Last week the Transmediale08’s exhibition drew to a close. A nice opportunity to mention a few highlights of the show. Guest-curated by Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, it referenced the Latin roots of “conspire”, conspirare, as a way to deconstruct “the nature of conspiracy into a silent and cosmic act of 'collective breathing' suggesting a sharply targeted, yet anonymous and intimate form of creative collaboration.” Though featuring much excellent work, the methodological discourse underlying the exhibition didn’t demonstrate too much “breathing together”, but rather came across as forced gasps for breath, if we want to stick to the metaphor. The exhibition was clustered under no less than 7 sub-themes: Bio-Organic Systems, Twisted Realities, Utopian Politics and Dissonant Poetics, Visionary Lives, Fictionalised Selves / Fictionalising Oneself, Haunted Past - Projected Future, Alternative Science / Science vs Fiction, and Conspiratory Truths. Did this clustering aid in comprehension and perception of the exhibition? No. Did it validate the curatorial choices? No? Did it do anything to the exhibition that can be perceived as added value? No. If anything, it shows curatorial indecision or functions as a tool to fit work in the exhibition that would logically not fit in there.

This comment may sound harsh for an otherwise interesting exhibition. But sometimes curatorial trains of thought should not leave the curator’s desk. Sometimes an overt emphasis on methodology comes across as didactic, or just plainly kills the magic of the exhibition (for those who actually bother to read the accompanying material). I have to admit that my irritation is predominantly with the curatorial statement in the program booklet and on the website, than with the exhibition itself. I didn’t feel as if the neatly thought out clusters were reflected in the exhibition design at all. So what’s the point then really, unless this baring of the inner workings of exhibition’s conceptualization was a performative act somehow, highlighting the big curatorial conspiracy behind each and every exhibition.

However, enough virtual ink bled on this. Let’s have a look at some of the works. But first: kudos to whomever thought up the open cube-shaped video booths (or should I say video viewing boxes?). Their design fitted in beautifully with the idea of conspiratorial semi-public concealment. Lying on the big comfy cushions - protected from the outside, as it were, yet still on display - looking at the video screens fitted from above, was great! As a matter of fact, the video selection was excellent. Egle Budvytyte’s “Secta” (2006), is a brilliant short docu-fiction about a sect, recognizable by their peculiar behaviour in public space, like women shaving their legs alongside the canal, walking backwards on escalators, hanging in trees, or licking fruit at the market in order to determine its quality. Budvytyte’s strategies remind me a bit of LIGNA’s radio ballet, where in equal measure the boundaries of acceptable and non-permissable gestures in public space are examined and performed. Makes you wonder about how curtailed and managed your behaviour actually really is.

Two other videos which caught my attention were Polish artist Arthur Zmijewski “Lisa” (2003), and French artist Alain Declerq’s “Mike” (2005). The former is an account of a young German woman (Elisabeth Traulsen) who immigrated to Israel because apparently god told her to do so. Moreover, she believes she is the incarnation of a 12-year old Jewish boy, murdered in the holocaust by a shot in the neck…that’s why she has continuous neck pains. The story is absurd, and conform with a condition known as Jerusalem syndrome, yet it is simultaneously deeply sad and infuriating: sad because one is confronted with a lonely and – dare I say it - pathetic woman, believing her own self-constructed mythology, infuriating because it reproduces Jerusalem’s mythology as a holy and sacred place, devoid of the politics of Israeli occupation, aggression and dispossession. An excellent work because it really captures these seemingly competitive sensibilities. “Mike” on the other hand, is a film with a high James Bond quality. It is unclear who the protagonist really is: a spy, a secret agent, a terrorist, a go-between? Beautifully shot between Cairo, Washington and Amsterdam, with lots of suggestive footage of land- and cityscapes, planes, hotels, public and semi-public spaces, flight charts, and even a shot of Uday Saddam Hussain stationary (!), it leaves more to speculation than to information. Or rather, it emphasizes that most information is perhaps pure speculation.

Other works worth mentioning are Christoph Keller’s photographic “Chemtrails Project” (2006), Marko Peljhan’s “LADOMIR AB 7th SURFACE” a” cryptic – but beautiful – glass case installation which he describes as an ur-object, Matt O’ Dell’s sound sculpture “New Worship”, and how could I ignore Khalil Joreige & Joanna Hadjithomas’ “Wonder Beirut” project? In effect, I have written about the latter on previous occasions, and have seen it at quite a few exhibitions. Nevertheless, it never ceases to fascinate me….however, I will not write about it this time. Chemtrails, basically shows a series of beautiful aerial photographs, accompanied by far less interesting interviews. It feeds into the Chemtrail conspiracy theory that claims that some trails left behind by jet aircraft are different in appearance and quality from those of normal contrails, and are perhaps composed of harmful chemicals, which are being deliberately produced, and covered up by the government. Finally Matt O’Dell’s prominent sculptural sound installation “New Worship” combined wry humour with a carefully executed concept. Displaying a miniature architecture of power: 3 mini watch towers perched on wooden supports (even the fake grass was a detail the artist thought of), the installation also hinted how much worship, in any kind of form, is per definition a power construct, a one-to-many model, that smacks of indoctrination. The installation description reads that the work “point[s] towards individuals and groups who have rejected ‘accepted’ ideas and have attempted to forge their own belief systems. These groups are notably found at the source of conspiracy theories, or in various sects that propose a new spiritual paradigm.” Intesrtingly, I did not find a trace of rejection of dominant beliefs or, attempts to subvert them symbolised in this work, rather the opposite: that any closed system of uncritical thought (worship) is ultimately always about control and power, which O’Dell expertly recreated in his closed system installation.