It is the Franco-Algerian artist Kader Attia, working on questions of memory and on colonial history, who is the curator of the 12e Berlin Biennale. An event also tinged with social issues, with reflections on colonialism and feminism, but which nevertheless shows works of art.
The title of this biennale, Still Present! [Toujours présent !] highlights how “more than ever, algorithmic governance has taken hold of our present moment; it has become a field of unprecedented economic struggle for the extraction of behavioral data, an economic model so powerful that we feel unable to free our present from its clutches. We project ourselves daily into the future or the past, while believing that we are acting in the present. How then can we reclaim our present? By reclaiming our attention. Art makes it possible to offer a prolonged and above all free present. »
The visitor will particularly notice the shutter placed in the former offices of the Stasi dealing with the question of surveillance. Note among others the work of Omer Fast, A Place Which is ripe, which makes you think about the relevance of the omnipresence of surveillance cameras in our societies. In this exhibition, Canada is in the spotlight, but not for very good reasons. In Freezing Deaths & Abandonment Across Canadafrom the Serie Cold Casesartist Susan Schuppli talks about the Starlight Towers [Virées sous les étoiles]a police practice of driving drunk or agitated Aboriginal people out of towns in very cold weather and leaving them there, dooming them to hypothermia and even death.
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