Art: Self-portrait of a camera | nd-aktuell.de

System terror! Please wait. This website is temporarily unavailable. How wonderful! A broken app. The failed server. The disruption at Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, or Signal. Don’t fret! Enjoy the view of the circling Microsoft symbol. The error message. The frozen tile on Zoom. What do you see?

Perhaps one of the “most precious categories of art created without intention.” Glitches, i.e. errors in the technical system, as the writer Clemens J. Setz describes them in the logbook of the Suhrkamp publishing house, are the most electrifying examples of surreal poetry in our time. Much of what is considered a modern narrative strategy basically follows the logic of glitches: errors, bubbles, distortions in the fabric of reality. “They point out that the parameters by which we exist are all changeable.”

Particularly in our digital modern age, which tries to fool us into a perfect world with its smooth user interfaces and ever-smarter applications, the process of unintentional hacking, the interruption of everyday life, the tear in reality expands our perception, as it gives us a view of the hidden, Undiscovered, changeable ones free. No wonder, then, that art and media art quickly saw the glitch as an effective means of design.

The Munich Pinakothek der Moderne has now dedicated an entire special exhibition to “Glitch Art”. Works by 50 international artists will be presented – starting in the early days of photography, when art and technology merged. In “Born to Glitch,” the first of four exhibition chapters, we see double and triple exposed photos, scratched surfaces, and motifs discolored by acid. In contrast, the historical guides and photo error books on display bear witness to how the glitch initially had to assert itself, as in the context of technical progress it was initially seen as what it was: a mistake in the search for the flawless, perfect image.

The political dimension that lies in the subversion of the flawless is shown in Chapter 4 of the exhibition. Under the title “Critical Disruptions” we bring together “critical interventions” that address aspects of ethnic origin, class, sexual orientation and gender identity. In Arthur Jafa’s “Jellow Jacket” from 1999, for example, in the single-channel video we see a person in a yellow jacket lying on a sidewalk while passers-by rush past her. Although “seeing” doesn’t quite fit the bill. The video is so “shaky” that it seems like an animated version of Gerhard Richter’s portrait cycle. The effect is irritation. We step closer, try to take a closer look at what is happening through the veil of image streaks – and only through this process, with full concentration, do we become aware of the man on the ground, obviously a homeless person.

For Pipilotti Rist, working with glitches is closely linked to her body awareness. “When working with analog video, I noticed that the disturbances that occurred when winding, for example, were closer to my inner world than the smooth images that we describe as flawless,” says her statement, which is her single-channel Video “I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much” accompanies. In it we see Rist as a young woman in a very, very low-cut dress, her long hair swinging. But here too, the images are distorted, blurry and unclear due to various disruptive processes. »I realized that there is a great similarity between psychosomatic problems in our bodies and technical malfunctions in machines: the disturbed images are closer to the truth, just as psychosomatic disorders show us what we have repressed, longed for and necessary changes.«

The perfect transmission of images that machines such as cameras, cameras and televisions usually advertise to us is exactly the moment that the works in Chapter 3 “Loss of Control” want to undermine. “For me, disruptions in technical images make it clear that they are constructions with very specific conditions that are not ‘objective’, but above all fragile, changeable and manipulable,” explains Christian Doeller in his statement. “Including them allows a kind of dialogue with the medium, with the machine.”

How poetic this dialogue can be in the sense of Clemens Setz is shown in his work “7300331879”, the “self-portrait of a camera”. Doeller used a digital camera with an extra long exposure time – but with the lens covered. The process of taking photographs was therefore directed not into the external world, but into the interior of the camera. Apart from a mystical black area, all we see in the large-format photo are the sensor’s “hot pixels” – like blue, yellow and red planets in a solar system. The space at the heart of the machine.

Very few contributions in this exhibition are so sensual. The majority of things are deconstructed for the purpose of making a political statement or purely media criticism. In addition, a lot of reading is required, as many technical processes are only explained in the accompanying artist statements.

“Freedom is playing against the program.” The character of the exhibition could be described with this quote from the media philosopher Vilém Flusser, which Gottfried Jäger cites as formative for his work. But what if it’s the program playing against the artist?

Unfortunately, negative effects, which are significant in times of hallucinating AIs, are not discussed in this exhibition. Only in Carsten Nicolai’s “telefunken anti” do we encounter technology with ambivalence. His two flat-screen televisions, which are broadcasting in front of him, are hanging with the screen facing the wall. Technology turns its back on us – as if it has something to hide.

“Glitch – The Art of Disruption” until March 17, 2024, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich.