“The Story That Never Ends”

The first thing I was recommended to do in Karlsruhe was to go to ZKM (Center for Art and Media), one of the biggest media art venues in the world. One quiet Sunday morning, I walked into ZKM, I paid 14 euros and spent about three hours wandering through different halls and floors, exploring various exhibitions.

The exhibitions reminded me of a huge archive of machines and memories - screens shouting, sounds leaking, hum of technologies that one day in the past was just science fiction.

I was stunned in particular by two exhibitions:

• ”All Memory Is Theft” by Johan Grimonprez is dedicated to storytelling, combining personal memory of the artist, political history, media, AI, and ChatGPT.

• ”The Story That Never Ends” presents around 12000 artworks exploring the evolution of the media art, beginning from early video and computer works to immersive installations and AI-based ideas.

These two exhibitions, in my opinion, are mirrors of how we perceive truth. The first one shows us that in the modern world, memory is no longer personal because it is installed in our minds by radio and television, governments and corporations, algorithms and AI. On the other hand, the second exhibition reveals that modern art and media art do not have any boundaries; they evolve together with technologies, but some stories are so bright and vivid, like these motionless and spinning red dresses, that they do not need any explanation in words.

Our minds always require explanations and words, our hearts do not.... Listen to your heart, use your mind when needed, and do not overthink. In this extremely chaotic world, very few things are left that we, as human beings, can understand only with our minds.

P.S. ZKM is not a traditional museum - it is a living organism where technology and art coexist.