Large solo exhibition of Korpys/Löffler & international group exhibition Computer Grrrls

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1 1 Press information HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) Annual program 2018 Four exhibitions at the beginning of the year At the beginning of the year, four of HMKV s exhibitions are still on view at the Dortmunder U: Parallel to the exhibition The Storming of the Winter Palace Forensics of an Image, HMKV is presenting the exhibition The Border. One hundred years after 1917, the two exhibitions on Level 6 of the Dortmunder U mark and question the founding act of the Soviet Union (The Storming of the Winter Palace) and are interested in the new geopolitical orientations that become visible in the successor states of the USSR after the end of the Soviet Union (The Border). Both exhibitions are on view until April 8, The Storming of the Winter Palace a cooperation between HMKV and the University of Zurich will be presented by the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (Poland) in April The Border an exhibition of the Goethe-Institut - will travel to Ekatarinburg (Russia), Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Tashkent (Uzbekistan) in The exhibition Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention presents Africa as a continent of technological innovation (Level 3, until April 22, 2018). The exhibition presents 20 international artistic positions as well as 12 tech projects from the maker scenes of different African countries. Afro-Tech is an exhibition of HMKV in cooperation with Interkultur Ruhr a project of the Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR) and Africa Positive e.v. The Hard Drawing by Dan Perjovschi is still on display in the vertical space on all levels of the Dortmunder U. At the end of February 2018, the Romanian artist will come to Dortmund for a week to update his highest wall drawing worldwide. The new version will be on display until April Large solo exhibition of Korpys/Löffler & international group exhibition Computer Grrrls On Friday, May 25 th, 2018, the HMKV opens a large solo exhibition of Korpys/Löffler under the title People Institutions Objects Things. This overview exhibition of the German artist duo is a co-operation between the Kunsthalle Tübingen, the Kunstverein Braunschweig and the HMKV (Level 3, May 26 th until September 23 rd, 2018) and it is the largest of its kind so far. The international group exhibition Computer Grrrls (Level 3, October 27 th, 2018 until February 3 rd, 2019) brings together artists who research, document and imagine different types of alliances between women, gender and technology in their work and projects. The exhibition, which opens at HMKV on Friday, October 26 th, 2018, is a collaboration between the HMKV and La Gâité Lyrique (Paris). In 2019 it will be shown in Paris - enhanced by performative formats. In addition, the HMKV Video of the Month (Level 3) continues as a monthly series of screenings of recent works by international artists.

2 2 Detailed information about the new exhibitions in 2018 Korpys/Löffler People Institutions Objects Things Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund), Sabine Maria Schmidt (Kunsthalle Tübingen) and Christina Lehnert (Kunstverein Braunschweig) May 26 th September 23 rd, 2018 (Opening: Friday, May 25 th, 2018) Dragnet investigation German pioneers The pioneer of German criminal ecology, Horst Herold (b. 1923), became President of the BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office) in Soon afterwards he became a symbolic figure of the fight against terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1970s, along with his credo "We ll get them all". Herold equipped the Federal Criminal Police Office with computers, set up databases, developed machine-readable identification techniques and the dragnet investigation ( Rasterfahndung ) as a method of police investigation. Not only his approach to collect and evaluate as much data as possible of the entire society was ground breaking, but in particular his idea to search for deviation and exclusion criteria: The trace would lead to perpetrators by looking on what they did not do and how they thereby deviate from normal behaviour. Accordingly, the investigative work would have to observe, categorize and analyse marginal phenomena and incidentals in order to identify patterns and track down the target persons. The database Personen Institutionen Objekte Sachen (People, Institutions, Objects, Things - PIOS) founded by Herold contained about 240,000 entries in What was an absolute novelty back then seems rather cute from today's point of view: Search engines like Google and social networks like Facebook and What's App collect a multiple of personal data every hour. And intelligence agencies such as the US-American NSA and the British GCHQ whistleblower Edward Snowden has made it public have driven the analysis of Big Data to global perfection with the government surveillance systems PRISM and TEMPORA. Their basic idea still follows the negative dragnet developed by Herold. Korpys/Löffler - methods and themes Observing the periphery of events and collecting evidence from the apparently marginal, to recognize patterns this is also the consistent working method of the internationally known media artists Andree Korpys (b. 1966) and Markus Löffler (b. 1963), who cooperate as a duo for about 25 years and are currently professors at the University of the Arts Bremen. In their artistic-documentary projects Korpys/Löffler use the methods of the modern surveillance state not on individuals but on the state itself. They deal with the secret work and official representations of state power, as well as with their challengers in the social opposition (such as the former Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army faction, RAF) and Blockupy or the anti-castor movement today). "Power" can have a face in the work of Korpys/Löffler

3 3 such as the President of the USA or the Federation of German Industries, or the Pope but more often it is examined in their institutional appearances: The artists are interested in reclusive organs such as the BKA (Federal Criminal Police Office), the BND (Federal Intelligence Service), the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the European Central Bank, the prison or the police. With eagle eyes Korpys/Löffler observe the outer skin of such state bodies and show the mechanics of their functioning in precisely composed works of art. The artists do not engage in investigative journalism, but focus on the aesthetics of peripheral events, secondary characters and details that begin to speak by themselves: People, Institutions, Objects, Things. The red thread through their oeuvre runs along the visually stunning, but neither morally nor politically evaluative analysis of control structures and their medial precipitation. Multimedia projects at HMKV In the centre of Korpys/Löffler's stimulating projects is usually a film production with a sophisticated soundtrack, which is fanned out and synthetized by accompanying elements in various media (photography, drawing, screen printing, painting, object). The result is novel spatial installations in which the subject is circled by multiple media changes and a changeover between power and countervailing power, which the artists repeatedly carry out. The exhibition People Institutions Objects Things brings together the most important works of Korpys/Löffler in a large retrospective. The exhibition course runs through the entire exhibition area at the HMKV (about 11 multimedia projects in 8 rooms with a total of 800 square meters). People Institutions Objects Things is also the title of a recent video installation by Korpys/Löffler, which deals with the artistic observation of the new building for the BND (Federal Intelligence Service) in Berlin that cost 1.1 billion to build. Starting in 2017, the most expensive building ever built by the federal government, will provide space for 4,000 agents. An exhibition of HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) in cooperation with Kunsthalle Tübingen and Kunstverein Braunschweig. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia. Funder HMKV: Dortmunder U - Centre for Art and Creativity.

4 4 Computer Grrrls Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) and Marie Lechner (La Gaité Lyrique, Paris) October 26 th, February 3 rd, 2019 (Opening: Friday, October 26 th, 2018) Alliances around technology and gender The exhibition Computer Grrrls brings together artists who research, document and imagine different types of alliances between women, gender and technology in their work and projects. The exhibition is curated jointly by the HMKV and La Gaité Lyrique, presented in 2018 in Dortmund and in 2019 enhanced by performative formats - in Paris. From Eniac Girls to boys toys Before the word "computer" described a machine, it referred to a profession that was primarily practiced by women. At the beginning of the 20th century, arithmetic was considered a female activity. When the first fully electronic computer was created in the USA in 1946, it was women, called the "Eniac Girls," who programmed it. However, in the course of the twentieth century, computer science turned into a masculine field of activity until the PC became the ultimate boys' toy in the 1980s. In recent years, historians have described the unprecedented revaluation that has occurred in computer science. How did it happen that a field of activity that was very attractive to women became completely connoted with masculinity after a few decades? According to a recent study by the American Association of University Women, in 2013 only 26% of professional computer scientists were women. This is a decrease of 9% compared to In the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is arguably the most disruptive technology for the future since the introduction of the Internet, there are even fewer women. Cyberfeminists and the end of discrimination? Since the 1990s, however, female voices have been raised against living in a technological society imagined and shaped by privileged white men. Inspired by the unprecedented possibilities of digital networks, the "cyberfeminists" hoped that the virtual space would put an end to all discrimination. They hoped that technology would enable new forms of resistance and thus become the accomplice of emancipation. VNS Matrix, saboteurs of the "big daddy mainframe" and authors of the provocative "Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century," also stand for a techno-utopism that imagines cyberspace as a place of liberation. However, the current development of the Internet and the growth of sexism and racism show that technology reproduces gender constructions rather than overwriting them. The new information technologies associated with the hope of new forms of political selfempowerment are now proving to be tools of the state monitoring and become the basis of new forms of oppression. An inventory of gender and technology is no reason for optimism. As various studies have shown, non-whites, women, non-heterosexuals are still largely excluded from the development of technology that determines us, our behaviour and our ability to interact with the world.

5 5 Queer technology prototypes at HMKV The exhibition Computer Grrrls introduces, in addition to central positions of the 1990s, new techno-feminist collectives that refer to cyberfeminism, transhack feminism and xenofeminism. In a heterogeneous technological landscape, they want to make dissenting voices heard. They invent feminist and queer technology prototypes to deconstruct patriarchal and militarized narratives; they design speculative science fiction and sensuous alternatives to destabilize the hegemonic and binary narrative of Silicon Valley. An exhibition of the HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) in cooperation with La Gâité Lyrique, Paris. Funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Funder HMKV: Dortmunder U - Centre for Art and Creativity.

6 6 OVERVIEW New in 2018 Korpys/Löffler People Institutions Objects Things Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund), Sabine Maria Schmidt (Kunsthalle Tübingen), Christina Lehnert (Kunstverein Braunschweig), In cooperation with Kunsthalle Tübingen and Kunstverein Braunschweig May 26 th September, 23 rd, 2018 (Opening: Friday, May 25 th, 2018) Computer Grrrls Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) and Marie Lechner (La Gâité Lyrique, Paris) In cooperation with La Gâité Lyrique (Paris) October 26 th, February 3 rd, 2019 (Opening: Friday, October 26 th, 2018) Still running The Storming of the Winter Palace Forensics of an Image Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) & Sylvia Sasse (University of Zurich) In cooperation with the University of Zurich, Gessnerallee Zurich, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at Dortmunder U, Level 6 Until April 8 th, 2018 The Border Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) & Thibaut de Ruyter (Berlin) An exhibition by the Goethe-Institut, kindly supported by the Federal German Foreign Office HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at Dortmunder U, Level 6 Until April 8 th, 2018 Afro-Tech and the Future of Re-Invention Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) and Fabian Saavedra-Lara (Interkultur Ruhr) In cooperation w/ Interkultur Ruhr a project by Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR) & Africa Positive e.v. HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at Dortmunder U, Level 6 Until April 22 nd, 2018 Dan Perjovschi The Hard Drawing Curated by Inke Arns (HMKV Dortmund) In cooperation with Dortmunder U HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) at Dortmunder U, Levels 0-7 Until April 2019 Detailed information about the current exhibitions and the HMKV Video of the Month is available at