Connections unplugged, bodies rewired at das weisse haus / Vienna

connections unplugged, bodies rewired
Johanna Bruckner, Debby Friday, Daniela Grabosch, Anna Thomas, Rindon Johnson, Sara Lanner, Martina Menegon, Hyeji Nam, Davinia-Ann Robinson, and Ningli Zhu. Curated by Frederike Sperling.

10.11.2021 – 05.02.2022

das weisse haus
Hegelgasse 14
Vienna, Austria

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Martina Menegon, “keep in touch”, 2019-2021, VR Experience, Virtual/AR Sculpture, also on www.dwhX.space, sound by Alexander Martinz [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Martina Menegon, “keep in touch”, 2019-2021, VR Experience, Virtual/AR Sculpture, also on www.dwhX.space, sound by Alexander Martinz [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Martina Menegon, “keep in touch”, 2019-2021, VR Experience, Virtual/AR Sculpture, also on www.dwhX.space, sound by Alexander Martinz [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Rindon Johnson, “I First You (11/11)”, 2018, Video, 5:28 min. [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Sara Lanner, “Intimate Illusions”, 2021, Performance, commissioned by das weisse haus [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Johanna Bruckner, “Crushpad Climax”, 2021, HD/4K 3-channel-video installation, 12 min. + Johanna Bruckner, “Hypermorphisms”, 2021, Installation, variously-colored silicone [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Johanna Bruckner, “Crushpad Climax”, 2021, HD/4K 3-channel-video installation [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Hyeji Nam, “Fly like a worm, sing like a snail – however they left, with the rattling sound of the bones breaking down”, 2021, Multi-media installation and performance [with Anna Mutschlechner-Dean, Boeser Reupel, mirabella paidamwoyo dziruni, Hyeji Nam] [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Hyeji Nam, “Fly like a worm, sing like a snail – however they left, with the rattling sound of the bones breaking down”, 2021, Multi-media installation [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Daniela Grabosch + Anna Thomas, “The screen is where we met —”, 2021, Scent, commissioned by das weisse haus, available as edition via das weisse haus [Photo: Daniela Grabosch]

Daniela Grabosch, “AND THEN – I ENTER(ED) THE DEEPEST, MOST DEEP DUG CAVE”, 2019, Reflective fabric, 3D print, clothes hanger, metal chain, scent, QR code, virtual 3D model, sound [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Daniela Grabosch, “AND THEN – I ENTER(ED) THE DEEPEST, MOST DEEP DUG CAVE”, 2019, Reflective fabric, 3D print, clothes hanger, metal chain, scent, QR code, virtual 3D model, sound [Photo: Theresa Wey]

Daniela Grabosch, “AND THEN – I ENTER(ED) THE DEEPEST, MOST DEEP DUG CAVE”, 2019, Reflective fabric, 3D print, clothes hanger, metal chain, scent, QR code, virtual 3D model, sound [Photo: Theresa Wey]

“connections unplugged, bodies rewired”, Installation view, 2021/22, das weisse haus, Vienna [Photo: Theresa Wey]


Beaten paths. Crowded stability. Silent potentials unborn. 

Relations buried. Stranded –– dwelling in forgotten time. 

Abandoned and out of sight ––,

bodies rise!

Climbing the cracks and folds of codes and syntax.

Against the backdrop of surveillance capitalism and its intensifying algorithmic navigation of our bodies and relations, the group exhibition “connections unplugged, bodies rewired” speculates on the deviant potential of post-digital intimacies and corporeality in a regimented future.

“You may also like…” or “people you may know…” are familiar phrases to anyone who has ever shopped, streamed a movie, ordered food online or simply is on social media (like 4.48 billion other users worldwide). While following and extracting each of our online movements, technology giants like Google, Facebook (Metaverse) or WeChat have learned to predict our dreams, our desires and our vulnerabilities. With their homophilic algorithms, which are coded to connect what is similar, they have started to infiltrate our social realities, to manage our webs of relations, our corporeal selves. They are trained to orientate us.

How to reclaim agency over who we connect, conspire, become intimate with? What is needed to become ungraspable or even useless for codification? How to keep our inner most secrets and fantasies ours? The performative group-exhibition “connections unplugged, bodies rewired” delves into the debris of combed out data, flirts with the dissimilitudes and incongruencies that the gendered and racialized algorithm has not been able to allocate. It makes room for off-script relations, illegible bodies and ambiguous desires.

Celebrating disorientation and uncertainty as prerequisites for a future self-determination, “connections unplugged, bodies rewired” forces you into a dense assemblage of smells, sounds, images and movements. The artists invited variously speculate on post-digital intimacies and celebrate corporeality as means to collectively conjure a social otherwise. They craft worlds in which community and mutuality are nurtured and enriched by difference rather than sameness.

The physical part of the exhibition takes up elements of club culture to celebrate night life as a breeding ground for intimate, non-scripted and chaotic forms of togetherness. Parallely, das weisse haus’ new post- digital platform dwhX features more contribution.