89plus: Americans 2017

The LUMA Foundation is pleased to announce the third 89plus exhibition Americans 2017 at the LUMA Westbau exhibition space in Zurich. The exhibition is co-curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist for 89plus.

Americans 2017 is a group exhibition showcasing new productions by 19 key artists and groups from around the globe. Stemming from the concept of algorithmic citizenship introduced by artist James Bridle’s Citizen Ex project, this group exhibition gives center stage to the work of artists from countries as varied as Ghana, Kuwait, China, Lebanon, Austria and South Africa, all the while reflecting the influence of US-based “computerized processes” over information, aspirations and concerns.

Featuring works by:
Ab6al (Sarah Abu Abdallah, Abdullah Al-Mutairi and Majid Al-Remaihi); Darja Bajagić; Anna-Sophie Berger; Andrea Crespo; Valia Fetisov; Aslan Gaisumov; Nikima Jagudajev; Jessika Khazrik; Yoan Mudry; NTU (Tabita Rezaire and Bogosi Sekhukhuni); Walter Price; Nik Rawlings; Bunny Rogers; Jasper Spicero; Elisabeth Efua Sutherland; Ye Wang; Shen Xin; Urban Zellweger and Tim Haesler; and Zou Zhao.

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee explains that he originally “imagined the web as an open platform that would allow everyone, everywhere to share information, access opportunities, and collaborate across geographic and cultural boundaries.” Positing an international perspective, Americans 2017 echoes the internet’s original universalist promise of alternatives to jus soli and jus sanguinis citizenship, all the while examining the enduring sway of the United States over the World Wide Web at a time when its government is veering toward discrimination and isolationism.

Definitions of citizenship are obscured in an increasingly globalized world, in which ties between civic engagement and geography are progressively loosened. Citizenship might be best understood as an evolving concept relating to freedom, politics, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the individual. Political scientist Nikita Dhawan explains that our understanding of basic human rights is informed by liberal norms handed down from the Enlightenment. Discussing Kant’s idea of “world citizens” having the right to free movement, she argues, “One can hardly imagine a right that has been so extensively violated as the right to mobility.”

Americans 2017 is a nod to the mid-century seminal Americans exhibition series at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition follows the format championed by Dorothy Miller—who curated six of the Americans shows—and offers each artist an individual space, the dimensions of which are determined by the body of work on display. Regarding nationality, Americans 2017 aims to reconsider the notion of citizenship in light of its disruption by digital practices.

Americans 2017 marks the third exhibition in the collaboration between 89plus and the LUMA Foundation. It follows the exhibition Poetry Will Be Made by All! (2014), which explored the emergent poetics of online distribution systems and continued through the publishing project 1000 Books by 1000 Poets as well as a focused participation in Moderna Museet’s After Babel (2015) in Stockholm. 89plus’s second exhibition with LUMA, Filter Bubble (2015–16) explored the way Internet users are increasingly directed to a personalized information landscape through an algorithmic editing of web content. 89plus and LUMA produced a digital and print-on-demand publication in conjunction with the exhibition.

About the LUMA Foundation
The LUMA Foundation was established by Maja Hoffmann in 2004 in Switzerland to support the activities of artists, independent pioneers, and organizations working in the visual arts, photography, publishing, documentary filmmaking, and multimedia. The foundation produces, supports, and enables challenging art projects committed to an expansive understanding of environmental issues, human rights, education, and culture. 

About 89plus
89plus is a long-term, international, multi-platform research project co-founded by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the generation of innovators born in or after 1989. Without forecasting artistic trends or predicting future creation, 89plus manifests itself through panels, books, periodicals, exhibitions and residencies, bringing together individuals from a generation whose voices are only starting to be heard, yet which accounts for more than half of the world’s population. Since its launch, 89plus has worked with hundreds of artists and organized over 30 projects in more than 20 countries.