03. 04. 2015- 10. 05. 2015
FUTURA
Exhibiting artists: Aleš Čermák (CZ), Barbora Kleinhamplová (CZ), Deanna Havas (USA), Irina Lotarevich (USA), Martin Kohout (CZ/DE), Micah Hesse (USA), Peter Friel (USA), Puppies Puppies (USA), PWR Studio (Rasmus Svensson & Hanna Nilsson) (D/SWE), Richard Nikl (CZ), Sara Magenheimer (USA), Vojtěch Fröhlich (CZ)
Curator: Jan Brož
Text: Jan Zálešák
Described by artist turned curator Jan Brož as a collection of his “favourite things,” Telepathy or Esperanto, currently on at Futura, ultimately runs a lot deeper than its playful exterior. Welcoming visitors to the exhibition, Vojtěch Fröhlich’s piece Postmix is a deconstructed soda pop machine. This lively installation weaves its way through the entirety of the exhibition, the transparent tubes bouncing and jostling as they are infused with fizzy liquid (available to guests at intervals throughout the show). Instant gratification, throwaway culture, this piece speaks to a variety of societal issues that are picked up to greater degrees throughout the show.
The subtle, yet constant preoccupations of this exhibition are the implications of globalization, greed, and their facilitation by our computer controlled society. As Jan Zálešák outlines in his accompanying text, what caused the financial crisis of such magnitude in 2008 was not simply the greed of bankers and the speculative character of modern markets, in which portfolio managers behave as though they were playing poker. It was also the super-fast computers, on whose calculating capacity the financial world now stands and falls.
Computers controlled by programs, the first versions of which (programs controlling mechanical looms) appeared at the end of the 19th century, i.e. at the same time as Zamenhof was designing his universal language and Meyers was connecting telepathy with the deep unconscious. Programs and programming languages entering instructions on the Man–machine interface were invented at the same time as Esperanto and telepathy, and though at first sight their abstractness would seem to set them apart, in fact they have a lot in common.
Like Esperanto, programming languages seem free of any a priori ideological content. From the moment it was created Esperanto had to come to terms with the competition represented by existing languages, which in the 19th century formed the cement binding together the nation states being constructed and helping to maintain colonial order. Programming languages have no such competition. They can be filled with any content, adapted to suit any purpose. These became the “genuine Esperanto”, and bear the brunt of the responsibility for the fact that we live in a globalized world, even though for most of us the operations of these programming languages are as mysterious as paranormal phenomena.
With the development of the internet and the capacity of computer networks approaching the dystopian vision of popular science fiction, one wonders at what point people will sit up and start worrying. And yet- as Zálešák points out, everyone is calm. Connected to social networks and microblogs they work on their profiles, on their virtual personas, whose symbolic capital, with a little luck, they dispose of even in the real world.
Video by New York based artist Micha Hesse addresses this issue directly, whereas the paper installations by Peter Friel and the material based works by Irina Lotarevich explore the theme more subtlety. Ultimately, it seems to me that Telepathy or Esperanto is an exhibition that wishes to convey a message. Despite the playful element, it is in fact a lot more instructive than many contemporary art exhibitions. Is this a message viewers are eager/ willing to process? It is hard to say. Intrinsic to message or narratively structured shows is an element of poignancy that can be problematic. There is always a risk that the actual contents of the message will be unintelligible, or worse, banal. In this case, if the viewer is able to overcome the initial uncanniness they encounter, they will understand that it directly corresponds to what is concealed in the heart of this exhibition, namely excess. Excess and desire and a need for exterior validation. The exhibition ultimately asks the viewer to engage in a process of turning in, eventually asking themselves how this need for confirmation, in many ways, dictates their lives.
artnyni 