life : 0
imagined value : 0
curated by Lola Pfeifer
Artists: Lukas Soldo, Julian Siffert, Lola Pfeifer, Teuta Jonuzi, Sula Zimmerberger
life divided by zero or short: life : 0 appears as an absurd thought, a calculation - seemingly nonsensical.
At the same time, with just a slight shift in perspective - from institutionally to socially recognised signification, it could equally read as a short exclamation followed by a shocked face emoji:
life! :0
is written to proclaim that, yes that’s life, or no! this is not life! Or, whoah, who would have thought this is life! The title conveys the simultaneous righteousness of realities.
Acting as a point of departure for speculative thinking, life : 0 is understood in the sense of Isabelle Stengers:
Speculative thinking [...] systematically intervenes in a reality in which it remains embedded. Speculating is [an] entanglement of problem and solution, of things and words. (Harrasser, 2019)
The exhibition aims to fold pieces of reality over and over again. The result: life, or perhaps human reality, divided by zero, or simply: life : 0
Imagined Value is the afterthought of the first exclamation; a possible result of a proposed imaginary calculation - (is it life ? Is it imagined value?) Life divided by Zero entangles the parts of life not yet or not anymore logical, not yet or not anymore working. Imagined value as a non-value is able to describe this non-working calculation of life divided by zero.
The exhibition starts exactly in-between this moment of astonishment and imaginary calculation - if life is divided by zero - Is it the feeling or the fakeness of nature that fits the division of life : 0 ? Are birds and flowers part of it? Improbability of connection is discussed with bathtubs and tajine clay pots, post cards and eery descriptions of land that has yet to become real space, fragmented language and semi-fictional companions - all stemming from the same fantastic fabric of reality, which is left after life is being divided by zero.
Dividing as such is a means to produce categories and order - Let’s divide oranges from apples, how to divide this cake - division, in the everyday meaning of the word, is always swayed by cultural and historical norms. Dividing by zero, dividing life by Zero, thus, breaks up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. (Foucault, 2023)
The melancholy of (not not) existing within this definition of a division by zero is being presented in the space: Nearly incomprehensible bathtubs in Pfeifer’s work to Jonuzis melancholic character of the little Tobi, Soldo’s airy painting, Zimmerbergers euphoric bird and Sifferts layering of global Joker visuals.
“While speculation on the probable results in a poor infinitude of the same, speculation against the probable heralds a multiplication of presents, a multiplication of improbable possibilities, an expansion of the horizon.” (Harrasser, 2019)
The exhibition aims to fold pieces of reality over and over again. The result: life, or perhaps human reality, divided by zero, or simply: life : 0
Harrasser, Karin. Kunstraum Lakeside: Recherche = Kunstraum Lakeside: research. Herausgegeben von Franz Thalmair. Wien: VfmK Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2019.
Foucault, M. (2023). Die Ordnung der Dinge: Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (27. Auflage). Suhrkamp.