p0es1s – Postdigital show at Kunsttempel (Kassel)

Title

p0es1s – Postdigital show at Kunsttempel (Kassel)

Author

Date

September 27th, 2017

C.O.P.Y by Martin Wecke

As part of a series of language art exhibitions in 2017, the year of documenta 14 (kasselkultur2017.de), Kunsttempel, Kassel, is hosting “p0es1s – postdigital” in partnership with the PublishingLab (Amsterdam). The international exhibition features artists from eight countries who present 16 current positions of language art in a rendition of the Post-Digital Publishing Archive. Following the opening, there will be a closed artists’ round table as well as a performance open to the public with contributions by Mara Genschel, Jörg Piringer and Rui Torres on Sep 14, at 7 p.m.

The exhibition curated by Friedrich W. Block is part of the “p0es1s” project which has organized exhibitions and research projects since 1992. The exhibition in the Kunsttempel focuses on current positions of language art labeled ‘post-digital’ (“a term that sucks but is useful” – Florian Cramer):

forms which reflect language processes under conditions of computer technology and culture, using all kinds of media technologies;
forms which enact the turn from digital to analog realizations such as poster prints, typewriter sheets, (artist) books, or poetry film, while emphasizing the switch between electronic and physical spaces and the cooperation of human and artificial agents;
forms of conceptual or ‘uncreative’ writing which often analyze and transform existing text material via computer algorithms; publication becomes artistic production and vice versa: Using innovative concepts, poetic language art puts a new perspective on the much-cited crisis of publication.

The Post-Digital Publishing Archive, curated by Italian media artist and researcher Silvio Lorusso, is transferred from the Internet to the physical space of the Kunsttempel gallery. Book and text objects documented in the online archive are displayed for the first time; the archive itself is present. At the same time, artists not yet represented in the archive were invited to contribute new language art projects to both the exhibition and the digital archive.

(All photos are by Leslie P. Zimmermann)