Past Exhibitions as Digital Experiences
March 14, 2022–April 23, 2023
Showcasing of the exhibition across different European locations starts in March. Online booklet out now.
Digitality skews the linearity of time when a computer-generated simulation brings a past environment back to life. If past exhibitions, which are spatial manifestations of thought processes, are modeled digitally, history turns into a virtual experience.
In 2022, Matter, Non-Matter, Anti-Matter will showcase digital models of past exhibitions. After a test-run at Tallinn Art Hall (2021/22) it will be on view at Aalto University (Väre, March 14–27, 2022), at Helsinki Central Library Oodi (The Cube, April 20–25, 2022), G204 V2 Gallery (Väre, April 26–May 9, 2022), Design Museum Helsinki (May 17–22, 2022), Tirana Art Lab (June–August 2022), ZKM | Karlsruhe (Nov 26, 2022–April 23, 2023), and later at Centre Pompidou, Paris (Summer 2023).
The exhibition hails from a collaboration between the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and ZKM | Karlsruhe. Both have made it their task to examine the possibility of exhibition revival through experiential methods of digital and spatial modeling based on the case studies of Les Immatériaux (Centre Pompidou, 1985), and Iconoclash (ZKM | Karlsruhe, 2002). The chosen exhibitions are landmark shows of the past decades and are both complex thought experiments deployed through space that experimented with innovative forms of juxtapositions between scientific, technological, and artistic practices. Furthermore, they both propelled the possibility of the exhibition as a medium and an interface to a sharp level of reflection and creativity.
The online booklet accompanies the exhibition series and provides permanent access to its conceptual components as well as to the Augmented Reality iteration of the work Untitled Installation (Statue Dangling from a Crane), 2002, (communist monument, crane) by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, which had been part of Iconoclash. Further content included in the online booklet, such as video documentations of the events organized alongside the presentations—a conversation with Boris Groys and a panel discussion with the participation of Kristaps Ancāns, Laura Kuusk, Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, and Dr. Pia Tikka, moderated by Corina Apostol, for example—can also be accessed online.
The booklet is available now and can be found here.
Matter, Non-Matter, Anti-Matter came into being within the international, collaborative and practice-based research project entitled Beyond Matter, in which cultural heritage and contemporary art are taken to the verge of virtual reality.
Scientific and curatorial team: Corina Apostol, Philippe Bettinelli, Julie Champion, Adela Demetja, Lily Díaz-Kommonen, Felix Koberstein, Marcella Lista, Cvijeta Miljak, Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás.
Display design: Commonplace Studio
Graphic design: AKU.CO
