Ausstellung von MELT: COUNTING FEELINGS
Warm invitation to the exhibition opening and presentation of the NRW Media Art Fellows MELT in the Fachbibliothek Kunst & Textil:
Opening: April 14th, 17h – 20h
Visiting Hours: 18.04. – 11.05.23, Tue, Wed, Thurs, 10h – 16h
Accessibility: The library can be reached via elevator. A detailed description of the venues accessibility can be downloaded in english and german.
Join us this April 14th from 17h at the Fachbibliothek Kunst & Textil for the opening of MELTs exhibition „Counting Feelings“. MELT’s interactive installation unfolds possibilities for lovingly engaging the knowledges of Trans* and autistic people when it comes to data about our lives. As NRW media arts fellows, MELT spent one semester at the University of Cologne and collaborated with Konstanze Schütze. During this time MELT held three workshops with Trans* and disabled participants on the topic of data for Trans* and disabled lives.
Counting Feelings unseats data practices that disembody and disconnect from the people who any data is about. Moving from a politics that asserts ’nothing about us without us‘ the works in this installation celebrate Trans* and autistic authorship, embodied data practices and dreaming. Following practices that focus on embodiment, MELT engages the senses throughout the exhibition space. Modifications of sensory inputs like light, touch, weight, reading and play permeate the works in the space and offer practices of rest, touch and connectivity over time as modes of approaching the exhibition.
Installed within the interactive installation are three distinct works. Beginning nodes for revolutionary data practices or groundwork for reimagining data consists of a grid like floor installation with statements emerging from workshops with Trans* and disabled participants considering our engagements with data; these statements entangle with clay data points that visitors are invited to move around to express interest in the statements and to play and stim with. Pop up Disabled Data Center is a series of stitched together fabric and plastic planes that shelter visitors. The work prompts reading with accessible language practices like embroidered braille and brings visitors into a prompt for sharing what kind of data they carry with themselves. These data sets shift and change what data is understood to be – no material or quantifable requirements are enumerated within these sets – included alongside are data sets that have been collaboratively built by Counting Feelings workshop participants. Data Set of Weight is a heavy blanket weighing down data feelings on our bodies. Consisting of a weighted stitched blanket filled with stones and other heavy materials, this data set wraps around visitors as a thick warm blanket.
During the opening there will be time to experience the exhibition and to meet MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr).
Bildcredits: MELT