The Akademie der K眉nste in Berlin examines the effect of art on reality itself, and how it is constantly adapting and transforming according to the viewer.
Art is commonly perceived to come from the artist. In the case of many of the world鈥檚 most renowned creatives, such as Gilbert & George or Marina Abramovi膰, the artist is the art. In proposing a perception of art as stemming from the practitioner, a work is also seen as a reflection of the individual鈥檚 inner experience and the environment around them. One of its beauties is the manner in which visual representation enables us to escape realities and empathise with the worlds of others. However, why not also consider the manner in which art reflects on existence and the debate over the effect that creativity has on reality? The positive effect of art, and its ability to engage audiences, is long-acknowledged, not least through public grants to institutions and governments鈥 attempts to widen access for all.
In an attempt to redress this balance, and open the notion of how visual communication affects the world in which it exists, the Akademie der K眉nste in Berlin is holding a series of events examining 鈥渢he construction and reconstruction of reality in the arts.鈥 Encompassing more than 40 lectures, performances, conferences, concerts, workshops and tours, Vertigo of Reality is a multidisciplinary event that presents an ever-evolving interrogation of the role of creative practice and aesthetic production in society today.
Similarly to the Royal Academy in London, Akademie der K眉nste is 鈥渁n exhibition and event location, a meeting place for artists and people interested in the arts, where public debates on art and cultural policy take place.鈥 Founded in 1696, it has 400 current members across the six disciplines of visual arts, architecture, music, literature, performing arts, and film and media art. In addition, its archive of more than 1,200 bequests is 鈥渙ne of the most important interdisciplinary archives of 20th century art.鈥 While its events programme of exhibitions, concerts, debates, readings, award ceremonies, and film, theatre and dance performances presents 鈥渃ontemporary artistic positions to the public and is dedicated to safeguarding cultural heritage,鈥 Anke Hervol, fine art curator, also emphasises that 鈥渙ur main focus is fixed on the research about subjects which could not be shown in the classical teaching institutions, cultural institutions or museums.鈥 This emphasis on subject matter outside of the remit of traditional presentations means that 鈥渨e are following the aim of deepening subjects with cultural, political and social significance.鈥 Hervol highlights this as the reason behind the choice of curatorial team, 鈥渙f several people with specific ideas and backgrounds,鈥 which is 鈥渢o construct a many-sided exhibition.鈥 Hervol鈥檚 co-curators are: Wulf Herzogenrath, director of the fine art section of the Academy of Arts; curator, art historian and specialist of video and multimedia-art, Mark Butler; cultural scientist, futurologist, and research associate at the Institute of Art and Media of Potsdam; and Niels van Tomme, curator, researcher, and critic working on the intersections of contemporary culture, politics and aesthetics.
Vertigo of Reality promises to examine how 鈥渢he profound changes in artistic practice as a result of new media, in particular digitalisation, have resulted in a stream of new strategies tackling ways to construct or deconstruct reality in and with art, attempting to make a contribution to enlightenment and resistance through critical appraisal.鈥 At its heart is the exhibition itself, which will, in turn, have the work Metabolic Office for the Repair of Reality at its centre. Its esoteric title reflects the spirit of Akademie der K眉nste鈥檚 motivations, which are invariably obscure and difficult to pin down. While Manos Tsangaris, curator of this work, describes it as 鈥渁 very practical thing鈥 and 鈥渁 place and a structure to work in between all the activities of the experiential programme,鈥 its purpose, to the visitor, is less explicit if one looks beyond its function as a meeting point for the various facets of the programme. Tsangaris emphasises that it has such variety, which brings with it 鈥渆veryone, every discipline with its characteristic linguistics constructing and generating their own terms of reality and swindle;鈥 the Office seems to be a place to make sense of it. The fact that this piece never hesitates to use the language of work, labour and commerce highlights that Vertigo of Reality is an exhibition that expects to take from its visitors as much as it does from its artists. Engaging with the display and its concepts is as much an act of work as it is of pleasure, and it is a constant negotiation of one鈥檚 own thought processes, and those of the curators and artists. While the arguments and concepts behind the exhibition are incredibly relevant, although complex, Tsangaris still highlights the need for some kind of 鈥渢raditional borders and limits鈥 and perhaps this is where the Metabolic Office comes in, as a place for visitors and the curators to explore and discuss the consequences of the exhibition.
With the metaphor of work at the forefront of this piece, Tsangaris highlights that 鈥渢he use of aesthetics in our lives [has] very concretely become an instrument for political interests, powers and intentions,鈥 and that everything has become political. For the team behind the programme there are inherent links between the arts and the political sphere because the arts are constantly used to make an argument, 鈥渟o effectively, we become instruments for this ourselves.鈥 This is a significant contributor to the exhibition 鈥 the idea that 鈥渁rt and art theory analyse this and work on the invention of antidotes.鈥
The form which these antidotes to the political posturings of art should take is, however, unclear; in fact, in presenting the idea that art influences our very reality and that its effect on the world can change its outcomes, the curators of Vertigo of Reality have opened up a greater debate, which is impossible to bring to a resolution in the course of one exhibition. However, what Vertigo of Reality does do is neatly position the viewer at the centre of the art-making experience. In line with Roland Barthes鈥 Death of the Author, the practitioners behind the exhibition are, according to the curators, almost subservient to the viewers themselves. In focusing on the audiences鈥 perception of a work and how it interacts with reality, the role of the artist is changed to that of an enabler. Hervol points out that we should avoid talking about 鈥渧isitors鈥 or 鈥渧iewers鈥 because 鈥渢he visitor becomes 鈥 if he wants to 鈥 the participant or even the performer himself.鈥 While Vertigo of Reality 鈥減resents artistic strategies and methods of working which focus on the viewer鈥檚 perception,鈥 this means that 鈥渢he artwork materialises only in and through the viewer themselves,鈥 that the originator has a selfless role to play in 鈥渄eveloping the idea and giving it as a proposal to the participant.鈥 The show inevitably engages with relational aesthetics and the concept of audience participation. Butler says: 鈥淲hile we did not have relational art in mind when the exhibition was conceived, it is definitely there and can be seen as a necessary consequence of the breaking open of the hermetic circle between the creator and artwork, with the audience on the outside as beholder of the finished product. Once the visitor becomes a part of the process and is transformed from observer to participant the myriad relationships involved in the production of the aesthetic experience are put front and centre and become a focus of inquiry.鈥
Vertigo of Reality combines 1960s and 1970s works (which arguably show the heyday of conceptual art) from people such as Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman, right up to the works of today鈥檚 leading figures, including Bill Viola, Olafur Eliasson and Marina Abramovi膰. In doing so, it shows the progression of art as a tool that can alter reality, and highlights the profound changes in practice enabled by digitalisation. Butler explains that while 鈥渢he exhibition retraces a development in which the media assemblage increasingly moves into focus,鈥 this, in turn, means that the medium itself becomes as central to the work as its end result: 鈥渢he methods that are constitutive of every act of perception and communication become the focus of art itself.鈥 Because of the development of digital technology and the widened, heightened and instant communication of the internet, innovators have utilised 鈥渄iverse strategies of manipulating this threshold [so that] the act of perception itself becomes a phenomenon that can be experienced.鈥 In addition to this, and in a similar vein, Butler argues that 鈥渢he role of the individual on the receiving end changes fundamentally from being a passive receiver to someone who actively participates in the creation of the aesthetic experience.鈥
Hamish Fulton鈥檚 first public walk for Berlin, Walking East-Walking West, explicitly references the city鈥檚 historical and contentious position as a cultural and political crossroads between east and west, capitalism and communism, and is interesting because it鈥檚 the only project that, according to Hervol, 鈥渆ngages directly with the city and its public space.鈥 In a way, many of the other artworks are much more removed from their context, and more internationalist in their outlook, particularly because of the manner in which technological advances have not only made this possible but have also made the artists鈥 outlook more international. Hevol suggests: 鈥淲hile in the 1960s the new technical imaging and communication capabilities used for film and television were incorporated into their work processes, today this new generation of artists is drawing on the opportunities of the internet, social media platforms, devices such as smartphones and tablets, and their respective programmes and applications. The threshold between digital information and analogue users, between machine and man, between virtuality and body, has long since become a key dialectic subject of contemporary art.鈥 Works such as Thomas Demand鈥檚 Control Room (2011) and Thomas Wrede鈥檚 Real Landscapes (2012) subsequently display an internationalist no-man鈥檚-land of sorts, which is difficult to nationalise or to place in any one specific context. Conversely, while these pieces encourage viewers to look out and examine the external, reflections such as Jeppe Hein鈥檚 Rotating Mirror Circle (2008) are unavoidably insular, and again highlight how central the viewer is to the artwork itself. It creates a disjuncture between the reality of the room and the observer and what they see in front of them, distorting both their face and the world around them in a manner that reflects the rapid change and evolution of the role of art today. As if in conversation with Rotating Mirror Cicles, Olafur Eliasson鈥檚 Mirror Stack (2010), in turn, distorts itself, each mirror gradually distorting further away from a perfect circle but in an inverse way to the order of gravity. Eliasson鈥檚 work not only highlights the effects of the laws of nature but also hints at mankind鈥檚 capability and strong desire to overpower it.
Furthering this argument, the Akademie der K眉nste has taken the unusually (but increasingly common) step of including video games in its remit for display. There is a whole section of the exhibition dedicated to game art (including Gold Extra鈥檚 Frontiers (2008), Bill Viola鈥檚 The Night Journey (2010), Molleindustria鈥檚 Unmanned (2012) and Tale of Tales鈥 Bient么t l鈥櫭﹖茅 (2002)). Butler also explains the Akademie鈥檚 plans to 鈥渆xhibit works that are positioned on the border of game art like Paidia Institute鈥檚 experiment series Laboratory: feedback or Robin Arnott鈥檚 virtual reality piece SoundSelf stating, 鈥渋t must be said that the entire show is pervaded by a playful paradigm.鈥
Ultimately the questions of reality and art鈥檚 effect on it are manifold and complex, and they provide a continual topic of debate. As Butler argues:鈥淎rt offers us new ways of perceiving the world and of acting in it. By doing this it opens up a relationship with reality that is open to change.鈥 For Butler it is the activity and engagement of art that releases its potential, and prevents us from being passive. 鈥淭his mode of being-in-the-world is fundamentally different from one simply accepting things the way they are. Instead of submitting to
the given, it encourages us to participate in the production of reality. As such, art invites us to play with actuality, to gain aesthetic pleasure from new and unusual ways of experiencing and interacting with the world and ourselves.鈥 The curators have brought together a complex system of events, mediums and artworks, and one that raises as many questions as it answers.
Vertigo of Reality will be on display at Akademie der K眉nste in Berlin from 17 September until 14 December. To find out more, visit .
Ruby Beesley
