Cleverly combining digital models, existing artworks, new commissions and archival material, the group exhibition at ZKM, Karlsruhe, recreates two historic exhibitions

The exhibition ‘Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.’ at ZKM in Karlsruhe is an experiment in curatorial conservation. At its core are two seminal exhibitions: ‘Les Immatériaux’ (The Immaterials), curated by postmodern philosopher Jean-François Lyotard at Paris’s Centre Pompidou in 1985; and ZKM’s own ‘Iconoclash’, spearheaded by the late philosopher Bruno Latour, with artist Peter Weibel and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist among many others, in 2002. While the first show investigated the changing relations between humans and their surroundings in the burgeoning information era, the latter focused on the Western iconoclastic craving for setting up and destroying images and frames of representation. With clever digital models, a selection of artworks from the original shows, new commissions and archival material, ‘Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter.’ brings these two shows back to life – not as simple re-creations but as a vigorous follow-up that charts new possibilities for conserving exhibitions in the digital age.

Inherently interdisciplinary, the two source exhibitions collected thoughts and objects from different fields, such as science, technology and religion. ‘Iconoclash’, for example, included a piece of the Berlin Wall and an anonymous, 15th century sculpture of the Pietá, shattered during the Reformation, to highlight the conflicting desire to destroy an image, idol or symbolic object then save its ruptured remains. These relics were shown alongside clearcut iconoclastic works, like Martin Kippenberger’s wooden sculpture of a crucified frog (Fred the Frog Rings the Bell, 1990), and more contemplative ones, such as Nam June Paik’s Zen for TV (1963/86): a CRT television modified to display a single vertical line of light at its centre. ‘Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter’ brings these works back both in the flesh at ZKM and as models in an online simulation. With a sleek interface and an interactive exhibition design – one which constantly rearranges itself based on a machine-learning algorithm that determines the viewer’s preferences through their interaction with the artworks – the online exhibition generates an experience that doesn’t seek to mimic the original but, rather, to reimagine it.

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