Never Cargo Terminal
Never cargo terminal has recently discovered the trembling hand of state secrets resounding oversold bounce child is an exhibition of new works by Kareem Lotfy, Simone C. Niquille and Adriana Ramić curated by Lucy Chinen.
7.12.14 – 8.8.14
“Weaving plays a role in the creation myth of Navajo cosmology, which articulates social relationships and continues to play a role in Navajo culture. According to one aspect of this tradition, a spiritual being called “Spider Woman” instructed the women of the Navajo how to build the first loom from exotic materials including sky, earth, sunrays, rock crystal, and sheet lighting. Then “Spider Woman” taught the Navajo how to weave on it.” [1] Kareem Lotfy's Jacqard loom woven blanket depicts a traditional Navajo pattern interwoven with Lotfy's own bit-mapped drawings.
“The french police officer Alphonse Bertillon was the first to measure and index bodies in 1893, creating an identification system for law enforcement. His intention was to be able to identify individuals who were arrested repeatedly, creating a file and ID card for each one, inventing the mugshot. From its start, the translation of the physical body into archivable numerals and measurable data has been performed under the pretext of the public’s protection. Safety as incentive for biometric data collection is problematic in so far as refusing entry into the system is rendering you an opponent, a potential threat. Registration being normalcy, a refusal would signal secrecy, something to hide....” [2] Simone C. Niquille's video Here Be Faces: FaceValue Part2 is a short story about facial copyright, encrypted identity and plastic surgery as a form of camouflage. The text GhostCrawl: Celebrity Lookalike Surgery will be presented alongside the video.
“If you will beat the whole story occasional touring century Boulevard exit of the modern Chinese Dictionary Balkan never cargo terminal has recently discovered the trembling hand of state secrets resounding oversold bounce child fish consumption story behind [...] the best way to hit invincible king continued distruction of the Ministry of Defence and the line Nina virain state secrets Jinggangshan ErYi...”[3] Adriana Ramić's drawings and ebook are based on studies of ant pathways by French civil engineer Victor Cornetz in 1910. The ant pathways were retraced onto an Android Swype keyboard in every language supported. The keyboard predicts a word corresponding to the gesture and what word would follow based on crowdsourced dictionaries, official documents and Ramić's personal habitual vocabulary. Versions of the ebook contain translations of the text in all languages supported by Google Translate.
[1] Wikipedia entry on Navajo weaving.
[2]”Here Be Faces: FaceValue Part2” by Simone C. Niquille.
[3] Google translated text generated from Android Swype predictive typing of an ant pathway.
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Kareem Lotfy is an artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. Selected solo exhibitions include Ultimate: Kareem Lotfy vs. Gustav Wideberg, Vita Rosen, Gotenberg and Tribal House, Headquarters, Zurich. Selected group exhibitions include In Its Image, American Medium, New York; ١١,000 B.C., Grand Century, New York; Data Mine, www.ofluxo.net; From Radience to Dissolution, Kraupta-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Futuremyth, 319 Scholes, New York and numerous exhibitions at Gallery Nosco, London. He is a 2015 resident of the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
Simone C. Niquille is a designer and researcher based in Genoa, Italy. Her work has been exhibited at the Chaumont Graphic Design Festival, France; De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam; NIMK, Amsterdam and Delay Sam, Moscow. Her collaboration with Holly Herndon was featured on the New Museum's First Look series and her Glamouflage series of T-shirts to evade facial recognition has been featured on Wired, The Atlantic and The Verge. She has done talks at Design Miami Basel, Basel and the DEAF Biennale 2014, Rotterdam. She is a graduate of the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam and RISD, Rhode Island. She writes for Sang Bleu magazine and works with the spatial design and research studio Space Caviar.
Adriana Ramić is an artist based in New York. Select group exhibitions include Surplus Living at km tempraer, Berlin; In Post, Stadium, New York; the 89+ Marathon, Serpentine, London and Month of Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. She is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego's Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts program. She recently participated in an artist residency program at Google, Paris where the works in the exhibition were made.
Lucy Chinen is a researcher, writer and curator based in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. She has curated the exhibitions Immune Stability and Over the Valley at Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles; the online project MAYBE NEW FRIENDS and screenings at Favorite Goods, Los Angeles. She has written for Rhizome and publications edited by Content is Relative, Los Angeles and V4ULT, Berlin. Currently she is a MA student in Media studies and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam and works with the design and research studio Metahaven.