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IS THAT THE VIEW FROM A WORLD AND INTO A FUTURE IN WHICH THESE ROMANTIC IDEAS WILL NO LONGER EXIST?
24.07-07.08.2021
Erratum
Böckhstraße 40. 10967
Berlin, Germany
ICONOSTASIS OF HYPOCRISY 2.0
On July 24, 2021, you quietly join the cult of hypocrisy at Erratum New Made Church. The liturgy of the rethinking of the rational and the corrupt cyber-bacchanalia impatiently begins at 5 in the afternoon.
The dark iconostasis of the time of the pandemic is a continuation of the first Iconostasis of Hypocrisy. This iteration reflects on the aesthetics of Generation Z, ordinary visitors to the Erratum art space, with their drawings in notebooks, fashion of the 90s, abstract music, and meme-quoting as opposed to spiritual awakening. It addresses impotence in the face of the political situation, the search for rethinking and resurrection, criticism of the evil monster of capitalism, and disagreement with the path of escapism through online reality. The rotating all-seeing eye of the world database flaunts at the top of the iconostasis. Two teenagers are the main characters of the icon. The story of the bottom icons level depicts how they went through doomsday together to reach a utopian paradise.
The installation is accompanied by a prayer book and a sound piece: a reading of the sad meta-canons lamenting the degradation of civilization and the possibility of technocracy. At The Iconostasis Of Hypocrisy is the praying book glorifying the entire surrounding fragile universe. You can listen to the chanting reading of it as a sound piece during the ceremony. The book is available in the church shop.
Review by Prof. Knut Ebeling:
"In terms of form, the text is based on poetics of invocation and acclamation, on odes or odysseys in which a certain cosmological relationship to the world is constructed in poetic form: something is given to be heard, in artistic or literary form. The temporality of this gift is a future from which one looks back to the past that is our present. While the text is provided with a lot of artistic ornament, it itself takes an archaic form. One has the impression the world before its end is being invoked. It is the well-known, techno-capitalist world of today, the swan song of which is celebrated here.
Those who speak up here are the 'adolescents of the post-industrial era,' who grew up with the Internet, social media, Trump and fake news, pandemic and climate change. The word is taken by a generation that is expressing its malaise and madness in the contemporary world. It seems like an outcry from a generation that will say in retrospect: Why didn't you hear us? A dystopian world is constructed whose swan song can be heard clearly and extremely artistically.
The artistic form of the work does not only affect its ornament or illustration, but of course first of all the text itself, which is artistically designed. Theory or science no longer plays a role in this dystopia, in this 'era of a new philosophy' in which every 'brain is connected to a database.' Rather, it appears to be an accomplice in a world that has allowed this to happen: Is this a look back at a world of philosophy and ideas, but which they have ruined? Is that the view from a world and into a future in which these romantic ideas will no longer exist?"