Unblackboxing —
Artistic investigations into digital realms of exploitation and control
Exhibition opening at the Einstein Center Digital Future, Berlin
Please register by email with Friedrich Schmidgall at
friedrich.schmidgall@nulltu-berlin.de
For the first time the Einstein Center Digital Future has invited artistic projects that investigate the conditions of digital societies, providing a space for critical reflection through aesthetic interventions.
Digital infrastructures, devices, and practices are so engrained into our daily lives that it becomes increasingly difficult to take a step back and to understand their impact on the world we live in. It is precisely in its capacity to disrupt norms and habits by uncovering underlying power structures and the imbalances they entail where artistic practice comes in. The capacity of digital technologies to connect the world and provide an abundance of information is well known. But the complexities of exploitation and control that have evolved alongside those technologies are, for most people interacting with them, hard to fathom. This exhibition has gathered artistic projects that investigate such ‘black boxes’ of digital societies. Based on extensive research into the operating principles of opaque applications, apparatuses, and infrastructures, they make tangible the social and ecological implications of digital technologies for the world we (want to) inhabit.
Contributing artists and activists are Kim Albrecht, Sarah Grant, Adam Harvey, Joana Moll, Julian Oliver, Juan Pablo García Sossa, Danja Vasiliev, and Hana Yoo. The exhibition is curated by Daniel Irrgang (University of Copenhagen) and organized in collaboration with Friedrich Schmidgall and Gesche Joost (Einstein Center Digital Future). The opening event will be accompanied by the presentation of “Weak Signals”, a publication project by Lukas Freireiss and Florian Hadler. Resonating with the exhibition themes, the book examines the nexus between the arts, science, and technology as a source of shifting paradigms.
Unblackboxing. Artistic investigations into digital realms of exploitation and control
Einstein Center Digital Future
Wilhelmstraße 67, 10117 Berlin
Opening: October 13, 2023, 5 – 8 p.m.
