the thing is
the thing is - analog-digital entanglements counteracting an ongoing crisis culture

This is the chapter in which we were wrecked by isolation, then consumed by witnessing the unfolding of an unfathomable war and finally spiraled back into our physical world with the urge to grasp solid, common ground.

Three years back, we witnessed the global rupture of the pandemic, only to learn that it became “an ongoing crisis,” seamlessly segueing into a (nuclear) war scare, all parallel to an ongoing environmental and economic end-of-the world scenario. No doubt we live in a self-perpetuating crisis culture.

CAMP, 2022

The pandemic also produced a historic jolt, and one of the many side effects manifested itself in a changing online sphere. We witnessed the proliferation of crypto cult(ure) and an overall fast developing web3. Many people who had categorically avoided online activities now fully embraced it. But a diametrically opposite trend was also noticeable. Those type of individuals who had been engaged with online or digital culture for years turned to hybrid or analog production methods. This “return to the physical world” also suggests a return of a special kind of knowledge production that grounds itself in more fundamental questions of life.

Sebastian Lütgert: UNPROMPTED #106, 2022 excerpt

Nonetheless these series of ruptures also provoked a new political impetus. For many of the exhibiting artists, current issues of governance have reframed much of the discourse around contemporary art practice. Other positions in this exhibition examine societal power shifts in which both human and non-human agents mediate between the physical and the virtual.

Still others link on- and offline cultures to spiritual questions, reflecting on notions of presence and absence. This marks yet another effect of having endured the absence of social interactions during the pandemic.

Back in the 90s, The THING became known for building the first ever international net art community. This exhibition groups its founders and many active members (living in New York throughout the 90s, 00s and 10s) with friends and associates. When New York was experiencing 9-11, it produced its most dramatic change in that decade, which in turn dramatically transformed artistic practices. A similar looming time of uncertainty seems prevalent today and it produced a number of responsive strategies. Many of the works in this exhibition are reflection exactly this mindset. There are also two historic works included: Peter Fend as well as Eva+Franco Mattes. Coming from the aforementioned moment in time in New York, they are now indicating an uncanny actuality.

the thing is collectively counteracts the myth of the individual that has been granted new life under neo-liberalism’s fractured, #mefirst precarities. It challenges the countless unseen connections that continue to nurture and sustain life. As mystics from Rumi to Cage attest, there is nothing we aren’t connected with. We are only the sum of our relationships.

CAMP MEMORIUS IS 5 (2022)
(A live stream from Chuim Village, Mumbai)

We will remember it... as a small spherical robot-camera, perched on a tripod made up of four floors of a building in north-western Bombay, on the old border between the British and Portuguese empires. A generic early 21c security camera with a non-generic purpose: to "film", rather than to "watch". This object - we called it Memorius after the character in a Borges story that first appeared in a Buenos Aires newspaper in 1942 (who not only remembered everything, but also always knew the time)- is 5 years old today. In another 5, it will be 10. 
The stream from Memorius is always at "local time", intercut by images from its young memory: a gathering at CAMP, food on the table, the sky and moons, friends and birds, new buildings overwriting settlements, a popular beach, fireworks celebrating unknown events, pipe-lines and wire-crossings slowly changing the landscape but also the virtualscape. The result is a kind of context-machine in which one image provides a context for another, by thickening it in spacetime.
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