Watch your Bubble!
About borders, multiplicity and extension

Exhibition: 10.05.2018 – 23.06.2018 | Opening: 09.05.2018, 18:00

Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten
Turmstraße 75, 10551 Berlin
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturdday 1pm – 7pm, Admission free
www.kunstverein-tiergarten.de

The gallery is a cooperative directing model between the Faculty of Art and Culture Berlin-Mitte and the Kunstverein Tiergarten e. V. www.kultur-mitte.de

How much does your SELF depend on others? To what extent is the bubble surrounding you shaping WHO YOU ARE?

This project is an interdisciplinary art exhibition & conference devoted to the problem of Bubbles and the illusory yet tangible phenomena of self identity. We intend to merge the borders between philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, and aesthetics, converging on multiple art disciplines.

The project Bubbles explores the building up of the social and personal identity, as a constitutive process in living beings, as a process of demarcation and delimitation across groups, as a blurred and flittering complex phenomenon. Identities and the self, yet historically, culturally and socially determined, can be conceived as unstable, emerging and constantly changing, as physically instantiated processes. In virtual space we blend the features of our identity into an ostensible coherent matter. But what is coherence?

The looking glass self is a mirror of the society, and yet it constitutes society. As the identity assimilates to the bubble, the bubble becomes the identity. Its weakness makes up its power. Although caught up in the anonymity of the bubble, as one among many, the individual self can be the tipping point for the holistic identity to emerge. And yet, it will never be able to break out of this bubble.

Bubbles invite an exploration of the ubiquitous, constructed, immeasurable and fortuitousness nature of identity, uncovering its unconscious/intangible quality. With this project we discover the dynamic nature of the interplay of social and individual identity. Focusing on the transparent and illusory, yet tangible and dividing quality they have.

Bubbles takes inspiration from diverse contemporary social phenomena, derived from digitalization, migration, globalization, truncated trans-culturization and hypermodern societies. In which spatial segregation of diverse social groups, whom living in the same physical space, but without relating to each other, conform to different and parallel layers or realities and virtualities. Bubbles also is based on recent discussions about social bubbles, the isolation and separation of groups according to their preferences, but also across languages, habits, style, personality among others. The bubble metaphor applies to the ever growing atomization of our societies, where individuals relate less and less with others through enacted ‘real’ interpersonal relations, relying more and more on mediated forms of digital interaction (e.g. social networks). All these play a central role organizing society as bubbles within bubbles or layers within a system.

Bubbles challenges our most basic assumptions about who we are, our beliefs and how our identity, desires, fears and hopes are ‘just’ built up from our social and physical context. We intend to highlight how we innocently “hold” to our beliefs and identities as being something definitive and factual. With Bubbles we will explore an interdisciplinary and interactive debate on this very process of identity, as social and individual phenomena. The art exhibition will be composed of several artworks, ranging from installations, paintings to video, performance, etc. Talks with artists and experts will present theoretical perspectives and cutting edge research by leading scientists from diverse disciplines. By means of workshops, screening program and dialogues, artists and scientists will invite the viewer to join a collective reflection about the topic.

Participating artists:
Kim Albrecht | Marisa Benjamin | Rachel Bernstein | Valentina Berthelon | Marta Dell’Angelo | Magali Desbazeille | Andrés Galeano | Muriel Gallardo |Thorsten Goldberg | Julia Krahn | PSJM |Casey Reas |Aiko Tezuka | Tomoyuki Ueno

Organizing team of the exhibition:
Nicole Loeser, Curator, art manager and owner of WHITECONCEPTS Gallery; artistic director at Institute for Art and Innovation.
Muriel Gallardo, Co-curator, visual artist MA, currently resident artist of Künstlerhaus Bethanien

Program:
18./19.05.2018 2 days conference of academic presentations
It accompanies the art exhibition and includes diverse activities such as didactic workshops, group discussions, and a film screening program. (please check website for further information)

Core organizing team of the conference:
Dr. Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Human Physiology at the University of Parma, Italy, professor in Experimental Aesthetics at the University of London/UK and visiting professor at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain within an Einstein Fellowship for 2016-2018.
Expert in Neurophysiology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Neuroscience, and Philosophy of mind. As one of the discoverers of mirror neurons his research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying social cognition, including action understanding, empathy, language, mindreading and aesthetic experience.

Dr. Laura Kaltwasser, Post-doctoral researcher in the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Humboldt University. Working with Prof. Dr Vittorio Gallese.

Simon Guendelman, MD. Doctorate candidate in the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Humboldt University. Psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

www.watchyourbubble.de (shortly online)

The conference is organized by the Einstein Foundation and Berlin School of Mind and Brain in collaboration with the Humboldt-University.

The art exhibition is organized by the curators, Galerie Nord – Kunstverein Tiergarten and gets supported by the Einstein Foundation.

Press contact: Nicole Loeser, nicole.loeser@watchyourbubble.de, +49177 7878578