In his book 'What Is Different?', Tillmans, one of the most popular contemporary and politically active artists amongst the new generation, digs into the issues of of newly resurfaced right-wing populism, the phenomenon of fake news, and psychological findings.
Rather than analysing the status quo, he focuses on what has changed in the past ten, twenty, thirty, forty years. Why are societal consensus and institutions now under attack?
Similar to the discussion surrounding the Anthropocene, Tillmans interviewed scientists, politicians, journalists, and social workers, highlighting the issues at stake from various angles. The publication also contains analytic texts and studies that shed further light on what happens in our brain, ethics, and online behaviour when we are confronted with statements that oppose our political beliefs. Tillmans associated these texts with his own images as well as visual material found in print and online. While designing this year’s Jahresring, he has created photocopy works using the four-colour scan process on a machine from the 1990s—an early digital collage technique that resonates with the complexity of the situation we find ourselves in today. Hence uses old materials to made audiences re-connect and mirror contemporary issues (lateral learning).
David Zwirner Gallery, New York, October 2018.
Exhibition focus: What does it mean to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world?
Film (2018) Tillmans speaks a stream of consciousness on the topic of technology in the current climate.
An extract that I noted:
'lack of respect for the power of the instrument that lies in your hand
lack of understand about what goes on within this instrument
how is code is written 0s and 1s
How can hundreds of thousand of people stream movies at the same time and it all goes through cables under the ocean?
when the internet first got created in 2001
exchange
gigabytes translated in seconds down the same wires'
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