Map

Map is a public space installation questioning the red map marker of the location-related search engine Google Maps: “Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.” Using a small graphic icon, Google marks search results on the map interface. The design of the virtual map pin seems to be derived from a physical map needle. From one point of view, the marker and information speech bubble next to it cast a shadow on the digital map as if they were physical objects. When the map is switched to satellite mode, it is as though they become part of the city. From another, it is a simple 20-pixel graphic icon whose size remains unchanged on the computer screen. The life-size red marker in the physical space corresponds to the size of a marker on the web interface a maximum zoom. Where is the centre of a city? In the city centre series, Map is set up at the exact spot where Google Maps assumes a city’s centre to be. Transferred to the physical space, the map marker questions the relation of the digital information space to the public city space of everyday life. The perception of the city is increasingly influenced by geolocation services.

Aram Bartholl

Aram Bartholl uses sculptural interventions, installations and performative workshops to question our engagement with media and with public economies linked to social media networks, online platforms and digital dissemination strategies. Through his work, he addresses socially relevant topics, including surveillance, data privacy and technology dependence, by transferring the gaps, contradictions and absurdities of our everyday digital lives to physical settings. The effect is twofold. The works create an at times bizarre confrontation with our own ignorance of globally active platform capitalism while they renegotiate network activities as political forms of participation on an analogue level using the potential of public space. Bartholl thus initiates a performative process to catalyse a renewed understanding of individual action within a collective and self-determined network discourse. Conceptually and technically, he uses the same aesthetics, codes and communication patterns that users are familiar with from YouTube, Instagram and video games. A purposeful contextualisation employs the logic of the Internet while at the same time undermining it with individual strategies.

Bartholl has exhibited at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York City), Skulptur Projekte Münster, Palais de Tokyo, Hamburger Bahnhof, the Seoul Museum of Art and the Thailand Biennale, among others. He has also conducted countless workshops, talks and performances internationally. Bartholl is a digital media-based art professor at HAW Hamburg. He lives and works in Berlin.