Escap­ing the Dig­i­tal Unease

After 25 years of the World Wide Web it has become com­mon­place that our life also hap­pens in dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion spaces. But unease spreads in this dig­i­tal life. While we’re using prod­ucts by Apple, Amazon, Google, Face­book and find them useful and indis­pens­able, we’ve become aware of the dom­i­nance of such big play­ers. Their ser­vices form our thoughts and com­mod­ify the ideas of frien­ship and exchange. We do not surf the wild web any­more, but are fed with feeds, receiv­ing more and more of the same, based on algo­rith­mic extrap­o­la­tions of our pref­er­ences. With the social media account we rent ser­vices, which we pay with our data and atten­tion. With Edward Snowden’s dis­clo­sures aware­ness on the exces­sive gov­ern­ment-sur­veil­lence and their link to pri­vate actors has also reached a broader public.

Since the begin­ning of the web, artists have built their own spaces and chan­nels there. They have cre­ated art­works that reacted to com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion and restric­tions in a crit­i­cal way. The exhi­bi­tion presents works from over 30 artists and col­lec­tives tack­ling these topics, rais­ing aware­ness to the unease, show­ing its causes or pos­si­bil­i­tites of an escape from it. A selec­tion of books and artist pub­li­ca­tions are pre­sented in a read­ing room.