Tomás Saraceno. Omega Centauri 1 Nephila Kenianensis 4 Cyrtophora Citricola, 2014; spidersilk, carbon fiber, light, tripod. Courtesy of the Artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin.

The gallery hums with screechy sounds resembling acoustic feedback, punctuated by random bursts of bass and cartoonish sound effects. The soundscape is queasily amorphous and disorienting, built on dissonance and the chaotic rhythms resonating from a handful of arachnids that have woven fine, thick webs around delicate wire frames. Featuring a plethora of spiderweb sound installations, Tomás Saraceno’s latest show Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions is an experimental drive to amplify and record the vibrations created when spiders communicate, and using special sensory devices, like transducers and laser Dopplers, that map their movements. When made perceivable to human ears, these vibrations—spontaneously produced in a freewheeling environment—enable jam sessions to become integral part of the show, where musicians have been invited to respond to the arachnids’ vibrational signals in a bid for interspecies mingling.

In spite of what the name of the exhibition suggests, the curatorial framework of the show is given vague, but stylish parameters that situate Saraceno’s oeuvre on the crossroads of art, architecture, and science. To term Saraceno’s show as “sound art” or “sound installation,” would be an underestimation of the multivalent nature of an artistic practice that prizes interaction, interconnectedness, and a kind of new order that can only form out of an established network of chaos.

Tomás Saraceno. Spider Salon: Jam Session with Evan Ziporyn with Cyrtophora citricola duet on semi social musical instrument SXDF-NB1006-2: built by four Cyrtophora citricola, eight weeks, on September 28, 2015 (performance still). Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Built upon the notion of conceiving “alternative ways of knowledge, experience, and interaction”[1], Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions comfortably slips out of any attempt at definition or categorization, playing to its own brassy tune in interrogating the nuances within the established structures of knowledge. In the enveloping darkness of the gallery space, glowing glass cases suspend the webs in the expanse of space, lending metaphorical and literal weight to each installation: a small, chaotic network of nature whose interconnectedness parallels transnational urban systems and galactic spirals in both shape and behavior. Their imaginative, gemlike exquisiteness, however, is muted by the sheer amount of technical and scientific information provided in the catalog, like a well-timed reminder that its beauty is a construct out of the precise observation of nature.

Tomás Saraceno. Spiderweb sonification experiments in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Hannelore Hoch and Roland Mühlenthaler, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, 2014 (performance still). Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno.

A spiderweb functions as a visual metaphor for what Saraceno prefers to term as the “cosmic web,” a persistent theme that is demonstrated over and over in varying forms and materials throughout the course of his artistic practice. The web begins with a single thread flung into the wind, where by chance, the filament of silk catches on an object that will anchor its structure. Only then does the web’s tridimensional complexity—assembled upon mathematical principles of radial lines and auxiliary spirals—start to take shape, as form and function come together geometrically to create a product of precision engineering. Social .. Quasi Social .. Solitary .. Spiders … On Hybrid Cosmic Webs (2013) features multi-tiered, collaboratively woven webs by different species of spiders showing grades of sociability: social (living together in a community on a single web), quasi-social, and solitary (living alone in a web). These hybrid webs interlink, morph, and shift, serving as instruments for communication and cooperation. Saraceno’s working process mirrors the spiders’ complex web-spinning processes, if not in precision, at least in form, invoking ideas that begin on the ground and end up somewhere in the cosmos: an envisioned future formed by collaborative forces, perfected by technology and sustained by trailblazing ideas.

Tomás Saraceno. Social .. Quasi Social .. Solitary .. Spiders … On Hybrid Cosmic Webs, 2013; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin. ©Andrea Rossetti.

“When cosmologists or astrophysicians were trying to explain how the universe had formed, the way how they describe [that] type of cosmic web and the geometrical analogy as they like to use is tridimensional spiderweb,” Saraceno says. Indeed, his constructs mimic what already exists in nature; from cosmic macrostructures to biological microsystems, his many projects of interests interrogate an endlessly expanding cluster of ideas grounded in socialist sustainability, until they morph and materialize into schools of thought that span multidisciplinary practices—again, not dissimilar to the process of web spinning.

The material results of these combining fields of knowledge are large-scale productions of networked utopias, cloud cities, and scalable installations that contain the indispensable notion of connectivity, found in the complex ecosystem of a spiderweb, the morphology of cloud formations, and within sociological and evolutionary pathways. In Galaxy Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web (2008), interwoven elastic ropes are stretched across floors, walls, and ceilings, over and around viewers. A single touch of the elastic connectors sends reverberations through this simulacrum of a universe, allusively drawing attention to concepts of social theory, patterns of networks and spheres that seem to articulate the basic structures of contemporary interaction.

Tomás Saraceno. Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web, 2009; installation view, Venice Biennale, 2009. Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno. Photo: Alessandro Coco.

As far as exhibitions go, Saraceno’s ambitions are hard work, literally and figuratively. They straddle high conceptualism and scientific research, borrowing heavily from the technical language of visionary architects like Buckminster Fuller, and require years to complete. Underlying the web’s intertextuality is the subliminal emphasis on the selfless collective, and in a culture where individualism dominates, that is perhaps the hardest to understand.

Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra Jam Sessions is on view at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore through December 20, 2015.

[1] Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions. Press release and exhibition catalog.

Tomás Saraceno. Omega Centauri 1 Nephila Kenianensis 4 Cyrtophora Citricola, 2014; spidersilk, carbon fiber, light, tripod. Courtesy of the Artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin.

In spite of what the name of the exhibition suggests, the curatorial framework of the show is given vague, but stylish parameters that situate Saraceno’s oeuvre on the crossroads of art, architecture, and science. To term Saraceno’s show as “sound art” or “sound installation,” would be an underestimation of the multivalent nature of an artistic practice that prizes interaction, interconnectedness, and a kind of new order that can only form out of an established network of chaos.

Tomás Saraceno. Spider Salon: Jam Session with Evan Ziporyn with Cyrtophora citricola duet on semi social musical instrument SXDF-NB1006-2: built by four Cyrtophora citricola, eight weeks, on September 28, 2015 (performance still). Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno.

Built upon the notion of conceiving “alternative ways of knowledge, experience, and interaction”[1], Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions comfortably slips out of any attempt at definition or categorization, playing to its own brassy tune in interrogating the nuances within the established structures of knowledge. In the enveloping darkness of the gallery space, glowing glass cases suspend the webs in the expanse of space, lending metaphorical and literal weight to each installation: a small, chaotic network of nature whose interconnectedness parallels transnational urban systems and galactic spirals in both shape and behavior. Their imaginative, gemlike exquisiteness, however, is muted by the sheer amount of technical and scientific information provided in the catalog, like a well-timed reminder that its beauty is a construct out of the precise observation of nature.

Tomás Saraceno. Spiderweb sonification experiments in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Hannelore Hoch and Roland Mühlenthaler, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, 2014 (performance still). Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno.

A spiderweb functions as a visual metaphor for what Saraceno prefers to term as the “cosmic web,” a persistent theme that is demonstrated over and over in varying forms and materials throughout the course of his artistic practice. The web begins with a single thread flung into the wind, where by chance, the filament of silk catches on an object that will anchor its structure. Only then does the web’s tridimensional complexity—assembled upon mathematical principles of radial lines and auxiliary spirals—start to take shape, as form and function come together geometrically to create a product of precision engineering. Social .. Quasi Social .. Solitary .. Spiders … On Hybrid Cosmic Webs (2013) features multi-tiered, collaboratively woven webs by different species of spiders showing grades of sociability: social (living together in a community on a single web), quasi-social, and solitary (living alone in a web). These hybrid webs interlink, morph, and shift, serving as instruments for communication and cooperation. Saraceno’s working process mirrors the spiders’ complex web-spinning processes, if not in precision, at least in form, invoking ideas that begin on the ground and end up somewhere in the cosmos: an envisioned future formed by collaborative forces, perfected by technology and sustained by trailblazing ideas.

Tomás Saraceno. Social .. Quasi Social .. Solitary .. Spiders … On Hybrid Cosmic Webs, 2013; installation view. Courtesy of the Artist and Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin. ©Andrea Rossetti.

“When cosmologists or astrophysicians were trying to explain how the universe had formed, the way how they describe [that] type of cosmic web and the geometrical analogy as they like to use is tridimensional spiderweb,” Saraceno says. Indeed, his constructs mimic what already exists in nature; from cosmic macrostructures to biological microsystems, his many projects of interests interrogate an endlessly expanding cluster of ideas grounded in socialist sustainability, until they morph and materialize into schools of thought that span multidisciplinary practices—again, not dissimilar to the process of web spinning.

The material results of these combining fields of knowledge are large-scale productions of networked utopias, cloud cities, and scalable installations that contain the indispensable notion of connectivity, found in the complex ecosystem of a spiderweb, the morphology of cloud formations, and within sociological and evolutionary pathways. In Galaxy Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web (2008), interwoven elastic ropes are stretched across floors, walls, and ceilings, over and around viewers. A single touch of the elastic connectors sends reverberations through this simulacrum of a universe, allusively drawing attention to concepts of social theory, patterns of networks and spheres that seem to articulate the basic structures of contemporary interaction.

Tomás Saraceno. Galaxies Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web, 2009; installation view, Venice Biennale, 2009. Courtesy of Studio Tomás Saraceno. Photo: Alessandro Coco.

As far as exhibitions go, Saraceno’s ambitions are hard work, literally and figuratively. They straddle high conceptualism and scientific research, borrowing heavily from the technical language of visionary architects like Buckminster Fuller, and require years to complete. Underlying the web’s intertextuality is the subliminal emphasis on the selfless collective, and in a culture where individualism dominates, that is perhaps the hardest to understand.

Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra Jam Sessions is on view at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore through December 20, 2015.

[1] Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions. Press release and exhibition catalog.

Tomás Saraceno, Cloud Cities, installation view, image courtesy Berlin Art Link

This winter the Hamburger Bahnhof’s exhibitions are (mostly) devoted to artists influenced by utopian architecture, a decision made to coincide with Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities, an investigation into sustainable living that borrows heavily from the language of visionary architects and futurists like Buckminster Fuller.

Saraceno’s “biospheres” are fun, enormous and inviting, with long lines of art-goers waiting for a moment of awkward repose over the Bahnhof’s hangar.  They allude to the plasticity of our “futures” (Saraceno prefers the plural) but they also seem kind of garish, like giant floaties at an eighties-themed pool party in West Hollywood.

When compared to Saraceno’s epic balloon opera, the drawings and models of early German modernist architects like Bruno Taut and Hanzel Weblik are pleasingly modest.  These are displayed downstairs, in small dark alcoves as part of the sprawling Architektonika exhibition.

Architektonika offers up a few real gems, among them Dieter Roth’s scrappy and feral Gartenskulptur, a garden-environment-installation that was added to, catalogued and maintained for thirty years by the artist and his son. Then there are photographs and remnants of Gordon Matta Clark’s 1977 Office Baroque in which the artist sliced open a building in Antwerp and created a teardrop shaped hole in the façade (which was slated for destruction).  The result emits a bodily pathos unusual for the inanimate.

Paul Laffoley, The Orgone Motor, 1981, courtesy of Kent Fine Art, New York

Upstairs Paul Laffoley offers his take on utopia as part of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s new Secret Universe series.  I’m really excited about this exhibition series, which will last for three years and focus on visionary artists whose multi-disciplinary practices may have been overlooked by the larger art community.  Finally, we can see what the weird uncles of the art world are up to.

Laffoley is a former architect who merges Eastern religious dogma, Futurism (among many other “isms”) and Carl Jung into intensely weird diagrammatic paintings.  His aims are lofty, and he seeks to illustrate complex imaginary systems like time travel, the fifth dimension and “Absolute Life.”

Laffoley, an artist devoted to the possibilities of other worlds spent many years making these paintings in a one-bedroom apartment he dubbed “The Boston Visionary Cell.”   Mandala-like, they aspire to a kind of “utopic space” with their own visual hierarchy.

In a lecture given in 2001, Laffoley stated about his mission to explore utopic space:

I have developed this task by means of symbols, perhaps the only way an individual can approach such a project. Real symbols move the mind up to and through metaphor and finally beyond to a semiotic state that has never been successfully named.

Laffoley goes on to claim that the concept of utopic space should serve “as a neutral sounding board for all attempts at plumbing or prophesying the future.” His paintings are filled with repetitive symbols including eyes, circles, stars, outstretched hands multicolored rays.  In another context, this could be a Bikram Yoga invite hidden underneath a windshield.  But with Laffoley, these symbols read as sincere parts of a dense personal lexicon.

Laffoley offers the occasional autobiographical nod, charting his lucid dreams in black and white panels, in one recounting sticking his finger into someone’s “soft eye.”

Paul Laffoley, The Renovatio Mundi, 1977, courtesy Kent Fine Art

He offers advice culled from Eastern ideas of non-resistance in vinyl letters, claiming that “All suffering is the separation of boredom and care.” His works are taped off, crisp and obsessive, but possess a kind of sympathetic craziness, like Laffoley isn’t being intentionally obtuse, he’s just your everyday Shaman, trying to spare you psychic pain.

Presenting a less utopian vision of the future is the neighboring National Gallery Prize for Young Art, exhibition, which shows the work of the four artists who competed for Germany’s annual 50,000 euro award.

Cyprien Gaillard, Artefact, film still 2011, courtesy Sprueth Magers Gallery

This year, the prize went to French artist Cyprien Gaillard, a headline-grabber who moves between mediums like beer and neon.  At the Hamburger Bahnhof Gaillard shows the more nuanced “Artefacts,” a slow moving cinematic collage of contemporary Iraq, which weaves together tropes of Babylonian antiquity and American militarism.  Gaillard lingers both on the famed Ishtar Gate as well as soldiers shooting green lasers into a receding desert.  The film was shot originally on Gaillards’ Iphone, but was transferred later to 35 mm, creating an anachronistic loop, which is reinforced by the repeating phrase “Babylon,” from the David Grey song.

Klara Lidén, a beloved Berlin artist whose urban interventions, sculpture and performative acts are usually so sharp, offers up a lackluster contribution in the name of institutional critique. Liden presents a video of herself climbing into a trash can, set to the tune of “Helpless” as well as a manicured hedge at the museum’s entrance in the shape of a dumpster.

Andro Wekua’s film and adjoining installation are more ambitious, but rely too heavily on saturated colors and the tropes of surrealism.

Kitty Kraus is the only artist to eschew video, but her kinetic sculptures share a sequential and rhythmic similarity to film nonetheless.  The pieces, like minimal metal characters, are forged from found handles and made in reference to the guillotine.  They seem dangerous and unhinged (literally).  Kraus’ work questions the way we move in the world with austere and poetic precision.

Theo Solnik, Anna Pavlova Lives in Berlin, film still, 2011, courtesy of the artist

A new addition this year is the National Gallery Prize for Young Film-Art.  The winning film Anna Pavlova Lives in Berlin by Theo Solnik is an enthralling black and white character study of a party girl whose exploits in Kreuzberg seem more elegiac than depraved.  Through drugs, alcohol and sex, Anna Pavlova clouds her own reality, creating a romantic vision of herself and the world.