Simon Denny, Berlin Startup Case Mod: GetYourGuide, 2014. Custom computer case, packaging, heavy-duty computer hardware, metal fittings, digital prints on custom plexiglas components, Samsung UE40F6500 SS, video on USB stick. 87 x 91 x 54 cm
In his 1985 novel White Noise, Don DeLillo notes: “The greater the scientific advance the more primitive the fear.” Fear is traded for frenzy and unease in Simon Denny’s new tech-based video-sculptures, currently on show at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin. Born in New Zealand in 1982, Denny is a Berlin-based artist, whose work revolves around tech industries–a commerce whirring faster than ever in Berlin–focusing on how people participate in society with developing technologies; how we process ever-present stimuli and visual data.
Denny’s presentation for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst 2013 at the Hamburger Bahnhof used the Digital Life Design conference, which was held in Munich in 2012, as his point of discussion to quantify how we experience information. The exhibition “Disruptive Berlin” takes last year’s top ten start-ups (as selected by WIRED UK) as data to analyse alongside four major IT media events hosted in Berlin over the course of 2013. Amongst others, Denny gained insider access to Seedcamp’s pitch week–the mecca of mentors for young start-ups–observing and filming an undoubted circus of activity.
These hyper-motivated, super-aspirational events are dystopian material for Denny’s practice. The video footage, which is cut, repeated and layered on top of abrasive dubstep, produces a hyperactive moving image, highlighting the spectacle of these environments. The game-show format creates a ludicrous tension mixed with attention-grabbing anxiety. The start-up mission is to “disrupt” and up productivity with high-risk ideas, as explained in The Innovators Dilemma Berlin (2014), which laments: “when technology causes great firms to fail.” This digital print is attached to a makeshift barricade; a frenzied audio can be heard from one of the Berlin Startup Case Mod computer-and-TV-based sculptures, repeating on loop “And the winner… is…” with much pent-up zeal. It confirms these events as spectacles, and reaffirms the public as spectators and consumers.
The digital, anti-aesthetic of Denny’s prints defy artistic taste and tradition by mimicking the low-res presentation of the image online. Favouring pixels over brushstrokes, many of the wall works are computer-generated facts: Where to Find Positioning (2014) is a large, digitally printed map on billboard mesh that locates the ten best start-ups around the city. Denny’s use of info-graphics present data in a glib, digestible format. Did you know 44% of start-up founders in Berlin are not German?
Denny’s use of technology-as-readymades means his practice will change as to the nature of trends: his earlier work focused on the desuetude of analogue technology. He has monitored the steady decline in thickness of the TV screen in relation to its importance as an entity within daily life and the home. In “Disruptive Berlin” the television monitor has been demoted to serve as thin tabletops for the latest varying custom computer hardware in the Berlin Startup Case Mod series; the interiors of which, are fetishistically splayed open.
Through his extensive research of these real-life events, Denny gives image to an ever-changing picture of digital industry. “Disruptive Berlin” is very much of its time: it already seems like an archaeological memory of our future past.
Review by Lilly Daniell
Denny has been selected to represent New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015
“Disruptive Berlin” at Galerie Buchholz, Berlin January 31 – March 15, 2014