Knowbotic Research

The exhibition 'Room for Manoeuvre' is the new solo-show of the artist group Knowbotic Research (KRcF), known for their advanced network and media works since the founding of the group in 1991. In a specially designed audio-visual installation including four video projections, 'Room for Manoeuvre' presents four of the 'vehicles' that Knowbotic Research have developed for their current projects, and places these vehicles in a series of hypothetical scenarios. The exhibition explores the meaning of codes and actions in public spaces. It proposes possibilities for acting through strategies of transcoding in these spaces of power, of scientific knowledge, of surveillance, and spaces of migration. Going beyond these possibilities, the show suggests to the audience that such 'vehicles' might in fact be used for other, self-designed strategic purposes.

The projects "naked bandit / here, not her / white bandit" (2004/05), "Passion 5" (2005), "be prepared! tiger!" (2006) and "BlackBenz Race" (2006-) use different vehicles to act as catalysts for such transcodings: in the first case it is an autonomous flying robot which produces technologically coded forms of sovereignty under the conditions of a (university) research laboratory; in the second case, a street cleaning machine clears up the petrified political passions of a May demonstration; the amateurbuilt stealth boat, invisible for radar, processes the intercultural translations between the US stealth bomber and the tactical speedboats of the Tamil Tigers; and in a car race, a caravan of black Mercedes cars traverses the translocal conditions of the Albanian space of migration. The term transcoding describes the translation of abstract facts and conditions which usually evade public representation, into temporary visibilities that can be dealt with. These facts cannot be described by simple representations in clearly defined, local contexts, but require networked scenarios within which they can be reflected and acted upon.

In the exhibition, some original vehicles (white_sovereign, tiger_stealth) are on display, as well as the vehicle-KITs' with which normal vehicles can be transformed into passion_cleaners and blackbenz. The atmospheric and metaphorically rich short film loops were shot and edited by Simon Jaquemet. They are projected in four separate rooms of the gallery, each showing one of the vehicles in action, pointing to potential applications that they can be put to. Brochures and printed tableaus offer information about the vehicles in the form of manuals through which their usages can be further explored. A specially designed sound environment developed together with Roly Roos and Joana Aderi traverses the entire gallery and sends echoes and acoustic reverberations of the different projects through the exhibition space.

Exhibition by Knowbotic Research in collaboration with Simon Jaquemet, Roly Roos, Joana Aderi, Peter Sandbichler, Yannick Fournier

Curated by: Andreas Broeckmann and Stefan Riekeles (assistant)

Production: Skuc Gallery in cooperation with Knowbotic Research

The text publication accompanying the exhibition includes essays by Andreas Broeckmann, Stefan Riekeles, Giaco Schiesser, Sabine Schmidt, Felix Stalder, Stefan Wagner, and Knowbotic Research.

Pressetext

Knowbotic Research
Room for Manoeuvre
four vehicles: white_sovereign, passion_cleaner, tiger_stealth, blackbenz
Kuratoren: Andreas Broeckmann, Stefan Riekeles

Ausstellung von Knowbotic Research in Zusammenarbeit mit
Simon Jaquemet, Roly Roos, Joana Aderi, Peter Sandbichler, Yannick Fournier