Andreas DUSCHA | Geplante Obsoleszenz I

About

In the first part of the exhibition, the artist exhibits electron microscope images of seven minerals that have formed solely through the ecological interaction of humans and the environment. Taken with a 35 mm camera, Duscha has deliberately evoked the formation of granularity to the point where one ultimately exceeds one millimeter in size. The grain is thereby a tribute to analogue, "outdated" photographic techniques characteristic of the artist: Technically impossible to simulate digitally, it can only be imitated post-processually through algorithmic filters.

Such constraints of digital, computerized systems are also apparent in the second section, dedicated to the interplay of individuals and systemic monitoring. Graphic patterns etched into mirrors on both sides of the room echo the geometrically abstracted visual strategy of CV Dazzle. Originating in New York, 'anti-facing' through hair and make-up has globally grown in popularity as a means of escaping facial recognition through computer vision. Human faces are thus rendered into a dualistic perceptive status: visible to other people, invisible to machines. This camouflaging is a process of analogization, a metamorphosis towards digital fictivity.

The last part of the exhibition tells chiastic tales of ephemerality, humbling human limitation and the triumphs of divergent thinking. Upon entering the third room, seven reproductions of superimposed postcards of defunct buildings that were considered the most outstanding architectural developments when they were constructed, now ghostly showing the transience of their sublime grandeur. Juxtaposed with these past greats are four cyanotypes that reveal the persistent quest to overcome the boundaries of human capability: Technical construction drawings of perpetual motion machines show the unsuccessful attempts for millennia to - in defiance of the laws of physics - supply energy by itself. A human concept doomed to failure from its very genesis.

The reciprocal relationship of all these human mechanisms is further magnified by the exhibition's wall design. As walls not only create space, but also define it, it is significant that Andreas Duscha tints the last room in the palette of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. He thus creates a museal sphere of the Anthropocene, of the slyness and incision of mankind, of the existing, the gone, and what is yet to come. In short: Humanity's efforts to prolong its own planned obsolescence.
Text: Teresa Kamencek, Vienna, 2023

Presentation of the monography by Andreas Duscha FACADE LANGUAGE TIME TRANSLATION (Verlag Moderne Kunst, 226 pages, softcover, edition of 400, 2023) during the opening of the exhibition.