"Cloudscapes" - an exhibition within the exhibition series of "Globale Digitale" till September 15th
http://zkm.de„In der ehemaligen Waffen- und Munitionsfabrik auf diesem Gelände und an vielen anderen Stellen in der Stadt waren im Zweiten Weltkrieg mehr als 17.000 Zwangsarbeiterinnen und Zwangsarbeiter eingesetzt. Ein Drittel waren Frauen. 12.000 stammen aus Osteuropa. Aus ihrer Heim verschleppt, wurde ihre Arbeitskraft von der Kriegswirtschaft ausgebeutet. Mehr als 500 von ihnen fanden in Karlsruhe den Tod. Den Opfern zum Gedenken, den Lebenden als Mahnung, zur Bewahrung des Friedens, der Menschenwürde und der freien Selbstbestimmung aller Menschen.“
„In the former weapons and amunition factory on the areal and on many other locations in the town more than 17.000 males and females were occupied by forced labor. One third of them were women. 12.000 came from Eastern Europe. Deported from their home, their labor force was exploited by the war economy. More than 500 died in Karlsruhe. To the commemoration of the victims, to the reminder of the living, for the preservation of peace, to the human dignity and the free self-determination of all men.“
This sign is placed at the right of the entrance and gives the visitor an information about the original purpose of the building of the ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) and its WWII history.
Ironically, the exhibition of „Cloudscapes“ gives this sign to the right of the entrance an actuality usually almost nobody dares to think about. The occupation of the consciousness is almost perfect.
Weaponry in peace times? On such a place - as this old factory has been changed into a museum of art? At least, in 2011 close to Karlsruhe there was a "Conference on non-lethal weapons" in Ettlingen (
http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/29764807/ ), organized by "Europäische Arbeitsgruppe für Nicht-tödliche Waffen" (EWG-NLW), which is a subsiadary of "Fraunhofer-Institut für Chemische Technologie" in Munich. ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer-Institut_für_Chemische_Technologie )
Well again: Weaponry in peace times? On such a place - as this old factory has been changed into a museum of art?
This would be as absurd as looking to the world from an ivory tower – far away from reality. But only at the first glance.
But not only the "EWG-NLW" came to Ettlingen, the Technische Universität Karlsruhe is very active in atmospheric research.
This exhibition "Cloudscape" in Karlsruhe did not fall randomly from the sky purely just by case.
You remember the old SS-slogan: „Arbeit macht frei.“?
A common sense metapher - „Arbeit“ - was being used to kill.
The main purpose of this exhibition is the cultural preparation to the „digital“ age for the public. It's part of a longerlasting exhibition series called „Globale Digitale“ until April 17 2016. What this is about you get informed outside the exhibitions halls in the entrance hall of the building where there is an exhibition stand with some video content about „Globale Digitale“. Some words are giving you the impression of what „Globale Digitale“ is all about: Reearth,
Resky, Renaissance 2.0, Exo-Evolution, Reality Mining, Big Data, Anthropocene, Reprogramming, Reskilling, Retooling, Infosphere, Reengineering and Nano Art. As you see there is an emphasis on the word „re“ and one might guess that the ZKM has fallen in love with this word of „re“.
The city of Karlsruhe is not only the German „City of the Courts“ it is also the city of one of the most successful German technical universities. It's supposed to be an university of „excellence“ - as it is called in modern German. Therefore, it is only a natural context to have such an exhibition series exactly in that town. In that way, Karlsruhe is the counterpart to Potsdam which is closely located to the German government institutions, where there was a conference about Climate Engineering just a few months ago - under the participation of representatives of the German government.
The emphasis on the word „re“ as a center piece of this exhibitions series has to do with the German specialty of having a basic excellence in organisation skills. With this cultural background you need only the tools to reorganize the material world with new ideas after you destroyed creatively the old world in a profound „re“shaping process. But not only the material world is touched by such engineering concepts and views also the spiritual world which shapes social relations is being used to grow this "re"-idea even punchier. It is military thinking and in such a way the old ammunition factory is the right location of this exhibition series.
„Cloud“ is the key word for this development within the realm of informatics. „Cloud“ is the metapher to describe the hardware phenomenon of the existence of huge data farms around the world. Altogether, these data farms are the touchable reality of the metapher of the informatical „cloud“ which at the same time is the metapher for the description of the perception situation of the user. From the point of view of the user what matters is the amount of data storage he may use. Where the hardware is, doesn't matter. What matters for the user is the possibility of getting the amount of data storage needed for a certain purpose. Of course, these data farms are far away from one's own computer – sometimes they are not -, but exactly for that reason the touchable reality gets for far-distance reasons the untouchable metapher of a "cloud". It describes exactly what matters in data storage. The problems around creating such a „cloud“ as data theft and data espionage don't matter all – at least for those who are propagating this development: They make investments and want to get profits out of these investments. But problems around these investments stay „foggy“.
This is the main background of the exhibition "Cloudscapes" at the ZKM in Karlsruhe.
Besides of its computational meaning the metapher „Cloud“ stands also for other realities of societies and their technical possibilities.
And they have – more or less – to do with results or methods of nonlethal warfare. Therefore, in total the word „Cloud“ is a symbolic key word for distraction from and a cover-up of reality. „Cloud“ is being used as a term for the „impossibility“ to grab the reality exactly for what it is. A „Cloud“ exists. You may see this cloud. But if you go through it you can not grab of what it is made of. A cloud is also a synonym for the behavior of mobbed-up societal structures. You see them but you can not grab them. Also, the judicial field - as this exhibition was in the German "City of Courts" is hit by the phenomen of the cloud as we see that corporations use their big expertise to disguise traces of business activities by using international relations. Germans go to Greece to hide their money. Greeks go to Germany to hide their money. Of course, this phenomen is not new, but now it is being social-engineered as other parts of society are changing in this way, too. Therefore, the term „cloud“ is also being used as a metapher for being „inaccountable“ to national laws. It is the time of "deals" - for those who can pay it. Additionally, in the health field you may find „clouds“ in the brain as its memory abilities may weaken and the memory hides into the cloud of dementia respectively alzheimer, although it seems that there are ways to reverse it - without earning a lot of money (a crime in market-orientating societies).
Independently of the single themes just counted, the term „Cloud“ describes also the situation of men in front of the explosion of availabe information which influences the perception of reality. The fact, that we don't know something does not mean that it does not exist. (In this way, Rumsfeld seems to have described reality correctly.) It means only that we did not consult somebody yet who knows about it. And the fact, that we may consult somebody who knows about the suspected information does not mean that this person may give you the needed information we are looking for. In that way the huge amount of information appears to the individual information seeker as a cloud. In this context the term „cloud“ describes the interdependency of the individual to society. It describes at the same time the interdependency of society with the individuals.
As there is power inequality between society and the individual there exists an emphasis of making the individual controllable. This may be the real reason of the security state. This same interdependency relates also to the anonymous relationship potential within society. But not only the aspect of „interdependency“ can be described as being cloudy or not only the data base perception can be described with the metapher of clouds. Also the information workers can be described as a "cloudy" social caste. The latter one results from the fact that people sunk into the deep sea of informatics forgetting everything around them. This may appear to outsiders of this caste as a social behavior that might be associated with the word „addicted“, although the addicted behavior is only the observable moment of the interdependency of the individual with the information cloud.
Maybe you find even more applications for the word „Cloud“.
In a structural sense these applications are all united by the fact that the knowledge about the existence of a cloud is there but neither of them can really grab the substance which the cloud consists of: You are poking around in the dark but this same dark is avoiding you – similiar to the observation situation in quantum physics where you deal only with probabilities.
These projections described above make it so difficult to educate the public about geoengineering.
In a meteorological sense of the word „cloud“ is not projected itself from an axiom. In contrary, the word „cloud“ is being used as an axiom itself. At least, for the general public.
Axiom is a term known from the „hard“ sciences. A scientific statement which is not only a belief but a logical „truth“. These axioms are used to develop scientific theories which have to be plausible before they can be tested with reality. Axioms are used as the bases of determination of what scientific „truth“ consists of. As we all know: "truth" depends on persons. As persons have their own convictions moreover, they themselves are dependent to social contexts. Therefore, „truth“ depends on axioms but "axioms" depends also on the historical context in which this „truth“ is found. Now, therefore it is a relative „truth“. As an example, the apple of Isaac Newton still falls down because of gravity. But what is different to the times of Newton now, mankind tries to get around gravity. (Higgs-Boson-Field, Graviton, CERN) Finding new markets.
After having constructed scientific "truth" one may start the technical construction using the found scientific knowledge. Therefore, axioms are the bases of the technical reality. And therefore, axioms get an enormous importance to society. Although they are usually true they themselves produce political reality as the system of the determination of axioms is „irrovacable“. This system of the determination of axioms is therefore a tight belief system. If you go outside this system you leave the politically recognized part of society and become to an „outsider“ with all disadvantages connected to this situation.
Now, we know why the term „chemtrail“ makes it so difficult to grab this reality: because nobody wants to imagine that he or she is carried by an airliner which disperses poison to the land below. It is too terrific to accept „chemtrails“ as a reality. What we see are just "Clouds" like the ones seen in the exhibition in Karlsruhe.
If the public would accept „chemtrails“ as a reality it would have to integrate „chemtrails“ into the societal systems. With the perception as "Clouds" you don't have this problem.
The costs of societal integration are too high. On the other hand we may ask ourselves: Do we need these kind of clouds?
For that reason we will be kept further in the dark, as others have decided - without democratic discussion of the "emotional" common men - the need of these clouds.
Nevertheless, we may care about information around "geoengineering", hoping to grab chemtrails even more as what they are: poison.
We are looking already to a successful discovery story.
GLOBALE: Cloudscapes Eine Installation von Transsolar + Tetsuo Kondo
https://vimeo.com/155835808Eine Wolke im ZKM! In den Lichthöfen 8 + 9 des ZKM wird für die BesucherInnen eine reale Wolke erfahrbar gemacht, die nicht nur statisch im Raum schwebt, sondern sich durch die Lichthöfe bewegt. Die BesucherInnen haben die Möglichkeit, über einen Steg durch die verschiedenen Luftschichten der Wolke zu wandern und diese so aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven wahrzunehmen.
Videodokumentation:
ZKM | Institut für Bildmedien
Kamera: Jonas Denzel, Martina Rotzal, Christina Zartmann
Schnitt: Sarah Binder
Sprecher: Rabea Rahmig
Tonaufzeichnung: Anton Kossjanenko
A cloud in the ZKM! As prelude to the exhibition »Exo-Evolution« Stuttgart-based Energietechnik GmbH Transsolar, together with Japanese architect Tetsuo Kondo plan to produce an artificial cloud in the ZKM spaces.
Video Documentary:
ZKM | Institute for Visual Media
Camera: Jonas Denzel, Martina Rotzal, Christina Zartmann
Editing: Sarah Binder
Voice Over: Rabea Rahmig
Sound Recording: Anton Kossjanenko
Cloud Clubbing
https://vimeo.com/141194108Dancing time during the exhibition "Cloudscapes"
300 Jahre Karlsruhe / 300 Tage GLOBALE / 30 Stunden Cloud Clubbing
Das ZKM und die junge Karlsruher DJ-Szene luden ein zum Cloud Clubbing: 30 Stunden lang gab es Musik von Menschen, mit Menschen und für Menschen aus Karlsruhe. Getanzt wurde in der Wolken-Installation Cloudscapes von Transsolar und Tetsuo Kondo im ZKM_Lichthof 8+9 und im Pavillon am Schloss zu elektronischer Musik von urban über deep bis minimal.
Videodokumentation:
ZKM | Institut für Bildmedien
Kamera: Jonas Denzel, Martina Rotzal
Schnitt: Louis Schmitt
