16.04-21.08.2016 

For The Appearance of That Which Cannot Be Seen, scientists and theorists were invited to engage with Armin Linke’s photographic archive. In close cooperation with the artist, different images have been selected to be presented in the exhibition in various combinations.

At the interface between the physical and digital world, between exo-evolution and infosphere, Linke’s contribution focuses our attention on such pivotal GLOBALE topics as smart technology, big data, climate change, and Industry 4.0. For the GLOBALE, scientists, theoretists, and cultural anthropologists have separately selected pictures from Linke’s photo archive, now comprising more than twenty thousand images, and have commented on these in texts and interviews. By making their image-selection process transparent, the project thematizes both the readability of photographic archives and the subjective treatment of GLOBALE themes, considering the individual nature of research approaches and interests. The modules by Armin Linke are presented in the exhibitions Infosphere and Reset Modernity!, which is curated by Bruno Latour.

For more than twenty years now, Armin Linke’s photographs have documented the effects of globalization, the transformation of cities into megacities, and the interconnectedness of post-industrial society resulting from digital information and communication technology. In his pictures, Linke captures in an exemplary way the profound economic, ecological, and geological changes our highly technologized world is undergoing in the Anthropocene Age.

As with Armin Linke’s interactive installation Phenotypes / Limited Forms, which was exhibited at the ZKM in 2007 and invited visitors to independently arrange photographs into an online archive, in The Appearance of That Which Cannot Be Seen the legibility of photographic archives can be experienced spatially through display systems created specially for the exhibition.

First, the module was part of the exhibition Infosphere. From April 2016, it is part of the exhibition Reset Modernity!

Curator : Philipp Ziegler

Contributors: Ariella Azoulay, Bruno Latour, Armin Linke, Peter Weibel, Mark Wigley, Jan Zalasiewicz

ZKM | Center for Art and Media

Lorenzstraße 19

76135 Karlsruhe