37C3: Art & Beauty Exhibition ANIMAL()CITY: Unleashed!

ANIMAL()CITY: Unleashed! presents the positions of the seven participating international artists as physical exhibits in the CCH entrance area exhibition space, each corresponding with their virtual counterparts in augmented reality.

The selected Art & Beauty work is more difficult than the other sections of the conference program. The artists have articulated themselves through their visual positions, as opposed to lectures or presentations. We sometimes succeed in making art – and beauty! – accessible in the form of the somewhat infamous performance lecture, but the art usually falls by the wayside when speaking about it.

That’s why the Art & Beauty team is attempting to facilitate the direct experience of art at the congress. This doesn’t always work, fortunately the other Art & Beauty related initiatives and projects support our cause.

For 37C3, we are very proud to transplant ANIMAL()CITY: Unleashed!, an exciting group exhibition by panke.gallery, from Berlin to Hamburg. The original ANIMAL()CITY exhibition in Berlin ran from October 12 to 28, 2023.

Based on an intimate experience – a fox crossing the path of panke.gallery curator Sakrowski early in the morning – the idea was born to thematize the various economic, ecological, political and personal layers that overlay the urban landscape of the exhibition.

ANIMAL()CITY: Unleashed! examines how augmented reality can influence, disrupt, supplement or completely superimpose different levels of perception and reality. The exhibition presents a surreal bestiary of animals that have transcended their natural form and taken on unreal shapes in the process. They are thus detached from the biodiversity of actual urban niches, and open up metaphorical spaces of possibility and engagement for us, the viewers and participants.

The artists have interpreted this creative and aesthetic interplay between the physical and the digital AR objects »let off the leash« very individually:

• Joachim Blank has removed his The restless lion/ess sculpture from its pedestal, which welcomes the congress participants at Dammtor station.

• exonemo by Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa releases dogs and cats that roam freely through the CCH and the neighboring Planten un Blomen park via their Metaverse Petshop

• Eva Davidova realized HorseWoman Appearing Normal as an AR version especially for the exhibition – an example from her HorseWoman series of works with which she reflects on the present time.

• Meredith Drum (Vulture Veneration) has long used AR as her artistic medium, in which she addresses questions of ecology.

• The performer Ingeborg Wie Henderson has animated herself as Cat Grey for this exhibition, to explore what feline qualities she currently embodies.

• Sahej Rahal presents The Walker, a mythical creature that comes from a world of his own creation and merges with its surroundings.

• In Search of Ideas (2021-2022) Jonas Lund wanders as his avatar through a world he has created, in search of the animals that inhabit it. For ANIMAL()CITY: Unleashed! he has detached a penguin and placed it in the building.

More information about the works on display at panke.gallery.

The augmented reality exhibits are best viewed by Safari on iOS devices and by Chrome on Android devices. In order to detect the virtual objects on the map geolocation has to be activated on your devices.

Some documentation and necessary security information at the 37C3 Public Wiki page.

Corresponding talk: ANIMAL()CITY.

Image by panke.gallery