Art in times of information overload

(© Pilvi Takala)

There was a time when people had to go looking for information. These days, we are inundated with it at every turn. In the context of ICT Art Connect 2013, Harlan Levey is presenting an exhibition, under the name “Public Data Explorer”, that shows how artists are dealing with that profusion. The subject is most clearly addressed in the work of Alexandra Dementieva, who presents two major spaces with an LED screen on which different individual words succeed each other. The installations are connected to RSS feeds linked to a variety of media. The computer searches for words relating to either “fear” or “desire”. The more such words crop up, the more lights come on. The whole installation, for example, lights up at the word “war”. Ermias Kifleyesus works with information too, but does so in an “old-school”, analogue way. He leaves sheets of paper lying around in international phone shops; spontaneously, people calling their families back in their homelands fill the sheets with scribbles and doodles. He literally transfers that information to the gallery, as a form of collective automatic writing. Jordan Seiler, for his part, appropriates advertising panels to exhibit his work in public spaces. On one wall of the gallery hangs a bunch of keys that he uses to open those panels. He also offers the keys for sale, so that the public, too, can have a go. The Finnish artist Pilvi Takala, who explores social conventions, tackled the European Parliament. She wanted to attend a number of public hearings and to that end contacted each member state, asking what would be appropriate clothing for the occasion. As there are no clear regulations, she received nineteen different answers, which she printed as e-mails on T-shirts that can be seen at the exhibition. In an accompanying video you can see how Takala deals with the Parliament’s bureaucratic rules. “Public Data Explorer” is deliberately restricted to a limited number of works, which have been combined in a coherent way – a wise decision in these times of information overload.

PUBLIC DATA EXPLORER > 22/12, do/je/Th > zo/di/Su 13 > 19.00, gratis/gratuit/free, Harlan Levey Projects, rue Léon Lepagestraat 37, Brussel/Bruxelles, 0485-69.91.46, www.hl-projects.com