HMKV - Böcker

Every month, the art association HMKV presents the latest videos by international artists in its series “HMKV Video of the Month” which has been ongoing since March 2014. The idea for the series came from the desire to show the newest artistic productions in rapid succession, changing works at a faster pace than in the exhibitions of the HMKV.For the first time, this publication unites all 78 works that have been exhibited since 2014. The videos address a variety of different topics and stories, ranging from labour conditions, structural changes, speculative technologies, or posthuman machines to technology (and its history) as well as artificial intelligence. A wide array of works is devoted to the old ‘new’ right-wingers and the alt-right. The book not only shows stills of all videos, but each work is also accompanied by anintroductory text to provide a comprehensive overview.Text in English and German.

Every month, the art association HMKV presents the latest videos by international artists in its series “HMKV Video of the Month” which has been ongoing since March 2014. The idea for the series came from the desire to show the newest artistic productions in rapid succession, changing works at a faster pace than in the exhibitions of the HMKV.For the first time, this publication unites all 78 works that have been exhibited since 2014. The videos address a variety of different topics and stories, ranging from labour conditions, structural changes, speculative technologies, or posthuman machines to technology (and its history) as well as artificial intelligence. A wide array of works is devoted to the old ‘new’ right-wingers and the alt-right. The book not only shows stills of all videos, but each work is also accompanied by an introductory text to provide a comprehensive overview.Text in English and German.

This book focuses on right-wing populist movements that are heavily reliant on the Internet and social media to spread their ideas. It explores the emergence of a (sub)culture of transgression in online forums such as 4chan and on platforms such as Breitbart News.The artists featured in this volume address Internet phenomena such as memes (e.g., Pepe the Frog, probably the most well-known symbol of Trump supporters), figures such as Steve Bannon, flag worship, the prepper scene, white supremacists, and Dark Enlightenment.The catalogue includes a comprehensive introduction to the issue, an interview with the science writer Angela Nagle, entries on all of the works, a critical glossary, and a list of links to relevant online resources.Text in English and German.

Based on the art project of the Mallinckrodtstraße workshop on Romani building culture of the same name and the redesign of a building façade in the Nordstadt district of Dortmund in September 2019, this publication focuses on a special form of architecture that has arisen in Romania, among other places, in the last 30 years which is characterised by expressive façade designs.Text in English, German and Romanian.

The title of the catalogue of works by the artist duo Stefan Panhans (Germany) and Andrea Winkler (Switzerland) is a nod to the rhetoric used by evangelical megachurches in the United States that preach a market-oriented, neoliberal ideology of individual self-optimisation under the guise of Christian pastoral care. The artists’ works touch on electric SUVs, communication with forms of artificial intelligence, racism in everyday life, celebrity cults, stereotypes, computer games, the “uncanny valley,” and other post-digital feedback loops between humans and virtual worlds, but also on the precarious condition of cultural sector workers.Panhans and Winkler are masters at using a broad spectrum of artistic genres and media, such as novels, texts, performances, installations, miniseries, musicals, sculptures, objects, films, videos, and dance. Their video installations can be subsumed under what is known as “expanded cinema”: the displayed objects, which also appear in the videos, are presented in a way that allows the films to expand into the surrounding space, drawing viewers into the artwork.Text in English and German.

This catalogue for a show at HMKV Dortmund explores techno-shamanism in the arts today, taking Joseph Beuys, who cultivated the figure of the shaman throughout his career, as the starting point. In addition to viewing shamanism itself as a form of technology, this artistic approach uses (speculative) technology as a way of discovering shamanic powers. Contemporary artists are updating Beuys’s strategies and themes for the digital age, deploying many of the same tropes. These acquired iconic status in Beuys’s oeuvre, and were aimed at healing and transforming society, cultivating a spiritual approach to the environment, and subverting power structures and the logic of capitalism. The positions introduced here combine aspects that appear diametrically opposed: technology and shamanism, technical progress and esotericism, rational modernism and the mystical tradition. Today’s artistic alchemists are engaged in a quest for “rare-earth elements” and metals, a fusion of the environment, technology, and artificial intelligence in order to create a technical/mythological description of the cosmos. Included here are works by: Morehshin Allahyari, Joseph Beuys, Mariechen Danz, Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, Lucile Olympe Haute, knowbotiq, Sahej Rahal, Tabita Rezaire, Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Transformella (aLifveForm fed and cared for by JP Raether), Suzanne Treister, Anton Vidokle.Text in English and German.

In the popular imagination, artificial intelligence (AI) is usually portrayed as a divine entity that makes “just” and “objective” decisions. Yet AI is anything but intelligent. Rather, it recognises in large amounts of data what it has been trained to recognise. Like a sniffer dog, it finds exactly what it has been taught to look for. In performing this task, it is much more efficient than any human being – but this precisely is also its problem. AI only mirrors or repeats what it has been instructed to reflect. Seen in this light, it may be viewed as a kind of digital “house of mirrors”.Humans train machines, and these machines are only as good or as bad as the humans who train them. Based on this insight, the publication addresses not only algorithmic bias or discrimination in AI, but also AI-related issues such as hidden human labour, the problem of categorisation and classification – and our ideas and fantasies about AI. It also raises the question whether (and how) it is possible to reclaim agency in this context.Text in English and German.

This volume is published to mark the 40th anniversary of the artists’ collective Rrose Irwin Sélavy and to accompany the exhibition at HMKV Dortmund. Since 1983, IRWIN has been investigating the art history of Eastern Europe, especially the ambivalent legacy of the historical avant-garde and its totalitarian successors, i.e. the dialectic of avant-garde and totalitarianism. Since the 1990s, the focus of the group has been on challenging the art history of “Western Modernism” in a critical and iconoclastic way. The artists playfully and darkly contrast it with the “retro avant-garde” and an “Eastern Modernism”.The book, which can be read from both sides, is made up of two parts: the first chapter explores the black humour that is a consistent element in IRWIN’s work. The second chapter examines issues relating to the state – and how IRWIN uses them to comment on current topics such as migration.Text in English and German.