1014 New York presents »It's Complicated, Is Possibly Art«
Elias Wessel
»We all know that we’re changing inside our heads. Quickly. Too quickly. Until recently people were simply people. Now we’re turning into something else. We all feel it. We all know it.« (Obrist, Basar, Coupland, The Extreme Self)
From September 7–23, 2022, 1014 New York presents the exhibition It’s Complicated, Is Possibly Art, that showcases a comprehensive selection of works by Elias Wessel that invert the digital space, playing with the seemingly non-corporeal and magical forces shaping our experience. Through images, text, sound, and technology, the exhibition gives visible, audible, and physical form to the orchestration behind the scenes, and the resulting fragmented nature of language, communication, and identity. Can our perception of reality and ourselves really be trusted?
1014 is an independent US not-for-profit organization, founded in 2017 upon the initiative of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut. In an interconnected world, it offers a space to build partnerships across the Atlantic. Throughout the year, 1014 functions as an inclusive platform for dialogue and art, opening the door for creatives from around the globe to stage exhibitions and programs on key societal topics. Located across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1014 is in the heart of New York City but reaches beyond its borders. Supporting collaboration between experts, 1014 is a space to explore ideas across the worlds of culture, science, politics and society.
Exhibition view of Elias Wessel — It's Complicated, Is Possibly Art, September 7 - 23, 2022 at 1014 New York
Exhibition view of the entry hall at 1014
Exhibition view of the entry hall at 1014 with the site specific installation It’s Complicated, Is Possibly Art
Audio installation simultaneously playing all audio works from the series Ist möglicherweise Kunst (Is Possibly Art)
Exhibition view of the site specific installation It’s Complicated, Is Possibly Art on the 2nd floor
Exhibition view of the site specific installation It’s Complicated, Is Possibly Art on the 4th floor
The exhibition begins on the ground floor with the physical and audible form of what usually remains hidden – the vast infrastructure of the Internet and the algorithmic data tracking, running on auto behind the scenes. Descending from an imperceptible source are suspended cables that do not end – instead they each transform into a sound piece, perpetually permeating the surrounding physical space. In the following room (see below), the experience continues with the 11 works from the series, It’s Complicated, each accompanied by the corresponding audio work, Ist möglicherweise Kunst [Is Possibly Art].
Installed as a surround-image display for face-to-face interaction, each work is a blurred palimpsest of something familiar, yet remains suspended in the in-between, the space where we spend most of our time in the digital era – consuming fragments of knowledge and information, incomplete, fleeting, source unknown; never in full, transparent view.
Created using the process of long exposure on social media feeds, the works stop the mindless scroll through relentless updates, and invite the viewer to reflect on the mechanics of the experience from a different perspective. Heard through the headphones next to each work is the audible dimension — the audio output created by the AI behind the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology Wessel used to convert his images into words. The title of the audio work comes from the verdict, »is possibly art,« determined by the AI in the process of translating the images.
The exhibition segment asks the viewer to rethink digital media and consider the relativistic, incomplete, fragmented worldview we consume daily. How can we find clear meaning in the mass of information noise, without a discernible, trusted source? What thoughts, ideas, images, and voices can we truly claim as our own?
Installation of It’s Complicated (Tabloid Edition, 2019–2021) and the according audioworks from Ist möglicherweise Kunst [Is Possibly Art] (2021).
From time to time fragments from Ist möglicherweise Kunst [Is Possibly Art] (2021) and Textfetzen (2021–2022) are audible coming from heating units and other areas of the 1014 architecture
It’s Complicated – No. 11 (Tabloid Edition) with Schöne neue Welt – The Moving Images visible in the background
During the course of the pandemic, as most of us retreated into the private sphere, the use of smartphones and digital technologies became a lifeline; a channel to continue our connection with the outside world. As use increased, so did the content for consumption and, along with it, concern for data privacy. In 2021, Apple embarked on an ad campaign, installed on billboards throughout New York City, quelling consumer fears – the iPhone covered the faces behind the device, implying that users’ data and identity remained protected.
Elias Wessel’s Deepfakes – Privacy series (see below), created through the process of long exposure applied to screens of smartphones and other digital devices, brings into question the ideas of privacy and the purported neutral, protective white space of your screen, and re-examines the experience engineered by synthetic and digital media. Are the contents of your life really shielded by your device? Can it contain the details of your identity within its seemingly impervious borders? How can we separate what is ›real‹ from what is ›fake‹? What really belongs to us and forms our perception of reality?
Installation of the series Deepfakes – Privacy (2021)
Elias Wessel, Deepfakes – Privacy, No. 2 (2021), color photograph, 72,6 x 60,2 cm in artist frame
The exhibition extends into the city. View of Deepfakes – Public Privacy (2021), Emulsion paint, approx. 600 x 1600 cm
The enduring, true value of a work of art (to whatever school it may belong), resides solely in the feeling expressed.
— Kazimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World
What constitutes a purely digital work? Where and when does it exist? What is its real value? Elias Wessel’s NFT work, Quick Response (2021), presented in analog, physical form, transforms the corridor into a pass-through between the physical and the digital. The tripartite composition is Wessel’s inevitable, yet reluctant response to the maelstrom of NFT art in 2021, and the artist’s lament for 2-D pictures. The three slightly blurry QR codes displayed at 1014 as simple printouts of the NFT works, are each linked to an orchestrated Google search. The QR medium is an echo of the original intent of QR – »quick response« – technology, developed in Japan in the 1990’s to answer the desire of an expanding consumer society for automated, shorthand access to more information. Wessel, in his Quick Response, uses the technology to choreograph a clever inquiry that will continue to yield perpetually changing answers to the search. Scanning each QR code takes you to a page of Google search results; the output is based on the algorithm’s mined data about you, and Wessel’s programmed command.
Schwarzes dataistisches Quadrat [Black Dataistic Square] searches for the words, »Netz, du hast das Bild gestohlen, gib es wieder her!« [Net, you stole the picture, give it back!]. Rotes Quadrat[Red Square] leads the viewer to the results for »Dass dich färbt die rote Tinte und dann bist du tot.« [So, you’re tinged with red and then you’re dead]. Schwarzes Quadrat[Black Square] links to the results for the phrase, »Nimm, du brauchst nicht alles haben, mit der Maus vorlieb.« [You do not have to have everything, be content with the mouse]. Together, the three works form Wessel’s adapted verses of »Fuchs, Du hast die Gans gestohlen« [Fox, You Stole the Goose], a popular 19th century German nursery rhyme that teaches children about the repercussions of stealing from the human race.
The form, title, and installation of Quick Response at 1014 are references to Kazimir Malevich and the Suprematist ideal of pure, non-objective art. Malevich’s Black Square presented in December, 1915 in the groundbreaking exhibition, Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10, reduced all objective form, color, and composition ›to zero.‹ Wessel’s Quick Response continues the reduction, transforming the physical image into the zeros and ones of digital code. The work is an intervention in the oversaturated digital space that offers the viewer a chance to take a reflective pause from constant online consumption, reclaim contemplative time, and consider the effects of the changes taking place in our world. As you scan the works, take a moment and consider this: what might the Internet be stealing from you?
Installation of Schwarzes dataistisches Quadrat [Black Dataistic Square] from the NFT series Quick Response (2021)
View from the opposite direction of the parlor with installation of the Quick Response series (2021)
View of Schwarzes dataistisches Quadrat [Black Dataistic Square] in the “holy corner” including wood chair – both as reference to the first exhibition of Kazimir Malevitch’s Black Dadaistic Square. To fully experience the images on display, please scan each work with your smartphone (possible by scanning the QR codes within the installation images)
View of parlor with Schwarzes Quadrat [Black Square] and Rotes Quadrat [Red Square] from the series Quick Response
View of Schwarzes Quadrat [Black Square] from the series Quick Response (2021). NFT, 12,520 pixels x 12,520 pixels (equals print size 106 x 106 cm)
Schöne Neue Welt [Brave New World] is a series that started in New York City shortly before the onset of the pandemic and was finished in late 2020 in Germany. It re-examines the role of cell phones in our lives and what lies beneath the screen we know so intimately.
In the process for the series, smartphones were being destroyed in every conceivable way – thrown under a bus, smashed against walls, maltreated with a hammer, drowned, set on fire, burned. The displays were shattered and unrecognizable, yet the photographs of the demolished devices rendered aesthetically beautiful images. Wessel started thinking about how it becomes psychologically difficult to destroy these ›magic boxes‹ that almost seem like living creatures or extended parts of ourselves. This led to the video installation on view, Schöne Neue Welt – The Moving Images (2021), for which Wessel documented the seemingly organic, moving shapes he witnessed during the destruction process. What is our relationship to these digital tools we use daily? Is destruction an integral part of beauty, or does destruction turn into something beautiful?
Installation of the series Schöne neue Welt – The Moving Images (2021)
Installation of Bewegtbild, No. 1 and Bewegtbild, No. 2 from the series Schöne neue Welt – The Moving Images (2021)
The exhibition culminates in play: the instruments of observation, the algorithmic systems that dictate what we see and hear, become the manipulated, performative material instead. Musical artist Natalia Kiës composed a sound piece using the computer-generated raw audio of It’s Complicated — Ist möglicherweise Kunst [Is Possibly Art], presented at 1014 with selected texts from Textfetzenand Wessel’s video, Systems at Play. The multimedia installation gives the viewer a chance to see and hear the absurdity of the information we consume, and the disorienting, changing structure of language and communication.
Installation of Systems at Play (2021-2022). This collaborative work includes a sound composition by Natalia Kiës and a video-work by Elias Wessel. The sound composition uses the raw audio footage of Ist möglicherweise Kunst
Installation of Systems at Play (2021-2022) in the reception hall of 1014
Opposite side of the room with Systems at Play (2021-2022)
Technical set up of the sound composition includes the presentation of the video work Systems at Play (2021-2022) on a first generation iPad
Close up on one of the wall panels within Systems at Play. All frames show fragments from Elias Wessel’s book publication Textfetzen. It’s Complicated. Texts From an Anti/Social Network 2019–2021
Elias Wessel, Textfetzen. It’s Complicated: Texte aus einem a/sozialen Netzwerk 2019–2021 Ist möglicherweise Kunst [It’s Complicated: Texts From an Anti/Social Network 2019–2021Is Possibly Art], 2021