Algorithmic Monuments

About

What the artists in this exhibition have in common is that they emphatically examine imagination as an instrument of liberation. They use technologies such as virtual reality and animation design to realize memories of the future. By recalling knowledge from the past and present, possible future scenarios are made artistically comprehensible and perceivable. A question is posed from different perspectives: How does the monumental change occur when it cannot be experienced in physical space?

Sondi considers home as a concept of memory, diasporic identity and relationships. The artist remembers her home in Cameroon in an immersive installation. Referring to local rituals in Cameroon, her avatar, which wears three different masks, accompanies visitors through her stories. Each mask leads through a process of remembering the lost home. The ceramics, objects of this past, are enlarged. They have changed and are no longer what they used to be. The artist invites us on a journey of healing, pain and radical acceptance.

Lia Perjovschi visualizes knowledge, reveals connections and opens up spaces for thought. Her mind maps are the result of years of archiving information - regardless of whether it was recorded in objects, texts or notes. Perjovschi's Knowledge Museum grows like a rhizome, multiplying, shedding and adding. The artist shares her experiences wholeheartedly and without demands - because solidarity is a horizontal process. Perjovschi's careful handling of materials and knowledge, her handwritten arrangements and her workshops are a practice of analogue knowledge exchange.

Sophia Bulgakova 's work illuminates perception and imagination. Interwoven projected writings touch each other and add a radiant, bright dimension to the gloomy gallery space. Visitors are invited to enter the space to break through the projections with their bodies and capture reflections. Visitors can move portable screens and contribute to the constant transformation of the space.

Tianzhuo Chen opens up the gallery into another world with his large-format photographic print and a video work. A world in which the caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) moves across a traffic circle in a mountainous location. Looking at these sculptural, gigantic creatures, a world without humans becomes imaginable. The fungus grows its fruiting body through the head of the caterpillars, slowly devouring them. In the gallery, the giant caterpillars seem both tangible and then again like protagonists of Chen's speculative fiction.

Together, the artists look towards the future and propose scenarios in the style of algorithmic speculative science fiction, envisioning a way of approaching history and knowledge in a technologically transformed future. How does the virtual change when it can be experienced in physical space?