nabelSchau - Die Ausstellung

The turn of the century respectively that of the millennium has certainly lost its mystic character of being at the mercy of divine power - a notion which is handed down to us describing the year 999 B.C for example.

Yet still this numeric rupture is treated with slight respect and changes, even those of paradigms, are at least theoretically associated with it.

The necessary reconfiguration of the global computer-population seems to be loaded with problems and "Y2K" has already evoked apocalyptic visions of disastrous system breakdowns. Anticipation of the end of the world likes to mix up causes and effects.

It is trendy and appropriate to mention the weight of the dusk of the millennium at every single opportunity given by public media. This automatism defines the almost eschatological subtitle of the show: In the dusk of the millennium. The actual title navelGaze brings up a entirely different question: What else is this result of an arbitrarily set chronology but one of many imaginary fixed points in human history?

The universe itself remains not afflicted by the donquixottery of our chronology and its helpful linearity. Bringing that thought into mind inevitably results in a loss of stability and meaning.

Then the terrestrial globe itself seems like an absurd body-less navel in space. Any kind of hold is questionable. To escape this universal lack of orientation, mankind has always constructed centrisms and firm structures, cosms of deities, scientific theories, chronologies and other vehicles. Even the often conjured-up network of media globalization now appears like such a model.

Kuratorin : Susanne Altmann

navelGaze does not provide a comment to the turn of the millennium and its manifold symptoms and hypochondrias.

navelGaze attempts to represent the turn to the year 2000 of Western history as one of many Archimedian points which promise internal and external stability as surrogate constructions. How do artists handle their awareness of instability and universal placelessness? What are their constructions opposing chronologies, calendars, periodical systems and astronomical research?

How do contemporary philosophers reflect on cause and effect of changes, how on the arbitrariness of human assisting constructions and their social aftermath? Does an artificial navel stand for desire, vehicle or narcotic or for all at once?

The artistic navel-gaze may hereby address personal perspective or at least the perspective of the human body as well as the construction of a navel = fixed point within a selected environment or conceptual reflection about those fixed points.