Alexander Iskin: www.arturbating.com

About

In May 2020 the Goslarer Mönchehaus Museum will hon- or the works by Alexander Iskin on the occasion of his 30th birthday in the solo exhibition „Die Ursache liegt in der Zukunft“. Prior to this exhibition, the artist will do the performance www.arturbating.com in the exhibition hall of SEXAUER, where he will prepare his first museum ex- hibition. Its “last state” will be shown as a central work in the museum.

From the day after the opening, Iskin will expose him- self to live internet transmission for about two months. After the opening, the hall will be closed to the public and converted into a studio. Access will only be granted to people who bring Iskin food or drink and to muses select- ed by Iskin. These can be people, animals or even plants. These visitors have the opportunity to participate in the creation of the works. Interested parties can watch the performance in virtual space via the website www.artur- bating.com. At the opening, visitors can thus experience the gallery space as a white cube for the last time person- ally and physically before it becomes a studio in virtual space.

Since leaving the social media in April 2017 during a performance in which he destroyed his computer, Iskin has been recording his impressions and ideas in drawings in his “analogue Instagram Account”. During the perfor- mance Iskin will use this analog “Instagram Account” as a starting point for artistic transformations. Paradoxically, one can only observe this thoroughly analog activity in virtuality - i.e. on the Internet. Every day, in addition to the visit opportunities, Iskin will offer two hours of the “Opened Studio” chat function to give viewers the oppor- tunity to exchange ideas about the exhibition process and thus to influence it.

In this “exhibition preparation performance” the idea of a finished exhibition gives way to the production pro- cess. A reference to the work of Joseph Beuys can be seen in this experiment such as as in the involvement of the audience and visitors. The interweaving of the digital sphere with the haptic world occurs symbolically through the gift of food by visitors.

Furthermore, the performance refers to the phenom- enon of presenting and commercializing oneself in social networks. Iskin is convinced that this goes hand in hand with a loss of empathy, naturalness and authenticity. The presentation in the Mönchehaus Museum then transfers the art back into an analogous medium, in which it be- comes directly accessible to the viewer.

Statement of an Interrealist

My aim is to investigate the digitalized, the being and the post-digital being. For this purpose I create a sphere of interrealism in a museum-like space-time. In this sphere flooded with interrealistic forces, my art-creating body as an avatar will gain new insights into the effects of interre- alistic formations. This premiere of the first interrealist exhibition is never final. It would not correspond to the interrealistic habitus. In line with Walter Benjamin, the pictorial succession (30 frames per second) of an infinite processuality of change will reveal itself to the observer as an instrument of reflection. The aim is to give everyone the opportunity, provided they have stable W-LAN or a functioning mobile network [from 3G], to participate in every state of an exhibition of interrealistic forces. Each image of these 30 frames per second could, in its equiva- lence, function as an installation view of an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery or the Centre Pompidou.

The total is the ephemeral in the world of interrealism. The unsteady experiences the sovereignty of interpreta- tion. In an interrealist art practice, every human being is an interrealist and has the opportunity to contribute hap- tically to the first interrealist exhibition www.arturbating. com through a life-sustaining, social gift in the form of food. This is in keeping with Joseph Beuys’ expanded con- cept of art.

In his book “The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution”, Frank White describes from the perspective of astronauts the changing cloud formations and the associated fleetingness of each moment as an “Overview Effect”. Seen from above, the Earth appears as a boundless, self-contained sphere in the middle of the universe. For the natural philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff, people and the universe are sculptures of the soul. Every soul of a living being is a microcosmic analogy to the world soul. The dance between polydimensions directs the re-cipient’s gaze to the trans-worldliness of human exist- ence.