Agricola de Cologne

Click to view the video

Curatorial statement
by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

The exhibition focus of The New Museum for Networked Art during 2023 is dedicated to the 100th return of the launch of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism, an art and literary movement initiated in 1924 taking fundamental influence on contemporary art and the perception of art and culture, in general.

The title of the exhibition project “Vacations in the Subconscious” is referring to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis in the arts and philosophy of the 20th century explaining people’s behaviors/acting directed from the Subconscious.

Surrealism was one of several art expressions in the beginning of 20th century developing simultaneously as a result of the industrialization, the horrors of World War I and the desire of people one hundred years ago for a kind of counter movement which was not dominated/directed by mind.

The exhibition is not intending to initiate a kind of revival of Surrealism, because the Surrealist ideas propagating new kinds of freedom via imaginary worlds, became the genetic code of contemporary art and a variety of expressions in most different manifestations in art, culture, philosophy, literature, or language, but – explore how contemporary artists working with a medium which did not exist yet during the classical Surrealist era (ending in the sixties of past century) – e.g. (digital) video art offering new ways of representing reality/diverse realities, are influenced by the ideas/ideology/utopias/imagery of Surrealism and the visual and substantive clichés Surrealism was generating.

It is the invitation to the viewer of art to dive deeply to the bottom of one’s soul via moving images and recognize the difference between videoart, cinema and video as an advertising medium, as well.

Digital video is representing quite a young medium starting only about 20 years ago, offering its user/creator fundamentally new possibilities using moving images for artistic purposes.
Therefore the chronological aspect became relevant in the exhibition concept – spotlighting the technological development and its manifestation int the content presentation during the past 20 years alike.

Vacations in the Subconscious would like to show a diversity of artistic concepts and the use of technology featuring more about 150 videos by as many artists.

The online/offline exhibition at ALPHABET ART Centre @ The New Museum of Networked Art to be launched in its totality in an exchange between virtual and physical space only on occasion of the exhibition at Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles – 22 July -9 September 2023 – is consisting of the key exhibition “The 3 Surrealists” featuring a retrospective of 10 videos by the 3 Spanish artists Albert Merino, Laura/Sira Cabrera and Ausin Sainz- and 10 associated video art programs including each one about 12 videos by as many individual artists from 35 countries.

As a curated selection, the video art screening program to be presented in Berlin is outlining the German capital and the venue of The Institute für Alles Mögliche as a Surrealist vacation resort in the subconscious by presenting an exclusive composition of art videos by Albert Merino (Spain) – Oleksa Konopelko (Ukraine) – Maka Kiladze (Georgia) – Maria Korporal (NL) – Laura y Sira Cabrera (Spain) – Brit Bunkley (New Zealand) – Ebba Jahn (Germany) – Heidi Kumao (USA) – Ausin Sainz (Spain) – Marco Joubert (Canada) – Francesca Fini (Italy).

The presentation in Berlin is part of the ongoing solidarity program for Ukraine @ The New Museum of Networked Art – Peace Letters to Ukraine, initiated on 2, March 2022 –
https://peace-letters.nmartproject.net/