Dead End Galaxies
Mar 10 - Apr 14, 2018
 

For the lack of better knowledge galaxies are infinite, endless spaces, which will always offer an ever so imaginary escapist niche, somewhere. Such magical spheres where Siri or Alexa are just poetically named starlets, where a ‘Hello Alexa’ remains unanswered, where there is silence beyond entrenching reason.

The longing to escape to such a non-defined, free space is as ancient as contemporary relevant. In times of seemingly endless reason, it remains the ultimate desire, yet ultimately results in a dead end. No form of contemporary escapism can any longer provide an idealized, naïve notion of a lost paradise. Escapism is at its end as it is en vouge. Parallelism or Internalism can provide relief yet, in the very end, it is the here and now.

Anyone who has thought about parallel universes will know that it is hard to figure out which one of them is ‘real’. The denominators of what we call ‘reality’ have become blurred, a new flexibility of ‘truth’ rules even over the galaxy we currently reside in. The ‘fake-news’ of the day is poking holes in the sensitive skin of our very own filter-bubbles and within the blink of an eye your day can vault you into the ‘upside-down’.

Maybe it is time to travel. Where could we go from here?

‘Introspection’ is the new long distance journey, as we slide through the endless feed of information and images that busy algorithms have chosen for our fingers to scroll through: A gentle touch, a ‘reaction’ of sorts – like staring into the abyss of binary code.

The afterimage of a world seen from outer space, the alienation of the self and ‘the other’ in a dense habitat we share with the digital creatures of our own making. Looking at the remainders of the world we produce and consume, light years filled with the human trace of artificial goods, it is time to enter the void.

The inscription of a seminal painting by the French artist Paul Gauguin reads “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” (P. Gauguin / 1897), a question still unaccounted for as of today. A promise has been made, and for the longest time it remains unfulfilled.

Dead End Galaxies is a single exhibition running parallel across two different cities connected via a time tunnel.

Opening: Sat, Mar 10
Dead End Galaxies at EXILE, Berlin
Artists: Angelika Loderer, Bitsy Knox, Christophe de Rohan Chabot, Core.Pan, Hanny Oldendorf, Nicholas Riis, Phillip Mueller, Real Madrid, and Studio Furthermore.

Opening: Sat, Mar 17
Dead End Galaxies at POLANSKY, Prague
Artists: Bitsy Knox, Christophe de Rohan Chabot, Erik Niedling, Jura Shust, Pakui Hardware, Patrick Panetta, Pauł Sochacki, Sarah Pichlkostner, and Sarah Schönfeld.

Dead End Galaxies is curated by Marlies Wirth, Curator for Digital Culture and Design at MAK Vienna, and Christian Siekmeier, EXILE.

Features
→Art Viewer