EVENTS

It is now open. Datament exhibition at Warsaw’s Zachęta

The Datament exhibition was previously presented in the Polish Pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Now it has been made available to viewers in Poland. The exhibition can be seen at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art.

The exhibition features dozens of objects. The exhibition illustrates man’s contemporary relationship with digital data and the ways in which it is processed. It allows one to experience data in its ‘physical’ form. The exhibition is intended to become a starting point for a discussion about the fact that although modern technologies cannot offer us ready-made solutions, they can help human development and help us ask better questions.

Curatorial text:

We are all made up of data. Digital information has become our main tool for interacting with reality and, in many cases, constitutes reality itself. The exhibition Datament, presented in the Polish Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, illustrates the contemporary human relationship with data and the ways in which it is processed. The neologism of the title identifies data as an establishment, highlighting its tangible and rarely questioned impact on our lives.

The sculpture, which completely filled the space of the Polish Pavilion, was created using an algorithm for which the starting point was publicly available statistical data on countries and territories from around the world. The installation consists of four grid models made of steel, transferred directly from the digital environment, which represent algorithmically generated statistical homes from Hong Kong, Poland, Mexico and Malawi. Each model consists of four rooms corresponding to basic living functions. Based on the authority of statistics gleaned from official sources, a picture of the world that is as reliable as it is false has been created. This is how datament manifests itself – filling every cognitive void with presumed knowledge.

Using the language of architecture, the installation confronts the problem of the ubiquity of data through physical experience, tangibly demonstrating how the scale of the accumulation of data requiring processing necessitates the establishment of an entirely new relationship with it. A relationship that facilitates the capture and minimisation of the errors they contain, resulting from the incompatibility of the human perspective with the logic of the algorithm.

DATAMENT
16.03 – 19.05.2024
Zachęta National Gallery of Art

artist: Anna Barlik
architect: Marcin Strzała
curator: Jacek Sosnowski

photography: Jacopo Salvi (altomare.studio)

source: ZachętaGallery