Bruno Listopad and Nikola Knežević
SHOW MORE
4 October–13 December 2015
Stroom Den Haag
Hogewal 1-9
2514 HA The Hague
The Netherlands
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday noon–5pm
T +31 70 3658985
info [at] stroom.nl
Stroom Den Haag challenged the choreographer Bruno Listopad and the architect/artist Nikola Knežević to create an exhibition that reflects the increasing impact of control upon individuals. Instead of reflecting on this topic in a straightforward manner by presenting people only as victims of surveilling corporations and states, they counterintuitively chose to present individuals who attempt to control their own public mediation.
The installation SHOW MORE presents a selection of YouTube online activities of “non-artists” that facultatively and publicly share a designed image of themselves or their desires, according to their own principles. These individuals take charge of their online representation by transforming themselves into subject-objects that either comply with or challenge established norms of behavior.
The works’ performative qualities, along with the creative strategies they employ, raise questions about the distinction between art and “non-art” practices. To intensify their qualities, the works are shown within a digital art space—a museum—that is created to emphasize the notion of the Internet as today’s largest archive and panoptical museum. This “museum” is conceived as an expression of total control by the way it attempts to command the visitors’ gaze, all the data it aggregates in its collection and the subjectivity it engenders.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an in-depth Stroom School program looking at the theme of control from a variety of perspectives, linking it to the city of The Hague.
SHOW MORE is part of the program “Culture of Control.” For a period of ten weeks, the program of Stroom Den Haag will be dedicated to the subject of control, from nudging and self-surveillance to talking refrigerators and military urban planning—not with dystopian scenarios or raised fingers, but from a real interest in a phenomenon that impacts city life in a variety of ways. Through art, movies, reflections, design and interventions, “Culture of Control” researches, plays with and manipulates both the known and the unknown control mechanisms that are at work. For this program, Stroom collaborates with a wide range of organisations and people, including Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR), International Center for Civic Hacks (ICX), Open! and Platform-Scenography.
“Culture of Control” is made possible in part by the Creative Industries Fund NL, Mondriaan Fund and the City of The Hague.
