Technoshamanism: HMKV Ausstellungsmagazin 2021/3

by Inke Arns, Erik Davis

• Contemporary artists inspired by Joseph Beuyrs explore techno-shamanism in the art of the digital age • Accompanies an exhibition at HMKV, Dortmund from 9 October 2021 to 6 March 2022 This catalog for a show at HMKV Dortmund explores techno-shamanism in the arts today, taking Joseph Beuys, who cultivated the figure of the shaman throughout his career, as the starting point. In addition to viewing shamanism itself as a form of technology, this artistic approach uses (speculative) technology as a way of discovering shamanic powers. Contemporary artists are updating Beuys’s strategies and themes for the digital age, deploying many of the same tropes. These acquired iconic status in Beuys’s oeuvre, and were aimed at healing and transforming society, cultivating a spiritual approach to the environment, and subverting power structures and the logic of capitalism. The positions introduced here combine aspects that appear diametrically technology and shamanism, technical progress and esotericism, rational modernism and the mystical tradition. Today’s artistic alchemists are engaged in a quest for “rare-earth elements” and metals, a fusion of the environment, technology, and artificial intelligence in order to create a technical/mythological description of the cosmos. Included here are works Morehshin Allahyari, Joseph Beuys, Mariechen Danz, Anja Dornieden & Juan David González Monroy, Lucile Olympe Haute, knowbotiq, Sahej Rahal, Tabita Rezaire, Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Transformella (aLifveForm fed and cared for by JP Raether), Suzanne Treister, Anton Vidokle. Text in English and German.

220 pages, Paperback

Published October 30, 2023