THE GLITTERING FIELD @AOA; 87 CONTEMPORARY

BERLIN ARTWEEK SEPTEMBER 11-16 2024

Ha no kage, 

Kaze ga wataru, 

Hikari no kirameki

(Tree shadows,

Wind passing through,

Glimmering light)

— Bashō

Bashō’s haiku captures the ephemeral nature of transmission, the glittery signal that catches our eye is a relay, a subtle missive of Mind. Eduardo Kohn in his book How Forests Think asserts that what we (humans) share with the sylvan habitat is not just bio-material, but also Mind. If we have eyes to see, and ears to hear  transmission is always happening within and across species, perpetual relays of distributed cognition. The exhibition The Glittering Field, positions an assemblage of artists and thinkers to contemplate and reflect the fluctuations of this ubiquitous Mind.

Just as the wind manoeuvres stealthily, tracked only by the glitter in its wake, we enter the dialogue obliquely, through intricate overlays of call and response;  via spirit; via invocation of DNA; via tech; via latent ancestral frameworks;  via code and decode; via seduction of the Absent; through traversal of the Void; through song; through surrender; through capture; through movement…  The Africans of the Middle Passage, forcibly severed from centuries of culture, compress what can be carried in the nervous system into a signal we now recognise in jazz, gospel, hip hop; the spices Marco Polo brings back from the Silk Road expand the palate, trigger the sensorium, tipping Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance… 

The glittering field is all these things, feedback loops wefting into shimmery underlays of the quotidian.

“Look around you, the world is shimmering…”

– Alexander Vvedensky / The Gray Notebook

What is transmission? In general terms, transmission is the act of sending a signal from one place to another. This takes shape in a variety of means i.e., radio or light waves; cables or umbilical cords; feelers or tentacles. In biology, transmission can mean a nerve impulse across synapses; in spiritual traditions, the passing of knowledge (or gnosis) from teacher to student.

The works in the Glittering Field will be exemplified by the tech of text and textiles; rites of osmosis; rites of communion; interspecies relays; interventions of Intelligence of various modalities.  The show will be embedded in a subtly dynamic sound environment: the gallery itself transformed into a 24 hour streaming radio station for the duration of Berlin Artweek. The evening programs will be dedicated to livestreams of art talks, performances, and DJ sets.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Onome Ekeh is a writer and designer of speculative fiction. Born and raised on both sides of the Atlantic, she started out as a painter, gravitated towards design, and then fell in love with film. Somewhere in the collision, she submerged into the digital world and discovered Artificial Intelligence. She produces works that spans film, video, theatre, literature and radio. She is currently a lecturer at the FHNW Academy of Art & Design in Basel, Switzerland. 

ABOUT THE GALLERY

AOA:87 is a gallery for contemporary art with locations in Bamberg and Berlin Mitte. Founder Angela Kohlrusch and her team are committed to presenting new and emergent voices alongside more established ones, spanning a  multiplicity of media.

The gallery functions as a discourse space for both viewing and intellectual exchange, to this end AOA;87’s calendar comprises solo presentations interspersed  with thematic group shows, institutional collaborations, and international art fairs. The  gallery also pursues various means of amplifying artists reach and raising their profiles by way of catalogues, limited edition imprints, vinyl pressings among other formats.