Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
2 February – 5 March 2017
The alien matter exhibition deals with the neo-cybernetic couplings of humans, living entities, and technology, and of human and non-human abilities – and addresses the shifts in this power structure. Technologies have become an obvious element of the new object cultures surrounding us. Alien matter is thus not something still in the distant future but rather an integral part of our present. The artists in the exhibition reveal the extent to which our supposedly familiar environment has already become alien material.
Alien matter refers to man-made, and at the same time, radically different, potentially intelligent matter. It is the outcome of a naturalisation of technological artifacts. Environments shaped by technology result in new relationships between man and machine. Technical objects, previously defined merely as objects of utility, have become autonomous agents. Their capacity to learn and network throws into question the previously clear and dominant division between active subject and passive object. 30 exhibiting artists from Berlin and around the world present works about shifts within such power structures, raising questions about the state of our current environment and whether it has already passed the tipping point, becoming “alien matter.” Content-wise, the works cluster around four thematic focal points: Artificial intelligence, plastics, infrastructure, and the Internet of Things – subcategories that are deemed to merge into the nascent great machine and thereby, to speak with Günther Anders, are future obsolete.
