And when the rain begins to fall, I’ll be that girl going from one exhib­i­tion to the next. Finally: more time to spend our days and even­ings inside enorm­ous cul­tural hubs, con­tem­plat­ing our lives and the mean­ing of art in the con­text of their makers inten­tions. I’m try­ing to see the pos­it­ive in this demonic weather.

Any­way, the “no touch” approach to art can get pretty tire­some too. That’s why I want to put spe­cial emphasis on the new Ars Elec­tron­ica exhib­i­tion at the VW Auto­mobil Forum Unter den Linden. It is more than just a “come in and just sit and watch” type of col­lec­tion. Going by the motto “Impetus and Move­ment”, the whole exhib­i­tion invites the spec­tator not only to com­mit to see­ing, but to exper­i­en­cing and feeling.

Pre­pare to be sci­en­tific­ally tested and stunned: everything is move­ment here. From the pop­u­lar viral videos exhib­ited (remem­ber the clever OK Go gigs?) to the fas­cin­at­ing body works of the Par­cours pas­sion­ates. Some of my favor­ite pieces of mov­ing art was a mini­ature train that went around a land­scape of office sup­plies in the dark. With its attached light it threw an amaz­ing shadow of a prac­tic­ally “grown up” city scape on the wall. It’s shabby to describe such a thing without get­ting into much detail, I know. But most of us were def­in­itely mes­mer­ized. Take it as a hint to go and see the exhib­i­tion yourself.

Of course — as always — there is a philo­soph­ical con­text to the event. Before I cata­stroph­ic­ally try and re-phrase it, here is a short insight into what the cur­at­ors were going for:

None of our other hab­it­ats, in order to make peace­ful coex­ist­ence pos­sible at all, neces­sit­ates such a com­plex com­pos­i­tion of how human beings live together — a set of rules that cir­cum­scribes every aspect of our lives but at the same time opens up beha­vi­oral lat­it­ude to the greatest extent pos­sible. One that defines itself as a com­mit­ment to every person’s right of self-determination, but that also demarc­ates clear bound­ar­ies. How­ever, this con­tainer, so to speak, that is the sum of all con­ceiv­able com­prom­ises must never be capped and sealed; it has to be under­stood as an ongo­ing pro­cess that is made to keep mov­ing by apply­ing one new impetus after another. If that doesn’t occur or does to an insuf­fi­cient extent, res­ist­ance arises.(- taken from the Ars Elec­tron­ica web­site)

Don’t expect to be stand­ing around in your vin­tage hat and blazer while con­sid­er­ing a pic­ture you really didn’t under­stand for the fifth time. This is not how the Ars Elec­tron­ica works. But if you’re ready to get your mind blown by simple sci­entific achieve­ments, you’ll have an hour or two of abso­lute bliss and won­der­ful experiences.

From 12. 7. 2012 — 16. 09. 2012. Doors are open every day from 10 am to 8 pm.

Auto­mobil Forum
Unter den Linden
Volk­swa­gen Aktiengesell­schaft
Unter den Linden 21
10117 Ber­lin

Ars Elec­tron­ica in Ber­lin: Impuls + Bewe­gung from Monocle Films on Vimeo.