Casey Killoran Performs a Dadaist Reading From Elias Wessel’s Artbook »Textfetzen« [Scraps of Text]

Please join Picture Theory for the closing event of the exhibition »Elias Wessel: It’s Complicated.« Actress Casey Killoran will perform a dadaist reading from Elias Wessel’s »Textfetzen. It’s Complicated: Texts From an Anti/Social Network 2019–2021. Is Possibly Art« (Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2022). The performance will be followed by an artist conversation between Elias Wessel and Antonis Pittas. September 7, 2024 at 3–5 PM, Picture Theory, 548 W28 Street #238, New York. A recording of the event is avalaible here.

Spread of Elias Wessel’s »Textfetzen. It’s Complicated: Texts From an Anti/Social Network 2019–2021. Is Possibly Art.« Published by Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2022. (Photo of »Textfetzen« © 2024 Elias Wessel/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Headshots © 2024 the artists)

Elias Wessel’s »Textfetzen« confront us with our everyday consumptions, which are fed by the inexhaustible newsfeed of social media platforms. His »Textfetzen« immobilize the newsfeed, inviting us to linger and sink into it, to draw associative lines between the scraps. Wessel transfers the newsfeed into other, classic media formats: As a color photograph, as an audio file, and as text in book form, they make their way back from the digital to the analog. Fixed, limited and authorized by the artist. In addition to this gain in knowledge, it may be seen as a debunking of the promise that search engines and social networks would ­create a better world and better understanding between people.

It’s Complicated, currently on view at Picture Theory, is an inspection of media algorithms and our relationships with the seemingly irresistible nature of social media. Wessel documents the real-life scrolling of social media users by utilizing a long-exposure that culminates in abstract compositions that serve as reflections and metaphors to the indistinct boundaries between man and machine — inviting viewers to rethink digital media and consider the relativistic, incomplete, and fragmented worldview we consume daily. Wessel is concerned with the psychophysiological experience of a visual reality. Artificial Intelligence becomes a focal point with the visual-to-text recognition »poems« (Is Possibly Art; Textfetzen), accompanying each photograph. The artist seeks to visualize questions such as »How does digital space react to analog space?« or »How can we find clear meaning in the mass of information noise, without a discernible, trusted source?«

Installation view of »Elias Wessel: It’s Complicated« at Picture Theory New York

Casey Killoran is a 2nd generation Irish-American and a 7th generation New Yorker. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Group and The Apollo Theatre. She has appeared on CBS’s FBI: Most Wanted, NBC’s Shades of Blue opposite Jennifer Lopez & New Amsterdam, and HBO’s Sex in the City, as well as numerous indie films. As a filmmaker, her award-winning films have been Official Selections at over 25 film festivals (Hollyshorts, Woods Hole, Soho Int, DTLA). Her first produced award winning feature film, Viral Beauty, received theatrical distribution in 2018 and is currently streaming on Apple TV, Tubi, Vudu, and Google Play. Casey is a graduate of the NYU Tisch Graduate Acting Program.

Portrait of Casey Killoran, courtesy of Theresa Biesold

Antonis Pittas (Athens) lives and works in Amsterdam, and has studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. In 2021 he was appointed as an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Humanity Studies, University of Amsterdam. He has been an artist-in-residence at Bard College, Annandale, New York. Pittas now, is an artist-in-residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. He had, amongst others, solo exhibitions at Mujin-to Productions, Tokyo (2023) Annet Gelink Gallery (2023), EMST, Athens (2022), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2021) Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen (2017); Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (2016) Hessel Museum of Art & CSS Bard Galleries, Annandale, New York (2012); Benaki Museum, Athens (2012); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2011) and participated in many group exhibitions, Biennials and Art fairs across the globe.

Portrait of Antonis Pittas, courtesy by the artist

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