Moving pictures usually have a soothing effect  in our society.  The 13 video works in In Escalation commonly reverse that by disconcerting the audience. The extremely personal pieces were created by PILOTENKUECHE online residents. The artists from the three 2021 residencies  come together to find a physical exhibition space against the neutral white walls of a&o kunsthalle.  

The humming from the artwork Defrag-mented Dream(s) by A. Morgan McKendry (US) welcomes the visitor into the space. The sound evokes the possible post-human future, interwoven with abstract images and natural elements. The interest in technology and cyborgs is further explored by the immersive installation of People, Plants, Precarity by Emily Wisniewski (US), who references Rosi Braidotti’s theory developed in “The posthuman“. She creates a mesmerizing and dancing globe, a structure overcoming humans and plants as separate entities as technology unites them.

These artists deal with technology producing a post-human world.

Yet another resident, Catherin Schöberl (DE), deals with the notion of post-human: in the piece Prediction, inspired by her grandmother’s thoughts about death. The rhythm of a voice guides us through an escalation of astronomical landscapes in an imagined universe, describing a possible answer to existential questions. Bereavement is pivotal to Eitan Ritz (AU) too, who in the artwork 4 delicate deals with the shift in cycles and frequencies his body experienced in reaction to his mother’s loss. Silvia Gentili’s (IT) similar inspection into her inner landscape is an attempt to invent a possible performative alphabet. Her body movements in Resistance along the axon conveying the sudden reactions the nervous system experiences in an allergic reaction to psychotropic drugs. Conversely, Nara Rossetto (BR) uses poetry To Disappear, expressing the feeling of disappearing from your own body through the symptoms of chronic illness.

images by Fanni Papp for PK

Anticipating the deepness of our body self-reflection, Therese Lippold (DE) pre-human figuration Arme=Beine represents physiques where stroking movements of the limbs insidiously morph and merge

our upper and lower parts. Emerging from the meanders of fine-tuned bodily sensations and outlooks on our future, Marc Vandermeer (US) joyously presents his 365 days of art,  possibly daunting images turned into proud moments by music in escalation.

 Politically engaged artists critique the current escalation of violence.

Another group of artists considers the escalation of violence and machismo in our world. In Am I a liar, Kana Maeda (JP) films herself in the place where she experienced sexual abuse as a child, delicately allowing the viewer to understand her personal experience in relation to the social injustice summarised by a Japanese politician saying Women can tell lies as much as they want. Sotira Bramou (GR) in the video The client critiques the hypocrisy of sex buyers, fathers, husbands, sons, neighbors who rape women in brothels whilst conducting a socially acceptable lifestyle. Violent recordings of voic

es in a brothel background images of a traditional Greek wedding.

Dalia Kiaupaute (LT) in drop after drop even broke the stone repurposes a traditional Lithuanian proverb to represent and critique the escalation of teachings society gives a woman in order to be fairer. An optimistic dance in Nadja Shkirat’s (DE, IL) Resurrection celebrates the struggle of every abused human being, particularly the Palestinian martyrs of the 2021 Gaza war.

Concluding the exhibition, Franziska Ostermann’s (DE) a white escalation is a literary take on many themes previously explored. An explanatory speech describes the images produced by A.I. in response to her poems, in a productive exchange between technology and human creativity fostered by the online residency.

written by Arturo Menozzi