-1
archive,tag,tag-conspiracy,tag-167,qode-social-login-1.1.3,qode-restaurant-1.1.1,stockholm-core-2.3,select-child-theme-ver-1.1,select-theme-ver-8.9,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,paspartu_enabled,menu-animation-underline,fs-menu-animation-underline,header_top_hide_on_mobile,,qode_grid_1300,qode_menu_center,qode-mobile-logo-set,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-6.6.0,vc_responsive

Ruminating on a hunch at Filamentous Magic Carpets

Anna Sophia Nübling
From left to right: Eiko Honda, Enis Maci, Anna Sophia Nübling (Image: Luzia Huber)
On Sunday 14 August 2022, the Lenbachhaus hosted an event in its beautiful garden: Filamentous Magic Carpets, curated by the writer and global dis:connect fellow Enis Maci. The event was part of the exhibition ‘Rosemary Mayer. Ways of Attaching’ at the Lenbachhaus. The event was inspired by the artist’s engagement with textile materials, weaving and matters of form that resonated with Enis Maci’s own interest in the 1990 science-fiction film Habitat and the Internet conspiracy saga surrounding the user 9MOTHER9EYES9HORSE, which she explored while at global dis:connect. Habitat is a science-fiction high-school comedy that examines the ecological discourse about the ozone hole and its disastrous consequences for life on earth in the late 90s. With the sun to incinerate all life on Earth in the near future, a scientist invents an inexplicable life form that expresses constantly emerging, shifting and disintegrating forms. The story of 9MOTHER9EYES9HORSE is a mashup of familiar conspiracy theories with LSD-fuelled paranormal occurrences around fleshy tunnels into other dimensions. Both narrations deal with implications of beholding the world through the lens of connections. The film is about a global ecological ‘system’ in which everything is connected with everything and that enables both a sense of attachment to what is called nature and technicist notions of its readjustment. The saga shows that, if done excessively, imagined connections can lead to the paranoia of conspiracy theories. Each in its own way, they challenge the notion that everything is connected and raise the (utopian) question of how a lifeform or a community might look when not fraught with the danger that notions of connectedness can entail, when they weave worlds too tightly. They inspire thoughts about a mode of living and thinking that would go beyond unifying, holistic notions of the self and of social entities to a way of thinking difference, alterity and a form of life that can entail such difference. As the exhibition showed, Mayer thought about her artworks as being at the ‘borderline to chaos’. That is, they are about forms that are hardly forms. In this sense, her work, too, is engaged with a way of thinking not in closed, well-ordered entities, but of dissolving rigid forms into ones that change, that can’t be fixed, and are therefore open to different interpretations and otherness. The life form in the film and Mayer’s textile sculptures and installations don’t dismiss any connections or attachments, but, as Enis Maci proposed with this event, inspire thought about how we imagine such connections, because they have implications for how we act. Following a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, as she called it, Enis Maci juxtaposed different artistic and scientific approaches and perspectives to ‘ways of attaching’ by association, which fruitfully complemented and communicated with each other. Under a bright sunny sky, the event started with a talk between Enis Maci, Eiko Honda and me. This was followed by readings from the publication Filamantous Magic Carpets, which the event launched (– mind the connection: the title is a citation from the book Utopia by Rosemary Mayer’s sister Bernadette Mayer). It brings together texts of writers (Sophia Eisenhut, Marius Goldhorn, Jonas Mölzer, Mazlum Nergiz and Pascal Richmann) and scholars (Eiko Honda and me). A concert by the sound artist Rosaceae and a film screening of Habitat completed the program. The light atmosphere of those special hours, the words that wafted through the warm air were ephemeral and will remain inscribed in the memories of those present, but what remains is the written word. Check it out at https://www.maerzverlag.de/shop/buecher/literatur/filamentous-magic-carpets/. Continue Reading