CURATOR'S TOUR

Considering the self as a continuous experience and distinct entity is an achievement of the human brain and at the same time serves culturally as an important basis for the individualism that dominates Western societies. This assumption is challenged by the influence of social developments and technical means such as social media, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Questioning it through the means of “unselfing”, as suggested by the Irish philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) in the early 1970ies, can provide a guideline for contemporary challenges and enable a position of both artistic and personal resistance.

With newly developed performances, installations and interactive formats as well as videos and paintings, the exhibition explores the experience of self-dissolution: Possibilities of fluid identities, the death of one part of the self and the transformation of another, as well as feelings of empathy and oneness with the surrounding world—with humans or other species and nature. From mingled authorship and absorption in the collective, to physically and psychologically dissociating experiences through meditation, trance, pain or chemical substances, the exhibition seeks to outline a path and state of self-laterality, empathy and happiness.

with works by assume vivid astro focus (avaf), Yael Bartana, Cevdet Erek, Ja Jess, Jessy Razafimandimby, David Reiber Otálora, Lillian Schwartz, Yuri Yefanov

Curated by Rebekka Seubert

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