Exhibition
The Eternal Network
curated by Kristoffer Gansing
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
28 January – 1 March 2020

The Eternal Network is a group exhibition about the persistence of networks, with a focus on their potentials and limits in response to current social and technological changes. The exhibition is curated by Kristoffer Gansing.

  1. Installation View The Eternal Network

  2. Exhibition Opening The Eternal Network

  3. Installation View The Eternal Network

  4. Installation View The Eternal Network

  5. Installation View The Eternal Network

  6. Exhibition Opening The Eternal Network

  7. Exhibition Opening The Eternal Network

  8. Opening transmediale 2020: The Eternal Network

  9. Impression from the exhibition The Eternal Network

  10. Impression of The Eternal Network at HKW

  11. Impression from the exhibition The Eternal Network

  12. Networks of Trust by Kyriaki Goni in the exhibition The Eternal Network

  13. Impression of The Eternal Network during Student Forum 2020

  14. Molecular Sex by Johanna Bruckner in the exhibition The Eternal Network

  15. Impression from the exhibition The Eternal Network during Student Forum 2020

  16. Asunder by Tega Brain, Julian Oliver, Bengt Sjölén in the exhibition The Eternal Network

The network has become an ever-present technical, social, and organisational form. In the mid-1960s, Fluxus artist Robert Filliou coined the term “The Eternal Network,” referring to social interactions taking place through mail art and other emerging means of global communication. This idealistic notion of the network can be contrasted with the many limitations of networks that have become tangible today. With this shift in mind, the exhibition presents twenty recent artworks that re-engage or move beyond the role of the internet and the network imaginary in today’s critical entanglements of humans, environments, and technologies.

The exhibition also features three associative lists of terms, illustrated with quotes and visuals, that highlight histories and transformations of net cultures. These terms fall into one of three categories: Legacies, Shifts, and Dis/Continuities. They are forming an “anarchive” of references to be further activated during the exhibition.

A series of Revisions are presented alongside, and in complement to, the List View part of the exhibition. Revisions are new works and documents that reactivate archival material related to the history of net cultures, from the early 1990s until today.

exhibition catalogue
Journal