I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, organiser and teacher living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
I'm a Finnish-Dutch artist, organiser and teacher living in Amsterdam-Noord. In my work I explore the revolutionary potential of collective creativity. As an autodidact DJ, filmmaker and anarchist, clubs are my art school and protests my phd.
07.09.2013 - 24.11.2013
Artists: Timo Arnall, Micol Assaël, Mark Bain, William Basinski, James Beckett, Dean Blunt, James Bridle, Constant, Emptyset, Mark Fisher, Alicia Framis, Laurent Grasso, Johan Grimonprez, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Roger Hiorns, Thomas Hirschhorn & Marcus Steinweg, Paul Jebanasam, Krõõt Juurak, Eli Keszler, Jacob Kirkegaard, Jørn Knutsen, Gert Jan Kocken, Jonas Lund, Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson (terminal beach), Aditya Mandayam, Metahaven, China Miéville, Kianoosh Motallebi, Stephen O’Malley, Trevor Paglen, Yayati Papita, Ras G, Roly Porter, Anri Sala, Einar Sneve Martinussen, Espen Sommer Eide, Sarah van Sonsbeeck, Berend Strik and Juha van 't Zelfde
Exhibition: Juha van 't Zelfde
Exhibition design: Miroslav Rajic
Dread logo: Metahaven
Collaborators: Shane Burmania, Xander Karskens and Huub van Riel
Photos: Timo Arnall
Tags: Amsterdam, art, design, film, music, research, technology
De Hallen Haarlem opened the new season with the international group exhibition Dread – Fear in the age of technological acceleration, curated by Juha van ‘t Zelfde, winner of the De Hallen Haarlem Curatorial Grant 2013. The exhibition presented works in various media, and by artists of different generations, that dealt with apprehension and fear as a result of technological innovation.
Instantaneous communication technologies like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and the worldwide distribution of information on the internet play a major role in the acceleration and synchronisation of emotions. Fear of a terrorist attack, a drone strike or the invasion of privacy online can simultaneously be shared by everyone all over the world. The phenomena of ‘acceleration,’ ‘omnipresence’ and ‘instantaneity,’ mapped out by philosophers such as Paul Virilio and Peter Sloterdijk during the Gulf War and 9/11, and defining qualities of our networked zeitgeist, are a rich source for the creation of art.
Dread is the visceral sensation that warns us of possible dangers. Sigmund Freud has suggested that dread is a readiness for danger. According to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, dread is not so much a fear of the present, but a fear of the future. Dread is not a fear of the actual, but it is a fear of the possible. Dread is a fear of what has not happened yet but may well happen in the future. It is a legitimate everyday fear that people live with and have to deal with on a daily basis.
Putting a searchlight on dread may lead to the possibility of an early detection and eventual prevention of catastrophe. The dreadful is not only a state of paralysis—it is also a constructive, moral force, that helps us decide what is good in order to preserve it and prevent bad things from happening.
The exhibition contained works that consisted of constructive dread, like the revolutionary organisation of freedom of Constant’s New Babylon; the phenomenological investigation of drone surveillance of Laurent Grasso’s On Air; and the atomised passenger aircraft engine of Roger Hiorns in his work Untitled, as the catastrophic conclusion of human imagination.
Some works were ambiguous by nature, other works created a direct physical response, making the spectator literally feel dread. But all the works combined intended to create an environment in which dread was exposed as an affective domain for contemporary art.
Dread existed in the changes brought about by technological innovation, by cultural and social upheavals and the social responses to them. And if dread was just memory in the future tense, then the artists in Dread might possibly remember, recognise and warn us for future terror.
Every two years, De Hallen Haarlem offers an under-35 curator the opportunity to realize an exhibition project. With this initiative, the museum for modern and contemporary art wants to stimulate the development of talent among up-and-coming curators in the Netherlands and bring about a fruitful exchange with young thinkers and makers from outside the museum. The De Hallen Haarlem Curatorial Grant has been made possible by the generous support of the Dr. Marijnus Johannes van Toorn & Louise Scholten Foundation.