RISE OF GIANTS - Banz and Bowinkel - PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

RISE OF GIANTS

Artists: Banz & Bowinkel

Curator: Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

Opening: Thursday, November 25, 2021, 6 - 8 pm CET

Here at PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

Accompanying Program:
InstaLive Artist Talk: Dec 2, 2021, 6 pm CET
Virtual Happy Hour Drop Party, Jan 20, 2022, 6-8 pm CET
Soft Opening in Cologne at PRISKA PASQUER Gallery, Saturday, January 29, 12 - 6 pm

The invisible bots and algorithms which govern our online behavior and collect our data every day, adopt visual forms in the series Bots by the artist duo Banz & Bowinkel. They occupy the virtual world of the PRISKA PASQUER gallery as giant cyborgs. The island, transformed into an all-encompassing coordinate system, becomes a symbol for the Internet. As visitors, we find ourselves in the middle of an experimental field of algorithms.

The Internet is a training ground for artificial intelligence to study, evaluate, and learn to anticipate human behavior. In doing so, they make our lives easier as we use map apps, talk to Alexa, or when Siri sets our alarm clock. Their knowledge helps drive our connection to technology and keeps it running as frictionless as possible. In the 1990s, we deliberately dialed into the Internet using routers and now we are connected to the internet automatically. We still push buttons and give voice commands today, but tomorrow we will control our actions with eye movements, hand movements, or even brain waves. The blurring of the boundary between humans and technology results in our gradual transformation into a technological giant. The visitors as cyborgs in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery also attain formidable sizes. The gallery lies at their feet like Lilliput, the fictional island in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels.

Banz and Bowinkel's series Primitives also addresses the issue of scale in virtual reality. Primitives are simple basic graphical forms that are used as a foundation for the creation of more complex structures. Triangles, polygons or point clouds are important primitive forms for digital 3D objects. These shapes have no size and are arbitrarily scalable without loss of quality, since their existence is defined by the relationship of the individual parts to each other. Size is relative here as well, just like in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery. Banz and Bowinkel's Primitives play with the various proportions of size that exist in the gallery space. 

With a virtual reality headset, we have the opportunity to experience what is denied to us on the computer screen. We dive into the dimensions of virtual space and experience a new perspective. With ease, we fly over the miniature version of the virtual gallery and explore the gigantic bots and primitives. The exact size of our own avatars is unclear. However, thanks to an increasingly frictionless connection with technology, we too grow into cyborg giants with extraordinary powers.

peer to space launches Virtual Art Space with inaugural show (Im)Material Matter

With its Virtual Art Space, peer to space further develops the concept of their previous online exhibitions. In the virtual exhibition space on the open source platform Mozilla Hubs. With the Virtual Art Space, peer to space establishes a new presentation format beyond the white cube to fully embrace the potential of the virtual realm independent from physical limitations. The open and dynamic structure of the floating islands allows to explore and engage with new forms of digital curating.

Spatial Design by Mohsen Hazrati

(IM)MATERIAL MATTER

Curated by Peggy Schoenegge

With works by Banz & Bowinkel, Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick), Mohsen Hazrati, Armin Keplinger, Nadine Kolodziey, Lauren Moffatt, Chiara Passa, Sabrina Ratté, Dagmar Schürrer

 Opening & Launch: Oct 28, 2021, 7 pm (CET)

Link: hubs.mozilla.com/owtpwaD/im-material-matter

(Im)Material Matter is dedicated to digital sculptures, their material and matter. The works highlight the potential of sculptural artworks in the virtual realm. Beyond the restrictions of physicality, sculptures take on new shapes and forms. The sculptural works float in the exhibition space. They do not need a bottom or plinth to stand on. This positioning makes them perceptible and accessible from every conceivable viewpoint, even from below and above. Their size can be freely determined. The 3D shapes of the sculptures are not static, but dynamic. Some consist of several parts moving freely in space. How the works are installed in the virtual art space would not be possible in the physical and creates a new approach to sculptures. As a result, they shift the parameters of the traditional definition of sculpture by deconstructing its solid matter. The constitution of the space, the textures of the void as well as the shape of the sculptures simulate materiality. Their surfaces are reminiscent of physical material like metal, plastic, or clay. They hyper realistically allude to tangible materials. In the exhibition, the sculptures become permeable. Visitors can pass through and enter the inner sphere of the artwork. The dissolution of physical boundaries once again reveals the distinctive conditions of the virtual. The works oscillate between the material and immaterial, defining a matter of virtual materiality.

With kind support by Stiftung Kunstfonds | NEUSTART KULTUR

PARADOXICAL OBJECTS - Video Sculpture Art From 1968 To Today

Curated by Sue Bachmeier and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Web design by Camilla Murgia

Release date: September 24, 2021, 9 am CET

With works by Matej Al-Ali & Tomáš Moravec, William Anastasi, Emmanuel van der Auwera, Benton C Bainbridge, Frank Balve, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Kelsey S Brewer, Amy Cannestra, Yvon Chabrowski, James H. Connolly, Kevin Cooley, D’arcy Darilmaz, Manja Ebert, Daniel Everett, Exonemo, Stefano Fake, Ornella Fieres, Carla Gannis, James Alec Hardy, Claudia Hart, Faith Holland, Annebarbe Kau, Philipp Madörin, Marck, Alex May, Martina Menegon, Sali Muller, Juan Obando, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Monica Panzarino, Taezoo Park, Björn Perborg, René Radomsky, Allison Maria Rodriguez, Ulrike Rosenbach, Nicolas Sassoon, Ira Schneider, Sid and Geri, Ivonne Thein, Joan Truckenbrod, Maria Vedder, Andy Vible, Wolf Vostell, Peter Welz, Xuan Ye

PARADOXICAL OBJECTS - Video Sculpture Art From 1968 To Today

Peer to space’s exhibition PARADOXICAL OBJECTS is dedicated to this special construct that combines video and sculpture, embracing the temporality and dynamic of video and the static nature of the screen. Fourty-six time-based works by international artists from 1969 to today highlights the technological development and variety of artistic uses of video sculptures over the last decades. Whether closed-circuit, single or multi-channel, screens create a physical entity to display of moving images. The exhibition’s artists explore the possibilities and conditions of this disparate unity.

Full exhibition text and exhibition at: paradoxical-objects.net

ONE TO ONE #4 - We Are All Under The Same Sky

We Are All Under the Same Sky

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer (artist)

Mara-Johanna Kölmel (curator) 

GRAND OPENING Friday, 14th of May, 2021 from 7 to 9 PM CEST

PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

hubs.mozilla.com/2ZBNWda/PRISKA_PASQUER_VIRTUAL_GALLERY/

We Are All Under the Same Sky questions the significance of the body in our technological present by addressing both our physical and virtual realities within networked, globalized, and data-driven worlds. How are we still connected to each other regardless of our physical locations? What do these different kinds of connections involve? How do such connections maintain traditional power relations or give them new forms? 

Gabriella Torres-Ferrer's transmedial practice strives to break down hegemonic narratives by challenging interfaces, modes of spectatorship, and materialities. By connecting references to net culture, neocolonial landscapes, ecologies, and globalization, their work seeks out the potential for the respective transformations of these phenomena. This artistic approach can be experienced sensually in the exhibition space, which has transported the Priska Pasquer Gallery onto a cloud. As crucial element of digital infrastructures, the cloud is an important concept for the artist and curator. It therefore becomes the central visual metaphor of the exhibition, through which power relations inscribed in the digital sphere are explored.

The show thus becomes a plea for alternative infrastructures to expose and counter oppressive regimes. Gabriella Torres-Ferrer’s solo show, curated by Mara-Johanna Kölmel, reminds us that we all live under the same sky. In doing so, the exhibition pleads for radical togetherness as an alternative to the feigned empathy implicit in our constant social connectedness.

We Are All Under the Same Sky is based on the title of one of Gabriella Torres-Ferrer’s works. The exhibition builds on the shared interests of the artist and the curator Mara-Johanna Kölmel, who met as fellows at Akademie Schloss Solitude. Mara-Johanna Kölmel’s curatorial projects regularly unite international scholars, curators, activists and practitioners to explore the digital sphere as a site for methodological experimentation, social activism and artistic intervention. Gabriella Torres-Ferrer considers the implications of existence within networked globalized life and explores their interest in the societal transformations of modern cybernetics. In essence, their works examine how our digital reality redefines nature. 

More information: Priskapasquer.art

SHOW ME YOUR SHEROES - curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz

Zohar Fraiman, Allegory of Love, 125 x 135 cm, oil on canvas, 2021

SHOW ME YOUR SHEROES

Artist: Zohar Fraiman

Curator: Gloria Aino Grzywatz

ONE TO ONE exhibition series

PRISKA PASQUER Virtual Gallery Space

Opening April 15, 7 pm CET

Peer to space’s curator Gloria Aino Grzywatz curates the solo show SHOW ME YOUR SHEROES of the artist Zohar Fraiman. The exhibition takes place at PRISKA PASQUER’s virtual gallery space as a part of the ONE TO ONE exhibition series from April 15 to May 13, 2021, followed by a solo exhibition at the gallery’s premises in Cologne, Germany later this year.

The exhibition Show Me Your Sheroes creates a surreal, glowing world of color and form, establishing a dialogue with Zohar Fraiman's colorful works. Using humor, Fraiman questions the practice of internet-based self-staging and criticizes exaggerated and distorted ways of expressing both gender and the self within image-based networks and social platforms. In her works, the artist refers to animated films and TV series like those created by Disney like Snow White and Alice in Wonderland which show manufactured images of women. The works in this exhibition, as well as the exhibition title, is sparked by the Warren Buffet quote: „Tell me who your heroes are, and I'll tell you how you're going to turn out“. How do representations of femininity in digital space shape our understanding of gender? How can we free ourselves from stereotypical thought patterns?

Online Exhibition opens on April 15, 7 pm CET

>>> Enter the exhibition here <<<

Another Person In You – New Iteration of PARS PRO TOTO

Yarli Allison, In Virtual Return You (can't) Dehaunt 於虛擬的彼岸 魂(不)散, video, still, 2020

ANOTHER PERSON IN YOU 

Online from April 1 to June 30, 2021

Works by Meggy Rustamova, Yarli Allison, Nina Mangalanayagam

Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz

The fifth iteration of PARS PRO TOTO focuses on language as part of our identity. The stories of artists Meggy Rustamova, Yarli Allison, and Nina Mangalanayagam explore how the language we think and interact in influences the way we are. Just like the individual self of its speaker, each language has its own history and cultural origins. As such, it expresses particular cultures, both individually and collectively. Language as a crucial form of communication connects and divides us equally. It influences our specific perception of reality, provides information about our own identity and simultaneously shapes it. The exhibition title refers to the Czech adage Every language is a person in you. This saying reflects the influence of language on our self-perception and view of the world. Who am I when I think or speak in a certain language? Do I see the world differently depending on the language I speak?

peertospace.eu/parsprototo

Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by Mara-Johanna Koelmel

Online-Exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by peer to space Associate Director & Curator Mara-Johanna Koelmel for Akademie Schloss Solitude.

With Nora Al-Badri, Johanna Bruckner, Rasheedah Phillips (Black Quantum Futurism), Jan Nikolai Nelles, Miriam Simun, Natasha Tontey

On view: Technische Sammlungen Dresden and Online

The physical opening at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden will be set according to the Saxon Corona Protection Ordinance. Currently, the Technische Sammlungen Dresden are closed.

Online-Opening March 4th at 7 PM. More information here.

The online exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters brings together the works of six artists and former Akademie Schloss Solitude fellows. Their contributions question and critically engage with heteronormative worldviews around consciousness research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self-experience.

Like a networked mind, the show unfolds amid several nodes of access by expanding from its own online space to the show Mind Over Matter at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden. As such, the works explore the concerns of the exhibition curated by Netzwerk Medien Kunst Dresden from a speculative, feminist, and decolonial point of view.

In dialogue with Mind over Matter, the artistic interventions speak about mechanisms of power, exclusion, and oppression encoded into the very concepts underpinning digital technologies. Yet they equally mobilize the digital medium to propose alternative visions for shared futures that are not exclusively white or Western.

The artists of Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters probe the power of a collective intelligence that reaches from the enhanced to the monstrous, the ancestral to the futurist, the molecular to the planetary, and from the human to the non-human. With creativity and visionary fuel, they unlock the digital realm as a space that comes with response-ability – the ability to respond to its architectures of power and to think with, to care for those it chooses to forget, erase, and leave behind.

***

Online Space by parmon

Design by Stephan Thiel and Anne Lippert
Exhibition architecture by Atelier Adhoc Arhitectura (George Marinescu & Maria Daria Oancea)

The hybrid exhibition project Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters is part of the exhibition Mind over Matter of the Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden and takes place in cooperation with Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Supported by: The Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and the Ministry of Research, Science and the Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Cooperation partner: Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden of friendsofDresdenContemporaryArt e.V. (DCA) in cooperation with the  Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude

LIGHT SHINES THROUGH THE CURTAINS OF TIME

Ornella Fieres, Inverse Fourier 36, 2021 (c) the artist

>>> Enter the exhibition here <<<

On February 10, 2021, peer to space and PRISKA PASQUER kick off PRISKA PASQUER's new ONE TO ONE exhibition series in the new virtual gallery space on Mozilla Hubs with the exhibition LIGHT SHINES THROUGH THE CURTAINS OF TIME, solo exhibition by Ornella Fieres, curated by Tina Sauerlaender.

PRISKA PASQUER's virtual gallery space on Mozilla Hubs will be inaugurated with a new exhibition series called ONE TO ONE, that signifies that the artist and curator are meeting at eye level and developing an exhibition in a mutual exchange. For the kick-off of the ONE TO ONE series, peer to space and PRISKA PASQUER gallery cooperate. In the upcoming months, four curators from peer to space will each present one of four artists whose work addresses the impact of digitization on the individual and society. Curator Tina Sauerlaeender and artist Ornella Fieres will kick things off with the exhibition Light Shines Through The Curtains Of Time.

The title of the exhibition was borrowed from the video work I create paths that lead to the clouds in which we go (2020), in which an artificial intelligence creates a poetic-dystopian vision of the end times based on all the texts that have been written about Ornella Fieres' works to date. In the works of artist Ornella Fieres, new technologies meet analog found objects from times past. The artist instrumentalizes photographs from personal estates and archival material from scientific films for her own purposes. She is concerned with "transferring the past into the present and making the invisible processes of the digital visible." Her works show the world of yesterday, seen through the eyes of today's algorithms.

Exhibition on view from February 10 to March 9, 2021.

>>> Enter the exhibition here <<<

Mirror, Mirror – New Iteration of PARS PRO TOTO

Online from October 1 to December 31, 2020

Works by Jonas Blume, Patricia Detmering, Bianca Kennedy

Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz and Peggy Schoenegge

In Cooperation With medienkunst e.V. - Verein für zeitgenössische Kunst mit neuen Medien

The third iteration of PARS PRO TOTO explores how self can be constructed with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The artists Jonas Blume, Patricia Detmering and Bianca Kennedy offer AIs their private content or allow them to become an active agent of the artwork. They explore how AIs collect personal and convert data into another form of the artist’s identity. Their works blur fictional and factual personal data into a synthetic personality. Jonas Blume reconciles his own biography with Apple’s Siri, resulting in an uncanny yet seemingly personal narrative. Bianca Kennedy lets an intelligent computer proclaim its own thoughts and feelings about its environment and its users. In a personal soliloquy, Patricia Detmering philosophizes about the perception and dissolution of reality. The artworks in Mirror, Mirror consider the interaction between human and artificial intelligence. They question how today’s algorithms co-create and shape the identity of individuals. This process occurs every day as we are exposed to big data’s algorithms online. Our online identity seems to be a distorted mirror image existing independently from our real self, just like Snow White’s mirror becomes an independent-minded entity, shaping the actions of the person looking into it. What about our digital mirror image? Does it influence our self-perception and our actions?

peertospace.eu/parsprototo