Franz Reimer & Julian Öffler

STUDIO

02 - 11 February 2018

CURATED BY CLEMENS WILHELM

In the original meaning of the word, "STUDIO" is "zeal, labor & effort". For this show, the media artists Franz Reimer and Julian Öffler transform HilbertRaum into studios 1, 2 and 3. They build a multimedia lab installation as an analogue-virtual media-art-stage-world. Does art still have something to add to the hyperreal flow of images? In this laboratory, the production process of the artistic and the media image meet. When preparing the show, the artists described this experiment like this:

"It's about a talk show as a work of art. It is about unfulfillable expectations towards art. It's about the virtual pain threshold. Terrific failure is possible. And it will cost nerves. Humor is included. We want content, content, content!" Franz Reimer's ARTIST'S TALK SHOW is participatory: you are invited onto the stage of a talk show. You are asked to cover your face with a green mask which is a copy of the artist Franz Reimer's face. You are free to speak your mind without any restraints and restrictions. What happens if this radical democratic freedom is really used? Reimer says: "Use any word that's needed, express any idea that is forbidden, or incorrect by any means. Let us hear the unspeakable, the unthinkable! I am offering you a public space that is protected by artistic freedom. Put on the mask, become the artist, and enter the stage with a free heart, and a free mind, and hold a free speech. Go public!

This poses a radical question: is political correctness turning undemocratic? Do you have the right to make incorrect statements under the right to free speech? Aren't the proclaimers of free speech often the most undemocratic people? Do they grant free speech to their opponents? Surely we should not stop to talk to each other. Which leads to an even more uncomfortable question: Isn't the essence of tolerance to let "the other" be how they are instead of asking "the other" to become like you? Isn't it a democratic imperative to tolerate the opposite opinion? If political correctness does not lead to conversations but stops conversations from happening, will it not produce its opposite?: Trump, Brexit, Pegida, AfD etc.

In STATE OF THE ART, Julian Öffler presents one of the crucial dilemmas of art production: with every new work you always produce a new stream of images, which seem to be grounded on more images, never on anything more substantial and real. The closer you try to get to reality, the more desperate it all becomes. In constant self-experimentation, Öffler reflects upon the unattainable expectations placed on art, and on himself as an artist, to talk about reality in images - and he exposes himself and pushes the viewer to a pain threshold which is always close to irony and humor.

In STATE OF THE ART, we follow a striving but failing actor, who is body-painted into a Piet Mondrian painting, and his struggling but failing director in their joint attempt to produce a media artwork in a sewage canal close to Alicante. With cleverly staged naivety, Öffler feeds his work with countless meta levels of visual references, powerful statements, and surreal forays into video clips, online searches and Google search results, only to enervate us with pleasure and to prove our expectations futile, over and over again. In the end, Öffler chants a mantra in the role of the director:
"We want content, content, content, useful content!"

+ SCREENING:

TRANSHUMAN TENDENCIES:

Special Screening with works by John Butler, Ann Oren & Stefan Panhans,

presented by Clemens Wilhelm

Friday, February 9, 2018

PROGRAM REFUSNIK by John Butler, 2014, 18 min
FREEROAM Á REBOURS, Mod#I.1 by Stefan Panhans, 2016, 16 min
THE WORLD IS OURS by Ann Oren, 2017, 39 min

Transhumanism is no longer science-fiction. The key areas of transhumanist thought are: super-longevity, super-intelligence and super-wellbeing. We are already transhuman: we are living decades longer, integrating more with technology, and emphasizing quality of life. We are in the process of redesigning what it is to be human, nothing more, nothing less.