Trevor Paglen at HKW Berlin
Alum Trevor Paglen will be one of the featured artists at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, beginning this year.
The New Alphabet will explore both utopias and dystopias until 2021. Through Opening Days, instants of alphabetization from the Baroque to the present day will be explored in performances, concerts, talks, films, and installations. It will take place from January 10 to January 13. See the description of the exhibit below.
Are binary code, algorithms, and DNA the alphabets of today? The current explosion of knowledge is accompanied by the segmentation of the world into the smallest units. The binary code – with only two elements the greatest abstraction of the alphabetical principle – makes the polymorphism of the analog calculable. Projects in synthetic biology and artificial intelligence are based on an interpretation of life as code that can be decrypted and thus manipulated. How objective are data? How do they reproduce existing structures of power and property? What is suppressed? Who dominates the new order of knowledge? And which ethical questions are raised by these alphabetizations? What happens between 1 and 0?