train that you can actually ride on in the gallery! That’s all I’ll say about it, as that’s all you get from the experience, a failure in terms of an artwork but a nice break from the norm.

Puppies Puppies is an enigma within himself, an anonymous figure that surfaces for live performances, posting internet memes that go viral or to take part in an exhibition or two. The work on display throughout the biennale was titled Untitled (Purell), which was literally hand sanitizer, melting into the very walls of the gallery space. I love this idea, as at the time you didn’t really know why they were there, were they art, or at some point in the exhibition were you going to handle something ‘gross’? Which would deem the sanitizers a viable thing to have on the walls of a gallery. I definitely want to have something invisible like this displayed in the future, a readymade that will stand out enough for people to notice, but not too much as to suggest that it is in fact art. Really clever.

Amelia Ulman managed to satisfactorily translate her virtual, Instagram work, into the real with her installation PRIVILEGE. The square screens, the curtains simulating an environment that you’re not really sure if you want to be in, alongside an animatronic pigeon. It was very plain, very slimmed down and packed with obvious metaphors that can be explained away with age. It was a nice beginner to the biennale for me, something to ease you in.

Anna Uddenberg’s Transit Mode – Abenteuer attempts to join contemporary consumerist performative acts with ideas of the body and real life experiences. A series of women mannequins contort their bodies around various products, hinting at some sort of journey or activity, from wrapping themselves around luggage to twisting around to take a ‘belfie’; a bum selfie. They’re kind of interesting assemblages of things, mashing various themes together with little care for subtleties. I want to see more of her work.

Timur Si-Qin had an okay installation, a fabricated landscape, mixing real and bought objects to create A Reflected Landscape. Fitted with cameras, you’ll appear on the television screen, being watched and viewed from afar, watching yourself in real time. It always feels a little gimmicky when this happens, like putting a mirror in a gallery, just asking for a selfie to be taken. Maybe this is the whole point, if so, I’m slightly disappointed…

The last artist from the biennale that I’m going to talk about is Hito Steyerl. I was kind of disappointed, two video works telling her usual half real/half fictitious stories using various animated technologies, one about a drone operator and another about a computer animator. Once again, I go back to the video that originally got her noticed How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File. Even her very confused, money filled piece for the Venice Biennale, The Factory of the Sun was better than The Tower and ExtraSpaceCraft. There just wasn’t enough content to grab onto, the stories not being real enough, I don’t know. Or maybe they were just too short. I don’t know, they just didn’t grab me like her previous work has done in the past.

That was the biennale, quite an amazing experience. I then went to a few other shows, some of which were equally as awesome. A huge show dedicated to Carl Andre happened to be on show, with 50 works and over 200 poems by the esteemed artist displayed. Although I personally don’t make the hyper minimal, incredibly material based work that Andre was known for, I still appreciate the pure structures and impressive stature of his sculptures. The outwardly simple poems alongside the structurally simple sculptures were simply an awe to be in the presence of, alongside the actually gallery space which was an old train station; a very intense experience.

In the same institution there was a Joseph Beuys exhibition, with the highlight being a work that I was never entirely sure was actually a real thing until now, Unschitt (Tallow). A work that involved 20 tons of beef fat being cast in the hollow of a pedestrian underpass. These giant blocks dominated the space, creating an industrial-esque presence whilst simultaneously presenting a more delicate, organic side. They are definitely worth seeing in real life, and I’d recommend looking into the process of how these monoliths of fat were made.

Another exhibition in the same place yet again was titled Das Kapital, Debt – Territory – Utopia. This was an incredibly curated show, which was unfortunately all in German, so when reading the booklet, I was only able to pick out various artists that I already knew, rather than being able to read through the whole thing. Highlights included On Kawara’s magnificent One Million Years emanating subtly from a bench in the gallery as well as Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV. There were many more works, 128 more to be precise, but I don’t have enough time or effort to go into them.

Another great exhibition consisted of a micro retrospective, alongside some new work, by Erwin Wurm. For the first time I was able to become one of his One Minute Sculptures, as well as exploring his Narrow House. It’s the kind of work that has many levels, the first level being pure enjoyment to be experiencing these other worldly objects/installations, and sometimes that’s enough to be a great thing. I did feel incredibly oppressed in the house, the further you went the harder it got to explore the squished rooms.

In terms of new work, he was showing a bunch of casts of everyday objects, some blown up to outrageous proportions, which had been stood on and punched, literally showing how worn down these various implements had become. The type of work you want to have in your white cube house displayed on a wall; not a completely bad thing.

I also went to the Jewish Museum, an interesting experience, if only for the incredible building. The two rooms that fascinated me the most were the Holocaust Tower and the Memory Void. Both rooms contain huge empty expanses of space, with the tower being a cold, silent experience; a space to reflect and the void being the location of Menashe Kadishman’s installation Fallen leaves. This was quite an incredible moment for me, when I found myself walking on 10,000 steel faces, looking up at me with a fixed, moaning expression, whilst I stood over them. A really distressing and violently beautiful moment that I won’t forget for a while…

I also visited the Medical Museum, which was a bit like visiting the Hunterian Museum in London, when it still had tiny deformed babies bottled in jars on their shelves back in 2005. It was a very weird experience, as it always is, to look at the various medical apparatus’ and distorted body parts.

The last exhibition that I went to was at the Kunsthalle gallery run by Deutsche Bank. They had a show on called Common Affairs, which was revisiting the ‘views’ award, with contemporary art from Poland. It was a bit weird, a bit like going back in time ten years or so, with the exception of one work by Rafał Jakubowicz where he had chipped away at the paint of the gallery wall, creating the Deutsche Bank logo, that he then proceeded to paint over. The work was made up of a series of images of the installation, which considered the questionable activities of the bank. A ‘diamond in the rough’.

I think that’s it for Berlin, an incredibly satisfying first visit to the city. It’s like a more condensed, friendlier version of London that you can easily bike around, if only I could speak German… Apart from Berlin, the last two weeks have been taken up by film watching and television consuming, as well as continuing to hack away at the Witcher 3, unravelling the incredibly detailed quests whilst getting a little too attached to various characters.

So, films. I finally got to watch Ratchet & Clank, which was unsurprisingly incredibly dull. I think it’s one of those things that I should never have watched and just kept it in my mind as this utopian ideal. As someone who loved the game series as a child, it was just disappointing to return to as an adult.

Bernie was a fairly ‘run of the mill’ experience, watched purely to indulge in more of Richard Linklater’s back catalogue. It was fine, overly long and predictable. Nothing more, nothing less.

I finally watched Rain Man, a very good film, a very sad film. One with a surprisingly ambiguous ending that made me stop and consider for a moment whether Tom Cruise’s character was actually a good guy or not. When Tom Cruise is good, he is very good, minus the whole scientology thing. On a side note, I’m eagerly awaiting Louis Theroux’s My Scientology Movie, which will hopefully be vaguely eye opening.

The Help was another film that I managed to cross off my list. These kinds of films are always very depressing and make me feel quite uncomfortable, for good reason obviously. Good acting, an interesting story that had instances of humour interspersed between the vial ‘casual’ racism.

Now, Training Day. Why haven’t I seen this before? Denzel Washington being a huge badass, alongside Ethan Hawke attempting to do the right thing. Denzel is very good in so many things, most of the time you can’t go wrong. A favourite of mine is Man On Fire, think John Wick but not as slick.

I did watch Money Monster, which was acceptable. You can’t really say no to George Clooney, especially when he’s dancing around with a hat talking about stock markets. The only vaguely clever part of the whole film is that, when everything is over, everyone watching the events unfold on the tv immediately go back to what they were doing before, as if it never happened. Quite an obvious, but still clever, observation of human life in this social media obsessed world by Jodie Foster.

The Brand New Testament was quite an impressive thing, a film that envisions that God is alive and living in Brussels. A God that has created all the accidents and all the annoyances in the world. It’s a very crazed, very flawed film, but definitely worth a watch. The focus is on the daughter of God, who goes on a journey to gather six more apostles, making 18 in total, the number of people in a baseball team (her mother’s favourite sport to watch). She proceeds to take you on a journey through these people’s lives, considering death and the value of living.

Watching Miami Vice was a mistake, a film that was way too obsessed with its soundtrack than its weak plot and even weaker camera movement. I expected a little more, I don’t really know why I did considering I didn’t like Blackhat.

Astro Boy was pretty basic, a fun kids film that ‘doesn’t hold a candle’ to the likes of Frozen, Zootopia or any other high quality kids animations.

Tallulah was a pretty smart story about a young woman who inadvertently kidnaps a toddler. The premise is a little silly, although I’ve never had a child of my own so I find it a little hard to empathise with the various situations that play out throughout the film.

An absolutely mental film that everyone should watch was Wild Tales. Six short stories that focus on the extremities of human behaviour, each one a little cleverer than the last, each one ending in dire consequences. Just watch the trailer to gain a little taste of what’s in store, highly recommended.

I think that may be it for films, not as many as I’d hoped to get through, but still fairly acceptable. In terms of tv, I’ve been dipping into various shows in an attempt to find something enticing to watch. I started to watch The Get Down, but haven’t watched enough to actually give a proper opinion of it yet.

I also watched an episode of The Night Of. It started off a little slow for me, but I’m going to attempt to continue forwards. I just want something that draws me in, something that makes me want to keep watching until the early hours of the morning.

Oh a while ago I did watch Stranger Things, which I omitted from the other week’s post. Overall it was a solid show, but if you have any love of sci-fi, you can see what’s going to happen at least two episodes before it actually happens. The whole thing just felt too obvious, too staged, too perfect. It needed to be grittier, less PG with a lot more death. Comparing anything to Twin Peaks is obviously wrong, but I wanted more Twin Peaks. It was fun to watch for the high production values and the solid soundtrack, but a program needs more than that to draw you in.

I think that might be it, it probably should be as this has been a huge post, close to my largest yet in 112 posts. So, next week, probably more films and hopefully some art creation. As usual really, going with the flow of things. I’m slowly starting to count down the days until I go back to London, which is in a month or so. The holidays do seem to have slowly flown by with a depressing pace, as they always do…

Enjoi.

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