The German title "Geschlossene Gesellschaft" translates as "private function". Literally it says "closed society".
Obama used one in tent form and was the first president to have himself photographed in one[1]. Intelligence agencies all over the world use them. People who think they are sensitive to mobile phone and WLAN radiation convert their bedrooms into: Radiation-tight chambers.
All electronic devices are senders. These emissions can be absorbed and the content can be trivially reconstructed. Keyword Emission Security. Earlier, when it was still a conspiracy theory, the military code name for this surveillance technique was TEMPEST.
Our phones, computers, vehicles, light bulbs are transmitters. Their signals join the naturally occurring activity of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can perceive very little of this without technical aids, such as light and heat. Some wavelengths can be shielded, many are very difficult to block.
In popular imagination, radiation always makes you sick[2]. The idea that the Wifi router installed in the shelter of your home and the mobile phone worn on your body are harmful is widespread and deep, as is distrust of a science in which those suffering from "electrohypersensitivity" see only interest-controlled propaganda.
Meanwhile, we are largely transparent to large corporations and the authorities.
The dream of isolation, of separateness, of perfect purity must necessarily remain unfulfillable. One is always permeated and interwoven by influences. By radiation. By the other. You're never pure. You're never quite clean. You're never safe.
The exhibition space is almost completely filled with a large sculptural installation. A compact, opaque mass whose interior remains inaccessible and which restricts the the audience's potential movements (Geschlossene Gesellschaft, 2018). Its surface is completely smooth and white, as if it had originated from a 3D rendering program. This contrasts with the crooked, historic walls of the exhibition space. Almost all that remains of it are corridors, transitory places.
A second, intimate room, away from direct access, illuminated by warm, indirect artificial light, opens up in the rear part of the exhibition space. It is the setting for a series of new works on paper (Tempest Tent, 2018).
The images shown here for the first time were created in a semi-automatic process in which a structure filled with liquid colours is imaged directly on and through the paper, similar to contact prints or photograms.
The images take as their motif the extreme form of protection against surveillance mentioned above: temporary room-in-a-room buildings, high-security zones hermetically shielding the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation.
