How noise and neons give birth to new worldviews
Warren Neidich’s introduction into ‘Neuro-Aesthetics’ at Priska Pasquer

Fake news, alternative facts and record-breaking headlines. The recent US presidential campaign, and relentlessly twittering president Donald Trump, give us an idea how closely political developments are actually linked to their media presentation. One of the most unsettling revelations: the Internet, its news and communications channels, don’t distinguish between ‘felt truth’ and ‘real facts’. »Pizzagate«, an entirely made-up scandal, which is considered to have sealed Hillary Clinton’s defeat, provides the title for Warren Neidich’s central installation within his solo show at Priska Pasquer gallery. A »Cloud« of neons, spreading out in the gallery space connects names, events and buzzwords around a conspiracy theory, which ended up deciding the presidential election. Algorithmically created pseudo-connections – glowing seductively – merge into a robust construct – one, which after all ended up having a long-term impact on our everyday realities.

Working interdisciplinary, artist, writer and theorist Warren Neidich zooms in on the neuronal conditions, which make up for our perceptions of reality. Based on the assumption that our brains is plastic matter that can be sculpted, and that each information feeds into its structure, continually shaping and transforming it, Neidich strives to unlock visual art’s potential to break down ingrained thought patterns in order to enable new ways of thinking. Noise music, the dissonant sounds and unusual rhythms of which go against the grain of our listening habits, is but one example for such processes of mental reformatting. For his piece »Scoring the Tweet(s)« (2017), the artist developed a composition of his own, in which he translated 195 tweets by Donald Trump into a musical score.

Neidich calls his field of research »neuro-aesthetics«, fusing various disciplines and intellectual traditions: Surrealist and dadaist deconstruction meets futurist techno-utopianism; German romantic philosophy’s musings about chaos meet scientific findings about our sense of vision. In ways, which are intuitive, and at times almost playful, Neidich ties these threads together with discourses on the digital era. Taking a institutional stance, Warren Neidich’s solo show provides an introduction into the depth and breadth of its research. The show’s extended duration and rich event program promise to actively speak to the public.

Text: Nelly Gawellek
Translation: Katharina Weinstock