RESET II and FUTURISM

“The internet is changing the structure of our brains and the structure of our planet in extraordinary ways, so quickly that we haven’t yet developed a proper vocabulary for it. Technological progress has accelerated to the point that the future is happening to us far faster than we could ever have anticipated. This new world is what we call “extreme present,” a time in which it feels impossible to maintain pace with the present, never mind to chart the future.”
Hans Ulrich Obrist, What Is the Future of Art?, February 2016

“Futurism is based on the complete renewal of human sensibility that has occurred as an effect of science’s major discoveries. Those people who today make use of the telegraph, the telephone, the gramophone, the train, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, the ocean liner, the dirigible, the airplane, the cinema, the great newspaper (the synthesis of a day in the world’s life) are not aware of the decisive influence that these various forms of communication, transportation, and information have on their psyches.”
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Destruction of Syntax. Imagination without Strings,Words-in-Freedom,
1913

“RESET”, the exhibition series initiated by | PRISKA PASQUER last year, is devoted to artists whose work holds a mirror up to the far-reaching developments of the digital age.

While its predecessor explored modernism, “RESET II” examines the parallels between contemporary art and Italian futurism. The exhibition focuses on three aspects: Temporality and speed, new ways of seeing and representing things and cross-genre works of art.

The art of the Italian futurists centres on the themes of dynamism, progress and speed. The artists saw the changes engendered by technical progress as a break with the historical past, as a fundamental change and as a challenge to be countered with new artistic means. In their zeal, they attempted to create the new “beauty of speed”. In doing so, they experimented with all media: painting, photography, sculpture, music and literature.

Some 100 years on, time has once again accelerated dramatically thanks to digital development. Today, we live at a speed that no longer seems to fit into the historic time model of past, present and future. Terms such as “post-present”, “super-now” or “extreme present” attempt to describe this state of radical acceleration.

As with the avant-garde a hundred years ago, today’s artists are looking for adequate forms of expression in a dramatically changing world.