exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, October 2014- January 2015
Simon Denny, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, 2013/2014 *; Hito Steyerl, Strike, 2010; Archiv Valentina Tanni, The Great Wall of Memes, 2012-2014; Seth Price, How to disappear in America, 2014
Courtesy: Simon Denny: the artist; Galerie Buchholz Berlin/Cologne; Hito Steyerl: the artist; Valentina Tanni: the artist, Anonymous; Seth Price: the artist
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier

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Hito Steyerl, Strike, 2010
Courtesy the artist

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exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, October 2014- January 2015
Archiv Valentina Tanni, The Great Wall of Memes, 2012-2014; Simon Denny, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, 2013/2014
Courtesy: Valentina Tanni: the artist, Anonymous;Simon Denny: the artist; Galerie Buchholz Berlin/Cologne
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier

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exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, October 2014- January 2015
Simon Denny, The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom, 2013/2014 *; Seth Price, How to disappear in America, 2014; !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014
Courtesy: Simon Denny: the artist; Galerie Buchholz Berlin/CologneSeth Price: the artist; !Mediengruppe Bitnik: the artists
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier

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exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, October 2014- January 2015
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014;Eva and Franco Mattes, Emily’s Video, 2012
Courtesy: !Mediengruppe Bitnik: the artists; Eva and Franco Mattes: the artists; Carroll/Fletcher, London
Photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier

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exhibition view
!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014, (detail)

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!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014, (ECTASY 10X YELLOW TWITTER 120MG MDMA)

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!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014, (ECTASY 10X YELLOW TWITTER 120MG MDMA)

 

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exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, October 2014- January 2015
Eva and Franco Mattes, Emily’s Video, 2012;!Mediengruppe Bitnik, Random Darknet Shopper, 2014
Courtesy: Eva and Franco Mattes: the artists; Carroll/Fletcher, London; !Mediengruppe Bitnik: the artists
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Gunnar Meier

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Eva and Franco Mattes, Emily’s Video, 2012
Courtesy the artists

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Visiting the current exhibition entitled The Darknet – From Memes to Onionland. An Exploration at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is like browsing the web during hours; scrolling down pages, jumping from links to links, starting with funny memes and odd videos until you arrive to a dark void that you know it exists but you are not fully aware of it.

The first room of the exhibition is literally taken over by images: VALENTINA TANNI presents her collection of her best memes onto a massive freestanding wall, while the visitor is surrounded by the Personal Effects of KIM DOTCOM (2013/2014) by SIMON DENNY, a series of inkjet prints on canvas which features the entire inventory of confiscated items taken by New Zealand police during a raid on the home of German internet entrepreneur, KIM DOTCOM. The first aspect of the exhibition is somehow funny and most of the time absurd, just like Strike (2012), a video loop by HITO STEYERL which shows a woman dressed in black approaching dramatically a LCD monitor and striking its surface once with a chisel, leaving a multi-coloured web of fractures across it.

The more you enter into the exhibition, the more you penetrate into the dark side of the web, the one with hacker communications systems, stolen data, non-transparent mechanisms and browsers on which you can buy drugs, weapons or counterfeits among others. For the exhibition the !MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK created the project Random Darknet Shopper (2014), which consists, according to the press release, ‘of an automated online shopping bot which has a budget of $100 in Bitcoins per week. Once a week the bot goes on shopping spree in the deep web where it randomly choses and purchases one item and has it mailed to the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen‘. All the goods received are presented in the last room of the exhibition into glass boxes along with a transcript of the ad from the Agora market place.

In the same space, the last piece of the show is the troubling video by EVA and FRANCO MATTES entitled Emily’s Video (2012) which they call “the worst video ever,” a combination of clips they found on illicit sites inside the Darknet. The actual video is not presented, what you see is only a compilation of the reactions of willing participants watching it, and leaving the viewer petrified by its own imagination.

After having seen the show, one question remains: is the darknet just evil? or can it be use in a good alternative way since the regular Internet seems to be screwed?

→ The Darknet – From Memes to Onionland. An Exploration is currently on view at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen and is running through January 11th, 2015.

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