On Sunday I went to the last day of the show The Whole Earth in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. A fascinating topic, and definitely a lot of fascinating material to discover in the exhibition. Yet I was left with an ambivalent feeling about the presentation. It was more of a catalogue than an exhibition and there was a lot to read. So it was more about text than it was about art. No, actually, it was not even a catalogue. I think the experience of watching this exhibition is best described as surfing on the internet for hours and hours, reading wikipedia and going on youtube. It might be that this was really the aim of the curators, Anselm Franke and Diedrich Diederichsen, and then they did their job well. But it is questionable if it is an endeavor that is critical or if it just not repeating the state of our earthly beings right now, mimicking its own subject “The Whole Earth”. After hours of surfing, one link leading you to the next one, and discovering interesting stuff, and then getting info on wikipedia about it, and surfing some more - well, it leaves you exhausted. It is an activity one knows it would be better to avoid - it just takes up time and keeps you from living. To double it in “real life” - making an exhibition virtual yet occupying space... Still feeling ambivalent.
The Whole Earth. Or Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
On Sunday I went to the last day of the show The Whole Earth in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. A fascinating topic, and definitely a lot of fascinating material to discover in the exhibition. Yet I was left with an ambivalent feeling about the presentation. It was more of a catalogue than an exhibition and there was a lot to read. So it was more about text than it was about art. No, actually, it was not even a catalogue. I think the experience of watching this exhibition is best described as surfing on the internet for hours and hours, reading wikipedia and going on youtube. It might be that this was really the aim of the curators, Anselm Franke and Diedrich Diederichsen, and then they did their job well. But it is questionable if it is an endeavor that is critical or if it just not repeating the state of our earthly beings right now, mimicking its own subject “The Whole Earth”. After hours of surfing, one link leading you to the next one, and discovering interesting stuff, and then getting info on wikipedia about it, and surfing some more - well, it leaves you exhausted. It is an activity one knows it would be better to avoid - it just takes up time and keeps you from living. To double it in “real life” - making an exhibition virtual yet occupying space... Still feeling ambivalent.