Sculpture (Sculpture)

Data mining is a computer software process that can involve the neutral or benign analyzing of internet data for patterns, however, it can also imply the more sinister activities of surveillance or subject-based information gathering. Amy Balkin’s neon sculpture I (heart) Data Mining , takes on this issue by revealing the acronyms or abbreviations of both technology companies and government bodies that have either profited from data mining, or have used it to political ends. The culprits include Facebook, Investigative Data Warehouse, Apple Computer, The Department of Homeland Security, Narus, Target, and Twitter.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Erratum: Brief Interruptions in the Waste Stream exists as performance, sculpture, drawing, video and the printed word. In a short video the two artists Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine transform a porcelain toilet into bricks in four movements. In quite brutal actions, they use sledgehammers to smash the toilet into small shards that are then reshaped to form a stack of bricks.

Photography (Photography)

For Bettina Poutsttchi’s large-format, site-specific photographic work Echo (2009–10), the four exterior walls of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin were covered with a digitally edited collage of archival images of the glass-and-steel facade of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic), which had once been located nearby. That milestone of late East European modernism was completed in 1976. It served as the seat for the Volkskammer—the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Winter is a film installation of multiple tenses—shot in the recent past, depicting an unknown future, unfolding (and changing) in the present of the exhibition. Shot in the white-washed homes of New Zealand architect Ian Athfield, including his own communal compound high above Wellington harbor, the film suggests various temporal and cultural conditions of instability, hinting at concerns of global warming and nuclear accidents, pushing at the boundaries of science fiction, stripped of narrative explication and causal explanation.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Berlin Remake ( 2005) combines extracts of East German films with images filmed by the artist in Berlin. While staying in Berlin, the artist found the locations where the official films were made and she juxtaposes the two in a synchronised double projection. Therefore on one screen there is Berlin between 1945 and 1989 and on the other Berlin in 2004.