CONTEMPORARY ART RUHR, MEDIA ART FAIR, 26 – 28 OCTOBER 2018
Directors Lounge presents
Leo Kuelbs Collection: Light Year 31: Identity 0.0
Identity 0.0 is a collaborative video and sound program exploring the changing meanings of “self” and “individuality.” Digital reality has allowed for enhanced communication, thus the possibility of easier integration, between individuals from cultures near and far. What was foreign is now only a keystroke away. Gender can be manipulated through science and philosophy, just as intentions for good or ill can be disguised easily through a variety of avatars and aliases. Nationalism and religious identities strain to remain powerful and effective versus the strong tides of this evolution of the self. All heading towards a further integration of humans (the terrestrial) and artificial intelligence, aka “The Singularity.”
Through this increasingly singular appendage, we continually manipulate our identities towards various audiences, as well as encapsulate our ever-changing notions of reality and our place within it. We “block”, we “add”, we “friend”, we “share”, we “filter,” all generating rapid snapshots of some form of our evolution. If one identity doesn’t fit, we are free to tear it down and build a new construct. And we can do it infinitely.
These individual patterns reveal how we wrestle with, and attempt to balance, our desires to be anonymous while simultaneously asserting some form of ourselves – our pasts, our views, our ideas of our future selves. Also, the differences and similarities between identity portrayal patterns of individuals reveal commonalities on multiple demographic levels.
Our own personal series of re-inventions is ironically what pushes us to demand privacy control against a seemingly limitless world of access into our digital histories. We crave unlimited exposure and reach, but want to have the ability to leave no trail to our past selves; so that we may never be interpreted in any other way than as we have deigned in the seemingly infinite moments.
Creators are asked to look back as they look into the future through the lens of the present and explore once important communal identities versus this shift into a more individualistic and digital reality; and how these shifts and their resulting patterns may manifest themselves in the creation and behavior of integrated societies of the foreseeable future.
Curation & concept by Leo Kuelbs with Aaron Riedel.
Featuring new work from: Radka Salcmannova + Alex Hamadey, Sarah Mock + Daniela Imhoff, Thomas D. Rotenberg + Theologian, Sarah Trouche, Naormi Meijia Wang, Mai T. Segura & Harald V. Uccello + Alex Hamadey, Kinga Toth + Normal Gergely, Vadim Schäffler, and Richard Jochum + Xiren Wang.
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“Light Year 31: Identity 0.0“ will be screened as part of the DL program at the contemporary art ruhr video lounge presented by Directors Lounge.
Find the complete program here.