For a long time, the rooms of Auguststraße’s Kunst-Werke have exhibited many small exhibitions, rather than a singular, large body of work. That all changed in mid-February. Poetics of Encryption is the name of the current show, curated by Nadim Samman, which transports viewers to the landscapes of the digital world and its hidden mechanisms. Inspired by the book of the same name, it explores a landscape characterized by black sites, black boxes and black holes — secret places and opaque systems. Three chapters present work from more than forty international artists who explore the aesthetics and politics of encryption. In the “Black Site” chapter, the artwork addresses feelings of being trapped in a digital world. The work demonstrates strategies of search and recovery and negotiating the decryption and unlocking of technology, while “Black Box” explores the intellectual inaccessibility of omnipresent tech products and control systems. The artwork included in this chapter illustrates the tension between the visible interface and the invisible backend. Finally, “Black Hole” deals with the effects of compact digital archives and algorithmic processes on cultural space-time. Here, the consequences of “total datafication” are explored, while artists sound out the event horizon of the digital era. The exhibition offers a fascinating and surprisingly analog insight into the world of digital encryption and invites visitors to explore the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly digitized society.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Credits: Andrea Khôra, Rapture, 2024, Photo: Frank Sperling; Carsten Nicolai, anti, 2004, Photo: Uwe Walter; Êmilie Brout & Maxime Marion, Idle, 2023.
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststr. 69, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
@kwinstituteforcontemporaryart
