The virtual and real worlds are increasingly overlapping, and new technologies are enabling ever more variations and creative possibilities. Image disturbances – known as glitches – have thus found their way into video art and are now an expression of creativity rather than representational errors. Computer-generated images and hacking have become just as much artistic methods as the examination of a society facing radical change. As an example, the Kunsthaus Zurich is showing the video work Cosplayers (2004) by Cao Fei: young Chinese men and women spend the day dressed up as their manga heroes. They usually turn their parents against them and miss out on life. The Kunsthaus Zürich is exhibiting a small new canon that reflects the spirit of art in the early 21st century. The Born Digital exhibition runs from June 7 to September 29.
The focus is on Swiss artists, but China, the USA and Croatia are also included. The exhibition deals with essential questions of the latest chapter in art history: How do artists react to the shift from analog to digital? What themes characterize the new perspectives that have gained access to the global canon since the turn of the millennium? What relevance does video have for the art of the 2000s and what is the spectrum of the means of production used? Works by Yves Netzhammer, Tatjana Marušić, Christoph Büchel, Com&Com, Rita McBride, Susann Walder, Zilla Leutenegger, Diana Thater and Cao Fei, among others, will be exhibited.
