we are already history,
and we don´t know it
an exhibition by Dagmar Schürrer
FITZROY CLUB
S-Bahn Bogen 46
Holzmarktstr. 15
Berlin Jannowitzbrücke
Exhibition period : June 17 – July 2, 2021
Opening Reception: June 17, 6 – 9 pm
Opening hours:
Fri, June 18, 5 – 8 pm
Sat, June 19, 2 – 5 pm
Thu, June 24, 5 – 8 pm
Fri, June 25, 5 – 8 pm
Sat, June 26, 2 – 5 pm
Wed, June 30, 5 – 8 pm
Thu, July 1, 5 – 8 pm
Fri, July 2, 5 – 8 pm
with the friendly support by Austrian Culture Forum Berlin
Fitzroy is pleased to invite you to we are already history, and we don´t know it, an exhibition by Dagmar Schürrer.
Guests are requested to wear a FFP2 mask and provide the organisers with their name, address and phone number. According to current regulations you do not need a Covid-19 Test or an appointment. A maximum of 10 visitors are allowed inside the space at a time.
we are already history, and we don´t know it
Text by Peggy Schoenegge
In we are already history, and we don’t know it, the artist Dagmar Schürrer uses the brain as the central subject of her latest work. Within a media installation, three video works open up digital image worlds that inspect the nature and function of the central organ of our nervous system.
While a double projection mirrored in the centre refers to both hemispheres of the brain and the perceptual psychological processes, the representations of two screens are expanded and multiplied by different AR applications. The virtual augmentations penetrate the physical space and invite the visitors to an active, spatial contemplation. The result is a work experience between materiality and immateriality that makes us aware of the brain as an object and its internal processes.
For the digital works, Schürrer assembles the abstract with the figurative in a typical manner and creates immersion spaces that oscillate between the physical and virtual spheres. Animated images of the brain and idealised representations of humans are superimposed on abstracted patterns reminiscent of human cell and neuron structures as well as electronic wiring. These image sequences are interrupted by hypnotic tunnel journeys that draw the viewer deeper into the artist’s work. Atmospheric sounds and voice overs create a consciousness-stimulating atmosphere.
Dagmar Schürrer creates a poetic meditation space. In a contemplative way, it evokes a reflection on the brain as a constitutive component of our being and makes us aware of it. In doing so, the artist establishes analogies between the organ and contemporary technologies, which are mirrored, as it were, in the sentences of the voiceovers. The statements expand the moving image and depict the complexity as well as the relation of both apparatuses in order to approach the essence of their function and to clarify their similarity as well as their interrelation.
In the (post-)digital age, technology becomes a mirror of our self and our society. It imitates the complex processes of the brain that shape our behaviour and are subject to the progressive developments that at the same time shape them. In this juxtaposition, we are confronted with the questions of our (conscious) being and our time. What makes us who we are and what role does technology play in this? What kind of reflection is created in the new media and what do they say about our consciousness of the brain? What should we do with our brain?
About the artist:
Dagmar Schürrer is a media artist based in Berlin, Germany. The digital image, found and generated, is her material to form a visual language to reflect on the peculiar characteristics and the societal and individual implications of digital space. She assembles digitally generated objects and animations, text, drawings and sound to form intricate video sound montages, evocative of painting, collage or poetry. Ever unfolding in changing variations they are presented on screen, as installations or combined with new technologies such as augmented reality. Her moving images reflect on the surface of digital imagery and their patterns and repetitions, on late capitalist paranoia and projected utopian futures and our relationship to technological development within the digital and the analogue.
She holds a degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martin ́s College in London, UK. Her work has been exhibited internationally, amongst others at the New Contemporaries at the ICA London, the Moscow Biennale for Young Art, Transmediale Vorspiel in Berlin and the Museum of Waste in Changsha, China. Her videos have been screened at numerous festivals: SUPERNOVA in Denver, the Seattle Film Festival, the Athens Digital Arts Festival, the Horn Experimental Film Festival in Israel, Tricky Women Festival in Vienna, or the Diagonale Film Festival in Graz. In recent years she received the Goldrausch Scholarship of the Senate of Berlin and was shortlisted for the Berlin Art Prize and the Tenderpixel Award in London.
Dagmar Schürrer
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