Renen Oh
Kiez.schaft, one step before the last (2019)
Video HD
3:40 minutes
This video is an encounter point with two neighbors of mine, a visual artist (Johannes Jakobi) and a musician (Brigitte
Haas) and the new works they have created. Their physical presence as well as their artworks and the essence of the
encounter are the foundation to the aesthetic and quality of the work.
Diogo da Cruz
Icarus - Wisdom Warriors (2018)
Video HD
7:19 minutes
Wisdom Warriors are a collective that designed a revolutionary project, with the potential to drastically change the way
society relates to technology and to the power structures inherent in it. The members of this collective meet mostly
online and engage in a regular contemporary art practice. Their disruptive "final project" is designed to make every
technological tool extremely slow and arduous to use, creating a general frustration that could lead to a rebellious
movement. After pursuing this work, they saw the effect of their actions in a closed room, and the striking consequences
were transmitted to them online. After a huge celebration, they realised that they had been tricked by the system, and
that their whole success was a simulation. Their life project was a lie.
By the end of their activity, scepticism and suspicion had taken over the members of the collective. They began to
question every information and fact that was reported to them, doubting about their very own existence.
Protest movements and Pandemics are two processes that usually do not function together.
All Protests critical of the neoliberal system that emerged 2019 in the whole world are facing their decline.
Just as in Chile where millions of people reclaim the streets to fight against the extreme disparities in their country.
As probably the world's most neoliberal country, Chile now is forming a kind of dystopia, where the right-wing
government utilizes the urgency of the pandemic crisis to regain power.
Chile is just an example how social distancing can affect solidarity and the physical basis of social movements. The
Project shows a multiplicity of demands of the social movement in Chile as an echo of demands that have been shouted at
the streets.
Re-situate the collective / body / place
The first exhibiting group includes the works of Diogo da Cruz, with a project called Wisdom Warriors, speculating
around the ways in which one can reclaim the technological means, in order to move against its accelerated expansion, it
addresses the conflict between the impossibility of revolutionary act, but ironically insists on movement towards this
infeasible horizon. The figure of the warrior implies the battlefield to be physically defined, that brings us to the
work of Clara Osterburg Correa, who deals with the dilemma of the police state in time of COVID, when the authorities
use extra forces to shut down any collective emergence on the street. She is working with gifs as a medium, which can
proliferate easily across the internet. She searches for new ways of resistance and solidarity and thinks through it
with us. The local politics has already shown us its limits before the pandemic arises but looking at the work of Renen
Itzhaki, helps us to remember a mode of collaborating, which now seems obsolete. Renen shares with us a video, which is
capturing the different artists working with the material at hand, a particular form of working together, which we might
need to start with. The different approaches try to create a response to the local/global friction, specially in a
situation, in which the local is global more than ever.
