“A Highly Dazed World”
with:
Stephan Backes, Stefania Batoeva, Robin von Einsiedel, Stelios Karamanolis, Isaac Lythgoe, Yves Scherer, Yorgos Stamkopoulos
Stephan Backes, Stefania Batoeva, Robin von Einsiedel, Stelios Karamanolis, Isaac Lythgoe, Yves Scherer, Yorgos Stamkopoulos
Opening day:
Friday, 26th May, 7-10 pm
Duration: 26th May – 8 July 2017
Opening hours:
Thursday 16.00-20.00, Dennis Brzek
Friday 16.00-20.00, Dennis Brzek
To make an appointment: dailylazy@live.com
DAILY LAZY PROJECTS, ATHENS
Sina 6 & Vissarionos 9 (entrance), Athens 10680
How do we break from these simulatory boundaries provided within this millennial world? How can one be liberated or emancipated from the bind of digital life. Would it be too romantic to argue that one truly only lives on the edge when encountering the unpredictable or the uncanny, in danger or on the brink of death? Shouldn’t life announce itself through the dynamism of feeling, passion and the direct experience of the present? Can this simulatory world that is rendered through the digital supplement our new highly dazed world?
Has digitalization acted as a numbing agent against mans inhibition to be human? For mans dependency to encounter accidents and to live a full life in the bliss of this highly dazed world? This world we live in allows us to live in a simulatory gaze, moving from algorithm to algorithm, from post to post. As early as Martin Heidegger the accolade of technology has been perceived as an anaesthetic for man, saving man from his innate dependency to find fate and accident, instead finding binary fact and tangible truth. Heidegger then questions our shifting position on this planet, questioning whether we are becoming devoid of a biological prerequisite for sunlight, storing energy through alternate forms? Has man found a new form of digital alchemy? Is this highly digitalized world a new formula for anthropological perpetual motion?
When placing an artwork in a gallery environment, a public space, one is shifting the works ontological matter, thus shifting its value. The artwork is becoming a form of consumed commodity, just like anything else. Yet there is a difference between an artworks commodity purpose, and other commodity purposes. Other commodities tend to have a ticking life spans, inducing a form of ephemerality, such as buying a new computer, a pair of Nike Air Max 95’s or even a pint at the bar, as man is really only looking for the next best thing, a more refined model. Yet the commodity value of an artwork differs due to two reasons: firstly its cognitive value, whereby we acquire knowledge of a work through thought experience and sense. Secondly an artworks value to induce through contemplation, the archetypal ‘consumption/ destruction’ paradigm shifts whereby an artwork is not consumed in a gallery setting yet is observed and contemplated and in most cases do not have an ephemeral quality. This same action exists when an artwork is uploaded onto the internet, again another form of public realm, when a work as been uploaded it has been commoditised, placing it in a sphere where everything happens, from purchasing a ticket to observing capital market flows, or even watching porn, yet again all disposable actions. Therefore in this setting artistic activity becomes ‘normal’ or standardized, art returns to its origins as a utility purpose, refusing to differ from anything else within the ether. Therefore within this highly dazed world does everything just amalgamate into one form, under the pretence of an algorithm? Have we become comfortably numb? Or is there still space for the individual grow?
Text by Hugo Wheeler
Text by Hugo Wheeler
The inauguration of Daily Lazy Projects marks the beginning of a two-year series of exhibitions and events showcasing the work of both local and international artists in Athens.
---
The Daily Lazy Projects space is sponsored by Efimerida café-bar.
The Daily Lazy Projects space is sponsored by Efimerida café-bar.
