Luciana Tamas: “Ein kleiner Matrose” / “Aquatic Drone” – Critique of Domestic Reason
- 4 years ago
“Ein kleiner Matrose” / “Aquatic Drone”—work in progress; clip from my exhibition “Critique of Domestic Reason,” halle267, städtische galerie braunschweig, 2020.
The exhibition focuses on femininity in the accelerated flow of postmodern life, and takes (as the event’s title already suggests), both an ironic and a critical look at what is traditionally understood to be the role of women in society. A series of portraits, of both famous and anonymous female figures, explore women’s lives, particularly in the sense of their waiting, and—as is often the case—feelings of isolation. Furthermore, there are several sculptural structures on display—such as weapons, drones, or guitars constructed from everyday objects—that reflect the impressions of postmodern, hybrid warfare that extends beyond the physical battlefield. And perhaps even more urgently, they encapsulate the newly-generated realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clearly, these new realities shift the way in which we relate to, and touch, not only other people but also our own bodies, especially since our health can (under certain circumstances), depend on the way in which we handle our immediate environment: our skin, food, or other pertinent objects, for example. This in turns forces the “domestic reason” to undergo previously unforeseeable transformations, in so far that Kant’s “pure reason” and Sloterdijk’s “cynical reason” slowly turn into a “pandemic reason,” which forces upon us new forms of global communication and distancing on the local level.
The exhibition focuses on femininity in the accelerated flow of postmodern life, and takes (as the event’s title already suggests), both an ironic and a critical look at what is traditionally understood to be the role of women in society. A series of portraits, of both famous and anonymous female figures, explore women’s lives, particularly in the sense of their waiting, and—as is often the case—feelings of isolation. Furthermore, there are several sculptural structures on display—such as weapons, drones, or guitars constructed from everyday objects—that reflect the impressions of postmodern, hybrid warfare that extends beyond the physical battlefield. And perhaps even more urgently, they encapsulate the newly-generated realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clearly, these new realities shift the way in which we relate to, and touch, not only other people but also our own bodies, especially since our health can (under certain circumstances), depend on the way in which we handle our immediate environment: our skin, food, or other pertinent objects, for example. This in turns forces the “domestic reason” to undergo previously unforeseeable transformations, in so far that Kant’s “pure reason” and Sloterdijk’s “cynical reason” slowly turn into a “pandemic reason,” which forces upon us new forms of global communication and distancing on the local level.