Each Line Is A Crime

exhibition and book launch Archive Kabinett Müllerstraße 133, Berlin

28 August 2018 7pm: Opening of Each Line is a Crime
with works by Birgit Auf der Lauer & Caspar Pauli, Robert Estermann, and Katya Sander

8pm: Presentation of the book
Towards (Im)Measurability of Art and Life with the author Miya Yoshida and Chiara Figone 

On the occasion of the book release of Towards (Im)Measurability of Art and Life written and edited by Miya Yoshida, Archive will host the group show, Each Line Is A Crime curated by the author. The exhibition expands on exploring the subject of art and measurement. It presents works by three artists: Birgit Auf der Lauer & Caspar Pauli (DE), Robert Estermann (CH), and Katya Sander (DK), each addressing different political, economic, aesthetic, and ethical issues of measurement in contemporary society.

Auf der Lauer & Pauli engage in issues of human trafficking at the borders and on the measurement of life. Wegskizze und Grenzlinie (2017) is a suspended sculpture consisting of a series of cut-out maps that show the escape routes used for crossing national borders in the Middle East. Most of these borders were negotiated during the colonial period, otherwise newly defined during the independence between the 50s and the 70s. The organic lines on systematic grids cross over the representational lines which demarcate the life/death border. The work confronts the viewer with the kind of measurement of life shaped by geopolitics and transnational economies.

Spectacular Interferometry (2017) is a series of very large digital prints by Robert Estermann. Each print consists of two different sets of drawings; one is his recent abstract drawings of beaches, the other is the pseudo technical drawings of automobiles that he drew at the age of twelve when he was obsessed with the design and measurement of cars. In Spectacular Interferometry, the artist juxtaposes them into a single pictorial plane and plays with the idea of measurement in the “(non) scale of a modernist dream” to interfere with his pragmatic approach as child car designer.

FINANCIALISATION (2016) by Katya Sander is a three-screen video installation to search images that depict relationships between contemporary statistics, calculations, and the global financial system in everyday life. Utilising lines, colours and rectangular forms with the insertion of an interview with French sociologist Emmanuel Didier, the artist connects the measurement used in the system of financial capitalism to artistic imaginary and successfully portrays the peculiarities behind the system. The exhibition aims at provoking viewers to reconsider the affects of contemporary measurements and to exercise them conceptually, methodologically and imaginatively.

The title of the exhibition is originated from a subtitle of the blog Robert’s Lines by Robert Estermann. The exhibition is kindly supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, and the publication is made possible by the support of Stiftung Kunstfonds e. V. and by Stiftung für moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst.

With contributions by Patricia Ticineto Clough, Helmut Draxler, Sophie Houdart, Chihiro Minato, Matt Mullican, Lucy Powell, and Oxana Timofeeva Softcover 320 pages ISBN 978-3-943620-64-1 Euros 18 Towards (Im)Measurability of Art and Life Written and edited by Miya Yoshida Towards (Im)Measurability of Art and Life gathers together various stories, practices, and essays about measurement that embrace paradox, contradiction, and humor. The book creates and introduces incidents of ideas, conceptual methods, acts, and processes of measurement that dwell in a conceptual transition between science (technology) and everyday life. When measurement is viewed as a practice, it is important to recall that data processing, especially visualisation, actually necessitates many aesthetic decisions. This makes contemporary practices of measurement appear to be no longer guided primarily by reason. Although, historically, measurement has always contained aspects of subjectivity, enlightenment in modernity aimed at excluding them based on ideological tenets of democracy and the necessities of administration.

https://www.facebook.com/miya.yoshida/posts/2087751067901678

 installing "Spectacular Interferometry"

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10214612278813974&set=pcb.10214612367736197&type=3&theater