Personae – Behavior & Authenticity

Exhibition opening Friday, June 22, 2018, 6–9pm

Open June 23 & 24th 2018, 12-6pm

”Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.”

– Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1973

As part of the 48 Stunden Neukölln Festival, 2018, SomoS Art House, Berlin, presents an exhibition by a selection of artists who reflect on authenticity, subjective reality, behavioral patterns and performativity of the self.

In our professional environment, on the internet, within gender and family roles, as artists, it can be said that our being is always layered with often highly coded performative elements.

The tension between inner being and public persona is described by Jorge Luis Borges as a sharp divide, while in Hannah Arendt’s view, “nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.”

Arendt’s view seems fitting in a time where, for better or worse, our public behavior is constantly under close scrutiny. Enabled by rapidly changing technologies, it is measured, and influenced by outside factors. Governmental, political and commercial monitoring and psychological profiling are all pervasive. The interest in our genuine private selves behind the public persona is enormous.

At the same time, to protect ourselves, behavior and self-presentation are used as performance. Both on-and offline, we often rely on masking our identity. Ironically however, genuineness has become a fluid idea, as our masks and personae may actually portray ourselves in an ideal way.

The participating artists trace these dynamics and their influence on social relations, our sense of reality and community.

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Participating Artists:

Boris Alexander Knop is a director and producer, as well as poet and artist known for his political theatrical pieces. During Personae, Knop will present his performative sound installation ReFugIum which will invite viewers to explore the relationship between new media, mobility and happiness.

Edurne Herrán is an artist based between Berlin and Madrid who approaches concepts such as everyday life as well as both encounters and communication between individuals in her work. Her work is particularly informed by the social codes that surround clothing and textile material, as well as the Internet era’s influence on behaviour. During the exhibition, her Futuro Perfecto will be displayed which consists of a series of photographs and text that emerge from the social experiments conducted as part of her development and performance of various self-characters, as based on dissociative identity disorder.

Jonas Blume is a Berlin-based conceptual video and installation artist for whom concepts such as the online and offline self are central to his work. In particularly, Blume’s work focuses on the multiplicity of identity that is encouraged by the blurred lines and connections between identity online and IRL. We look forward to exhibiting his video-work 52 Hertz Whale during Personae, which employs the sounds of a whale who scientists believe to be the last of its kind as an allegory to online existence.

Lyndal Walker’s work is concerned with gender roles, images, identity and our relationship to time. Consumer culture forms a contextual basis of her work, with fashion emerging as a means to explore concept. An installation of Walker’s will be shown during the exhibition which toys with the viewer’s reflection, the artist’s naked flashing body and the notions of self-presentation and public personae.

Stacie Ant is a Russian/Canadian new media artist and curator whose work employs techniques such as video, installation and performance to create fictional social commentaries on contemporary culture. For Personae, Ant will present Self Exploration; a series of character-driven paintings that offer humorous glimpses into the everyday routines of women within the broader context of a digitally immersed society.

Zander Porter is an artist, performer and curator who is interested in identity research that may be considered social/collective or ‘individuated’. For the Personae exhibition, Porter will present a performance work titled alias personae Live 3, which explores his previous embodiment of three online avatars; Freshy, ORGZurvivor and athlete__22.