Artist: Femke Herregraven
Exhibition title: Captive Portals
Venue: Future Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Date: June 24 – July 29, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Future Gallery, Berlin
Captive Portals
Terabytes pushing terrabites
Spectral signatures in ultraviolet ink
Airdrops in algorithmic skies
The birth of a new ocean
A solidified wave on one camel
Where do I place myself in all of this?
In the infinite space between image a and b.
In an economy of sci-fi capital and speculative exits some places are projected as zones of relief while others as zones of hostility. While data servers and calculation hubs migrate to cold regions in the north or beyond the atmosphere, less mobile life is confined within the blazing heat of inhospitable terrain. When a landscape gets dubbed as the hottest and cruelest place on Earth, our lazy air-conditioned desire for new frontiers is instantly fulfilled. Extreme soil, extreme heat, extreme life, extreme survival distilled into .jpgs of manageable risks. A cube satellite frames a splash of geothermal energy ahead of time. Timestamp. But the rains failed anyway.
‘Captive Portals’ presents an ongoing investigation into the relation between financial value, self-organizing systems, and geological instability. A new series of works explore the orbits of different actors that cross a geological depression in East Africa. Cyclical movements of a shield volcano, a telescope lens, a salt desert, extremophiles, salt trading caravans, and a swarm of CubeSats inspired a spatial model from which out-of-place artifacts are created by using silicic ceramics, color correction, salt printing, and remote sensing. In addition, ‘Sprawling Swamps’ (2016-ongoing) sketches a series of scenarios located on swamps, waves, ice, and shifting shorelines that simultaneously question new forms of value as well as the binary presumption of land and water which become ineffective on these unstable terrains. Uncertain matter creates uncertain value. When territories melt, erode or sink it becomes unclear what is to be governed. Exhaustion, regression, rumors, and empathy as new forms of value. Preserve or empty cache.
Mining sediment and sentiment,
a splitting continent offshores its own future,
What deserves to be framed and what not?
You cannot control what you cannot measure
Debt orbiting as an infinite shoebox satellite
A rain of payload ashes
What sense of place is imagined in a satellite picture commissioned by a hedge fund?
Prediction and deep time as allegoric props of the present
Blinding heat
A geologic depression sets the stage
In her work Femke Herregraven explores which new material base, geographies and value systems contemporary financial technologies and infrastructures carve out. Works exist digital and as drawings, prints, sculptures, video and installations. Recent group exhibitions include Simon Denny: TEDxVaduz redux, T293, Rome and online as part of the Extinction Marathon, Serpentine Galleries, London (both in 2014), Globale Infosphere, ZKM, Karlsruhe; Algorithmic Rubbish: Daring to Defy Misfortune, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Extension du domaine du jeu, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art In The Age of…Planetary Computation, Witte de With, Migration Matters, Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, All of This Belongs to You, V&A Museum, London, Dark Ecology, Norway/Russia, (all 2015); Conversation Piece, Transmediale, Berlin; Neoliberal Lulz, Carroll / Fletcher, London; Grand New, Future Gallery, Berlin; Digital Abstractions, Hek, Basel; CCS Bard / Hessel Museum, New York; Oslo Triennial, Oslo (all 2016). She’s currently a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.
Femke Herregraven, Captive Portals, 2017, exhibition view, Future Gallery, Berlin
Femke Herregraven, One wave, one camel, 2017, 26 slabs, Egyptian faience (quarz, silversand, salt, calcium carbonate), copper dioxcite, cobalt dioxite, manganese dioxide, 27 x 35 x 5 cm – dimensions variable
Femke Herregraven, Captive Portals, 2017, exhibition view, Future Gallery, Berlin
Femke Herregraven, One wave, one camel, 2017, 26 slabs, Egyptian faience (quarz, silversand, salt, calcium carbonate), copper dioxcite, cobalt dioxite, manganese dioxide, 27 x 35 x 5 cm – dimensions variable
Femke Herregraven, Captive Portals, 2017, exhibition view, Future Gallery, Berlin
Femke Herregraven, Captive Portals, 2017, exhibition view, Future Gallery, Berlin
Femke Herregraven, Captive Portals, 2017, exhibition view, Future Gallery, Berlin
Femke Herregraven, Seismic Parallax, 2017, 2 salt prints, silver nitrate, Ethiopian salt on, Hanemuhle Platinum Rag, 100 x 70 cm
Femke Herregraven, Seismic Parallax, 2017, 2 salt prints, silver nitrate, Ethiopian salt on, Hanemuhle Platinum Rag, 100 x 70 cm
Femke Herregraven, Seismic Parallax, 2017, 2 salt prints, silver nitrate, Ethiopian salt on, Hanemuhle Platinum Rag, 100 x 70 cm
Femke Herregraven, Rain of Payload Ashes, 2017, waterjet cut aluminium and taft silk, Aluminium block: 10 x 10 x 10 cm, parachute: dimensions variable
Femke Herregraven, Rain of Payload Ashes, 2017, waterjet cut aluminium and taft silk, Aluminium block: 10 x 10 x 10 cm, parachute: dimensions variable
Femke Herregraven, Rain of Payload Ashes, 2017, waterjet cut aluminium and taft silk, Aluminium block: 10 x 10 x 10 cm, parachute: dimensions variable
Femke Herregraven, Sprawling Swamps, 2016-ongoing, Dynamic interactive virtual environment, software, audio
Femke Herregraven, Sprawling Swamps, 2016-ongoing, Dynamic interactive virtual environment, software, audio
