highlike

Maurizio Bolognini

SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime

CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines

“In 2000, I began to connect some of these computers to the mobile phone network (SMSMS-SMS Mediated Sublime, and CIMs-Collective Intelligence Machines). This enabled me to make interactive and multiple installations, connecting various locations.
In this case the flow of images was made visible by large-scale video-projections and the members of the audience were able to modify their characteristics in real time, by sending new inputs to the system from their own phones. This was done in a similar way to certain applications used in electronic democracy. What I had in mind was art which was generative, interactive and public.”

ANDREI MOLODKIN

CRUDE

Crude oil, in all of its manifestations as energy, petroleum, natural gas, plastics, medicine, asphalt, fertilizers, and pesticides, is the principle industrial commodity and the world’s most valuable natural resource. An ancient substance, crude oil is continuously reborn in its applications and implementations. Molodkin’s incorporation of crude oil into his works provokes an open dialogue on how culture and geopolitical systems are influenced by oil. In one of his constructions, Molodkin analyzes the concept of democracy through the universal vernacular of oil.

julius von bismarck

Freedom Table & Democracy Chair
Suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space, a blue office chair and a simple table each swing in a circular orbit. At times the movement of table and chair is closely aligned, at other times out of sync. Moving in a rhythm of dance-like accompaniment, the two objects seem to have attained weightless freedom.
The table and chair originate from the gallery. Computer-operated motors determine their precise circular paths, which have marginally deferred frequencies.

Maud de Le Pladec

DEMOCRACY
Compagnie LEDA

“I’ve wanted to work on the drum quartet “Dark Full Ride” by Julia Wolfe for a long time. There is something quite revolutionary in the energy of this piece. Julia Wolfe uses the instrumentation of processions, meetings and political demonstrations. I work on democracy, not democracy reduced its political framework definition […] but ‘insurgent’ democracy that strives for the dissolution of certainty and the claim to equality as civil resistance. Work is nourished by ideas like the test of determination or the idea of a problematizing community, which I call the ‘all-one.’ Also, how does an individual decision open the possibility to collective action? What do we strive for, or against? Who do we give our consent to? Must we disobey democracy? How do we build a controversialist community? Does resistance to power define the democratic experience? What is a savage democracy? … ” Maud Le Pladec

ANDREI MOLODKIN

АНДРЕЯ МОЛОДКИНА
Democracy

Democracy, is a mirror reflecting the commodification of the democratic ideal. Empire at War, Molodkin’s portrait of an evangelistic George W. Bush, embodies the danger of theocracy – patriotism, nationalism, and religion are used to justify the most horrifying war crimes. Like a prismatic chessboard, Molodkin’s artworks articulate the contradictions between utopian ideals and reality.