And When The Panic Rises
You Shall Have This City’s Sympathy
John Holten
September 13-18, 10-18h
Public brunch reception: Saturday September 17, 10-13h
Mareschstrasse 1, 12055 Berlin, Germany
As part of its participation in Berlin Art Week, Büro BDP is very proud to announce the exhibition-cum-novel project And When The Panic Rises You Shall Have This City’s Sympathy by John Holten. This ‘exo-novel’ is spread across the city on fly-posters in the days running up to Berlin Art Week. First appearing in BQ Gallery as a potential book authored by a seemingly different John Holten, this project sees BDP’s editor-in-chief marry the practices of novelist, artist and publisher to create a work of fiction that is extended throughout the city of Berlin. Telling a story in the second person, it has its climatic crescendo in an installation at the project space Büro BDP with a VR scene created by Icelandic artist Mundi Vondi. For this scene, the audience will occupy the point of view of the main character. Envisioned in collaboration with Holten’s installation, Mundi recreates this environment made on one of the newest visualizing technologies – Oculus’ yet-to-be released medium. Telling a fiction with a centuries old medium of fly-posters, in the city, and the most contemporary technologies extent, the project points toward new ways of storytelling in the post-digital age.
John Holten is a novelist, artist and publisher whose work often occurs at the meeting point of these domains. His work has been shown internationally in places such as Malmö konsthall, The White Building, David Zwirner Gallery (with Aengus Woods), NGBK, Agora, Villa Romana, Plan B Gallery, Sans Serriffe and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. His novels The Readymades (2011) and Oslo, Norway (2015) have both been published by Broken Dimanche Press, which he co-founded in 2009.
Mundi Vondi is an Icelandic artist, filmmaker and designer. His work and collaboration has been shown most recently at Manifesta, the Serpentine London and BQ Gallery Berlin. He created over a dozen fashion collections the most recent of which SnowBlind at Harpa, Iceland's famous opera house, as part of a collaboration with the outerwear brand 66° North.
Oculus medium combines art and play in an unprecedented manner. Medium is a specially developed application that enables the user to model virtual sculptures, to paint in the virtual environment and create objects that feel realistic.
www.oculus.com/medium/