Aram Bartholl
Reply All

Gallery [DAM]Berlin presents Berlin based artist Aram Bartholl (*1972, Bremen) in his first solo exhibition, whose works create a dynamic tension between online- and real-life. In 2011 Bartholl was partaking in exhibitions by MoMA, Pace Gallery New York and [DAM]Cologne.

His pieces are cutting-edge – not just product of observation, but formed by thought-provoking impulses that Aram gives and by the subsequent independent existence of the artworks created by the user. His interventions in public space, his readymade-like installations and sculptures are based on a do-it-yourself-culture with regard to personal creation and responsibility as well as the Internet’s popular icons with whom Bartholl confronts us in reality. But Aram Bartholl’s artworks are not to be seen as entirely digital: they deal too much with space, are too haptic in their approach, and the awareness of potential political influence is too intense – his pieces push out of gallery and museum surroundings into the city space, into society.

Things, that seem to be trivial parts of the internet, irritate the viewer as soon as they confront him in the physical world: In Are you human? a CAPTCHA-code, used by web services to differentiate between human request and automated scripts, is applied in aluminium form onto murals and gallery walls. A screen with illuminating pixels turns out to be a hand crafted object operated by a candle. In a subtle but accurate way Bartholl reveals discourses concerning the power of a digitally affected world, e.g. in his successful, often quoted project Dead Drops, consisting of USB-sticks, mured into city walls, that refuse data exchange via the internet structures established by big global companies.

‘Everything develops extremely fast on the net. I have the urge to create something that deals with the topic, but that endures anyway,’ says Aram Bartholl about this de-digitalisation of the digital. Where media art, urban intervention and interactive performance meet he asks basic sociocritical questions, thinks about our cultural memory. The rapid development of the digital age is slowed down in his artworks, it is liberated of its technological appeal and exposed for intentional examination. For example his new project Dust: Bartholl wants to convey the worlds most played computer game landscape from Counter Strike – a virtual space, a place seen by millions of people that is fixed in their visual memory even though they were never able to really ‘enter’ it – into an accessible 1:1 model made of concrete.

With the performance and installation shown at the exhibition for the first time, Bartholl, who is active in net political circles like the Chaos Computer Club, turns towards the symptom of an already existing frontier crossing of digital and analogue world: The Anonymous-movement and its characteristic comic-inspired Guy-Fawkes-masks, that are its distinctive mark and protection of identity. They have gained huge media presence thanks to the civil movement Occupy Wallstreet as well. The Anonymous-movement pushes forward the idea of a free, net-based information- and creativity-collective – a kind of global brain, that develops political capacity to act without hierarchic organisation and without determined identity.

The exhibition ‘Aram Bartholl. Reply All’ is part of the associate programme of Transmediale 2012.

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ARAM BARTHOLL
The Speed Book

Josephine Bosma,
Jonah Brucker-Cohen,
Jon Cates,
Lindsay Howard,
Alessandro Ludovico,
Evan Roth,
Bruce Sterling,
Brad Troemel

More About This Book

Aram Bartholl: The Speed Book features savvy experiments with transitions from the virtual to the physical: USB sticks embedded into walls, buildings, and curbs; giant real-life versions of Google’s red map markers positioned in public spaces; portraits generated from search results. An introduction by editor Domenico Quaranta as well as essays by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling, art critics, and fellow artists guide readers through a wonderfully skewed version of our society under the influence of the internet, something Sterling refers to as Bartholl’s “self-created twilight zone.”

Curious Minds: New Approaches in Design

The Israel Museum
December 16, 2011-April 30, 2012
Location: Nathan Cummings Building for Modern and Contemporary Art
Curator by Alex Ward

The exhibition presents about 30 international designers from Europe, Asia, and the US whose works map out new territories and encourage a new discourse about the role of design in shaping the world of tomorrow. Some of these designers also address – under the umbrella of Critical Design – social, political, and environmental concerns, bringing together new partnerships between designers and researchers of other fields such as science or biology.

Participants in the exhibition:

rAndom International
Troika
Studio DRIFT
Simon Heidjens
Aram Bartholl
Elio Caccavale
Sascha Pohflepp & Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Veronica Ranner
Kevin Grannen
Hwang Kim
Ka Fai Choy
Studio Fons  Hickman m23
Studio Mrmann (Geoffrey Mann)
Studio Glithero
Studio Unfold
Marie Blaise
Studio Makkink & Bey
Studio El Ultimo Grito
Freddie Yauner
Julian Bond
Raw Edges Design Studio
Alon Meron
David Bowen
Julius Popp
Studio Karlssonwilker Inc; New York
Studio Stefan Sagmeister
Noam Toran

Participants in the exhibition:

rAndom International
Troika
Studio DRIFT
Simon Heidjens
Aram Bartholl
Elio Caccavale
Sascha Pohflepp & Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Veronica Ranner
Kevin Grannen
Hwang Kim
Ka Fai Choy
Studio Fons  Hickman m23
Studio Mrmann (Geoffrey Mann)
Studio Glithero
Studio Unfold
Marie Blaise
Studio Makkink & Bey
Studio El Ultimo Grito
Freddie Yauner
Julian Bond
Raw Edges Design Studio
Alon Meron
David Bowen
Julius Popp
Studio Karlssonwilker Inc; New York
Studio Stefan Sagmeister
Noam Toran

27.1.2012 – 15.3.2012
Reply All
Solo show, Aram Bartholl at DAM Berlin, Berlin, Germany

16.12.2011- 30.4.2012
Curious Minds: New Approaches in Design
Design & Architecture dept. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Curated by Alex Ward

24.11.2011 – 12.12.2011
Tracing Mobility
Exhibition, Workshops, Symposion
by Trampoline at HKW, Berlin, Germany
with: Frank Abbott, Aram Bartholl, Neal Beggs, Heath Bunting, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Miles Chalcraft, Simon Faithfull, Yolande Harris, Folke Köbberling & Martin Kaltwasser, Landon Mackenzie, Open_Sailing, plan b, Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum, Gordan Savicic, Mark Selby, Michelle Teran

3.11 – 12.12.2011
TECHNO-ECOLOGIES
XIII International Festival for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia
with: Bart Vandeput / Bartaku, Ingo Günther, Grégory Lasserre un Anaïs met den Ancxt / Scenocosme, Lynn Pook, Julien Clauss, Mathieu Lehanneur / Le Laboratoire, Gilberto Esparza, Ricardo O’Nascimento, Javier Busturia, Jingni Wang / Popkalab, Thomas Thwaites, Ulrich Vogl, Raul Nieves, Gerard Rubio, Jordi Bari / BlablabLAB, Julian Oliver, Aram Bartholl, Danja Vasiliev, Ben Dromey, Rasa Šmite, Raitis Šmits, Jānis Garančs, Mārtiņš Ratniks un RIXC.

9.11.2011
Lunch Bytes (3) – Digital Material
Panel discussion, Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum with Goethe Institute, Washington DC, USA
with: Aram Bartholl, Artie Vierkant, Rudolf Frieling, Hasan Elahi

9.11.2011
Ping Pong vidéo n°20
Video screening, Art Center of Pau
with: Ivan Argote, Aram Bartholl, Art Oriente Objet, Christophe Girardet, Hans Gissinger, Djamel Kokene, Astrid Nippoldt, Elisa Pone, Laurent Sfar & Sandra Foltz, among others

2.11. – 23.11.2011
Macht im öffentlichen Raum
Lecture series at DAZ , Berlin, Germany
organized by Space Strategies class Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee,
with: Aram Bartholl, Brad Downey, Julius von Bismarck, Le van Bo

31.10.2011
Lecture & Workshop
at Game Design Department Zhdk, Zurich, Switzerland

21./22.10.2011
What’s next?
Symposion at University of Cologne, Institut für Kunst & Kunsttheorie
with: Aram Bartholl, Matthias Böttger, Holm Friebe, Johannes M. Hedinger, Timo Meisel, Torsten Meyer, Sebastian Plönges, Konstanze Schütze, Wey-Han Tan

24.7. – 7.11.2011
Talk to Me
MoMA Department of Architecture and Design. New York, USA
Organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant,

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Past Events / Exhibtions

Google Portrait series at ‘Social Media’ Pace gallery NYC, Sept. 2011, 70 x 70 cm, edding, edding, char coal, stamp ink, all on paper

Are You Human? series at ‘Social Media’ Pace gallery NYC, Sept. 2011, dimension variable, up to 100 x 45 cm, 3 mm aluminum anodized, laser cut

DeadDrop #644 was installed for the show “Social Media” at The Pace Gallery,
510 W 25th St, NYC – 9/16 – 10/15/2011
Participating artists: Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, Emilio Chapela, David Byrne, Jonathan Harris, Robert Heinecken, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Sep Kamvar and Penelope Umbrico

Great show! Thx to the team for awesome support!
Aram Bartholl 2011

All pictures on flickr!

‘Ready for Upgrade’
Aram Bartholl + JODI

DAM Cologne
Volksgartenstr.10
50677 Köln

Preview: 9th September, 6 – 10 pm
The artists will attend the preview.

[DAM] Cologne presents Ready for Upgrade, the first joint exhibition of three artists, who deal with the appearance and meaning of the internet. The artist couple JODI is one of the most important representatives of net art that became well-known through their works that modify codes and appearances of websites or computer games. JODI is disturbing the relationship between technology and user. Aram Bartholl’s œuvre researches the interplay between internet, culture and reality. He is not just asking what man is doing with the media, but what media does with man. The tension between public and private, online and offline, technology infatuation and everyday life is the core of his creations. In predominantly public interventions and installations Bartholl transforms artefacts of the digital world into physical reality.

“Social Media”
The Pace Gallery & Pace/McGill
510 West 25th Street, NYC
from September 16 through October 15, 2011.

Opening, on Thursday, September 15 from 6–8 p.m.

SOCIAL MEDIA

September 16 – October 15, 2011

Video stills from I Love Your Work, 2011, by Jonathan Harris

NEW YORK, August 22, 2011—The Pace Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery and the MFA Photography, Video
and Related Media Department at the School of Visual Arts are pleased to present Social Media. The
exhibition focuses on contemporary artists exploring public platforms for communication and social networks
through an aesthetic and conceptual lens. In an era of increasingly omnipresent new technologies, Social Media
examines the impact of these systems as they transform human expression, interaction, and perception. The
exhibition will feature works by Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, David Byrne, Jonathan Harris, Robert
Heinecken, Miranda July & Harrell Fletcher, Sep Kamvar and Penelope Umbrico.

28.9. – 3.10.2011
AND
Abandon Normal Devices, Liverpool, UK
Festival of New Cinema and Digital Culture

23.-25.9.2011
Quasi Cinema
Video_Dumbo, New York, USA
curated by Caspar Stracke & Gabriela Monroy
with:Leslie Thornton, Aram Bartholl, Ernesto Klar, Ali Miharbi, Naho Taruishi, Andy Graydon and Ken Jacobs

22.9.24.9.2011
Open World Forum
Open Source forum Europe, Paris, France
Talk and panel.

17.9. – 4.10.2011
Experience Space
[DAM] Berlin , Berlin, Germany
with: A. Bartholl, C. Sommerer + L.Mignnoneau, Electronic Shadow, J. F. Simon, L.Hershman Leeson, LAb[au], M. Watz , N. Nickel among others

15.-27.9.2011
Blkriver 2011
BLK RIVER Festival 2011, Vienna, Austria
curated by Sydney Odigan
with: Akay / Voina Group / Aram Bartholl / BLU / Brad Downey / Christian Falsnaes / Leopold Kessler / JR / OX / Ivan Argote / Marlene Hausegger / Erwin Wurm / Zuk Club) among others

16.9. – 15.10.2011
Social Media
The Pace Gallery, New York City, US
with: Christopher Baker, Aram Bartholl, David Byrne, Jonathan Harris, Robert Heinecken, Penelope Umbrico

9.9. – 1.11.2011
Ready for upgrade!
[DAM] Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Duo show with JODI

24.7. – 7.11.2011
Talk to Me
MoMA Department of Architecture and Design. New York, USA
Organized by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant,

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previous shows and events etc…