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maggio 25, 2016 - Moderna Museet

THE NEW HUMAN al Moderna Museet, Stoccolma

Press release available only in original language. 

THE NEW HUMAN offers insights into a global warzone of religious fanaticism and political extremism, but also highlights examples of solidarity and compassion. The exhibition explores our human condition in a fast changing world. How do we perceive and understand ourselves as humans? How do we live, socialise, organise and control each other? And what kind of future awaits us? THE NEW HUMAN oscillates between the hysterically absurd and the deeply serious, just as mankind seems to be skirting the borderline between ultimate disaster and the emergence of something new.

All works presented in THE NEW HUMAN have been produced since the turn of the millennium – a period profoundly influenced by the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the “war on terror” that followed. This is also a time that has seen many of the dreams that blossomed amid the Arab Spring collapse in an ash heap of war and humanitarian disaster; extremist violence is on the rise, especially in poor countries; and nationalist and neo-fascist organisations and parties have established themselves throughout Europe. Today we see the largest number of refugees since the Second World War. Alongside this geopolitical development, mindboggling technological progress has raised the issue of what it actually means to be human. In nanoscience, the border between biology and technology is getting increasingly blurred. Global digitalisation has fundamentally changed our way of relating to the world around us and to each other, and the dividing line between actual and virtual reality is dissolving. Some researchers even claim that we are heading towards an era when technology has grown so complex, intelligent and self-generating that humans will no longer be able to control it. A question that arises is whether it will even be feasible to be “human” in the long run, or if the new beings that are evolving – hybrids, avatars and robots – are, in fact, the new humans.

“Today, thirty-year-olds can rightfully claim that the world looks completely different compared to when they were children. In times of such rapid change, pause and reflection become increasingly important. The artists participating in THE NEW HUMAN strive to understand how new developments change our lives and in what direction we might be moving”, says Joa Ljungberg.

In THE NEW HUMAN, diverse subject matter converges on the central question of the condition and possible future of humans. Two works in the exhibition – Daria Martin’s Soft Materials and Kerstin Hamilton’s Zero Point Energy – are set in laboratory environments where a new humanity can be discerned. In God is Design by Adel Abdessemed, ornamental symbols from three monotheistic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – fuse with each other and with schematic drawings of human cells. Tomáš Rafa’s Refugees on Their Way to Western Europe continuously documents Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis, and Hito Steyerl’s How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, gives instructions on how to achieve invisibility in a digitised world where there are cameras everywhere. The exhibition also features the entirely new work Atom Spirit by Ursula Mayer, along with many other contemporary key works.

Participating artists: Adel Abdessemed, #edatkins, Robert Boyd, Esra Ersen, Harun Farocki, Kerstin Hamilton, Daria Martin, Santiago Mostyn, Ursula Mayer, #adrianpaci, Tomáš Rafa, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Superflex and Ryan Trecartin.

THE NEW HUMAN is a film- and videobased project exploring the borderland between exhibition and film festival. Several of the exhibited works will be exchanged in the course of the nine month exhibition period, so there is reason to visit several times. THE NEW HUMAN has been produced by #modernamuseet Malmö and is the result of a substantial collaboration with Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf.

THE NEW HUMAN

Moderna Museet, #stockholm, May 21, 2016 – March 5, 2017 

Curator: Joa Ljungberg