Untitled (for Dread) (2013) Wallpapers & T-Shirts by Metahaven
An interview with Curator Juha van ‘t Zelfde
By Sophia Satchell-Baeza
In the unclear boundaries of the internet and the facelessness of surveillance technology, it often feels like daily life offers solid ground for paranoia. “Dread: Fear in the Age of Technological Acceleration” is an exhibition at the De Hallen Museum in the small town of Haarlem in the Netherlands, that looks at the work of various contemporary artists and how they interpret and react to the dizzying possibility of modern technology. Spanning various media – including a program of music in Amsterdam’s Musiekgebouw, “Dread” traces these varying responses to modern technology, often with a mixture of fear, resentment, or confusion. This specific notion of dread is closely linked to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of the “dizziness of freedom”, posited in “The Concept of Dread” (1844). For anyone who’s surfed the net and found themselves three hours later miles off from where they’d started, this is probably familiar.
At the helm of Dread is the DJ, journalist and award-winning curator Juha van ‘t Zelfde. His exhibition in De Hallen was realised with the help of a curatorial grant by the Van Toorn Scholten Foundation. His starting point for putting together the show? The utopian anti-capitalist city of “New Babylon,” imagined by Dutch artist Constant between 1956-1974.
“When researching the collection of De Hallen for my proposal, I found the ‘Labyrismen of Constant’,” van ‘t Zelfde explains. The Labyrismen “are almost like a summary of Constant’s entire project. When revisiting some of the things I had read about New Babylon, I remembered architect Mark Wigley talking to Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG about the horror of New Babylon, and of Constant’s loss of hope in people. In 1968, around the time of the Vietnam War and the student protests in Europe, he became disheartened about the prospect of the freedoms of New Babylon. You see this in the lithographs, with turmoil, blood and, in the end, a burning city.”
Constant Labyrismen, 1968 Series of lithographs 38 x 47,5 cm Collection Frans Hals Museum | De Hallen Haarlem. Photo Arend Velsink
These lithographs are on view in the final room of the exhibition, where they are displayed alongside Mark Wigley’s dread-laced comment on Constant’s final realisation of utopia as a place where “people will actually kill each other because we’re dark, miserable creatures.”
The exhibition offers mixed interpretations of dread across several genres and media. Whether in the investigation of drone surveillance in Laurent Grasso’s “On Air”, Jonas Lund’s hacker-inspired “Public Access Me” or the informational overload of Thomas Hirschhorn and Marcus Steinweg’s “The Map of Headlessness” – technological advancement is depicted in a strange limbo between entrapment and possibility, a freedom sullied by fear. In Alicia Framis’ “Room To Forget” (2012-2013), a construction of a room is filled with Metyrapone, a medicine used in the army to remove bad memories.
“For me dread is a readiness for danger, an understanding that something harmful may happen” van ‘t Zelfde says. “Dread is a bad memory of the future. It is evolutionarily hardwired in all of us to recognise risks and to anticipate threats. Dread is of relevance in the post-9/11, post-PRISM world of technological acceleration and digital accumulation.”
But isn’t there danger in piling on the fear without offering some sort of constructive solution, too? “I like to believe dread can be a constructive emotion. At the very least, it is one that gives us the option to act. Since dread indicates a future threat, it means there is time to respond to it. There might not always be a solution or salvation, but becoming aware of the shadow of the future is the first step to confront our fears and overcome catastrophe.”
It is interesting to imagine how, looking back at the time we’re living in, future thinkers might recognise this dread as the source for a new human condition. “Maybe dread is the strongest emotion, since our survival depends on it”, the curator adds, “and a system overloaded by dread-engendering information is the 21st Century human condition. This is one of the things I try to find out by researching the subject, and by making this exhibition”.
DREAD – Fear in the age of technological acceleration De Hallen Haarlem’s Young Curators’ Grant De Hallen Museum, Haarlem Through November 24, 2013