ART-PRESENTATION: The New Human in Stockholm
Moderna Museet Stockholm presents the third chapter of “THE NEW HUMAN”, continuing the exploration of the human condition in a rapidly changing world, while also presenting imagined scenarios of our future. “THE NEW HUMAN” is a film and video based exhibition-project, exploring the border between exhibition and film festival. This is the 2nd Part of the presentation, (Part I).
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive
“You and I in Global Wonderland” served as the subtitle of the first chapter. That exhibition dealt with how we evaluate, understand (misunderstand) and treat each other in a world characterized by intensified globalization and migration. In the second chapter “Knock, Knock, Is Anyone Home?” we saw totally different types of human-looking creatures. There were presented individuals who appear to have mutated through information technology, hyper-consumption and global corporate culture into something beyond human. The Third chapter of “THE NEW HUMAN” offers insights into a global warzone of religious fanaticism and political extremism, but also highlights examples of solidarity and compassion. All works presented in that chapter have been produced since the turn of the millennium, a period profoundly influenced by the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11/9/01, and the “war on terror” that followed. This is also a time that has seen many of the dreams that blossomed amid the Arab Spring collapse in an ash heap of war and humanitarian disaster. Today we see the largest number of refugees since the World War II, the rise of extremist violence, especially in poor countries, also nationalist and neo-fascist organisations and parties have established themselves throughout Europe. Alongside this geopolitical development, the technological progress has raised the issue of what it actually means to be human. In nanoscience, the border between biology and technology is getting increasingly blurred. Global digitalisation has fundamentally changed our way of relating to the world around us and to each other, and the dividing line between actual and virtual reality is dissolving. Two works in the exhibition, Daria Martin’s “Soft Materials” and Kerstin Hamilton’s “Zero Point Energy” are set in laboratory environments where a new humanity can be discerned. In “God is Design” by Adel Abdessemed, ornamental symbols from the three monotheistic religions fuse with each other and with schematic drawings of human cells. Tomáš Rafa’s “Refugees on Their Way to Western Europe” continuously documents Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis, and Hito Steyerl’s “How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File”, gives instructions on how to achieve invisibility in a digitised world where there are cameras everywhere. The exhibition also features the entirely new work “Atom Spirit” by Ursula Mayer, along with many other contemporary key works. A question that arises is whether it will even be feasible to be “human” in the long run, or if the new beings that are evolving (hybrids, avatars and robots) are, in fact, the new humans. Participating artists: Adel Abdessemed, Ed Atkins, Robert Boyd, Esra Ersen, Harun Farocki, Kerstin Hamilton, Daria Martin, Santiago Mostyn, Ursula Mayer, Adrian Paci, Tomáš Rafa, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Superflex and Ryan Trecartin.
Info: Curator: Joa Ljungberg, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmenm Stockholm, Duration: 21/5/16-5/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue 10:00-20:0, Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.modernamuseet.se
