Marc Bauer is the recipient of the GASAG Kunstpreis 2020, in this context he made the exhibition The Blow-Up Regime in the Berlinische Galerie.
For this exhibition Bauer dealt with the history and current impact of the Internet. He sketches the portrait of a society that is in a state of upheaval due to digitalisation and accelerated technical progress.
After a wide-ranging research into the history of the Internet, from the first computers to the present day, the central theme surfaced: how the omnipresent digitalisation influences our perception of reality, the individual and society.
This resulted in new, suggestive narratives composed of historical events and fictional elements.
For The Blow-Up Regime Marc Bauer developed a multimedia concept for the first large exhibition hall of the Berlinische Galerie. The exhibition is an interplay of room-high, monumental wall drawings, supplemented by a soundtrack, drawings on paper pinned to the wall, and digitised drawings on e-paper displays distributed throughout the room.
After a wide-ranging research into the history of the Internet, from the first computers to the present day, the central theme surfaced: how the omnipresent digitalisation influences our perception of reality, the individual and society.
This resulted in new, suggestive narratives composed of historical events and fictional elements.
For The Blow-Up Regime Marc Bauer developed a multimedia concept for the first large exhibition hall of the Berlinische Galerie. The exhibition is an interplay of room-high, monumental wall drawings, supplemented by a soundtrack, drawings on paper pinned to the wall, and digitised drawings on e-paper displays distributed throughout the room.
The title The Blow-Up Regime was found in mathematical theory of singularity.
For the project Marc Bauer collaborated with partners from various disciplines: with the musician Thomas Kuratli / Pyrit, who composed the soundtrack, with the German-Swiss writer Sibylle Berg. In the exhibition, Marc Bauer refers to her novel GRM: Brainfuck, published in 2019, in several ways, for example by translating text quotations from the book into drawings or by allowing himself to be inspired by the locations of the plot. Already during the preparatory work, the artist was in intensive exchange with Sibylle Berg. They discussed questions about the author's working methods, but also current social developments in the context of the Corona pandemic and their points of contact with the themes of the novel and the exhibition.
Marc Bauer also interviewed the Internet pioneer Alan Emtage, who in 1990, while still a student, developed the world's first Internet search engine called "Archie", as well as with the computer scientist Luca Maria Gambardella, director of IDSIA (Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale), a research institute of the University of Lugano for artificial intelligence and robotics.
Marc Bauer also interviewed the Internet pioneer Alan Emtage, who in 1990, while still a student, developed the world's first Internet search engine called "Archie", as well as with the computer scientist Luca Maria Gambardella, director of IDSIA (Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale), a research institute of the University of Lugano for artificial intelligence and robotics.
All these conversations and interviews are reproduced in the publication that is accompanying the exhibition.
