Import Projects

Initiating the group show Abjects at Import Projects, London-based Canadian artist Paul Kneale will publish a series of instructions for ‘Free Software’ performances on his website. These systems are designated to be carried out ‘DIY’, and will enable numerous outsourced works in the gallery. In the midst of these ‘Free Software’ works, the artist will be in conversation with curator Franziska Wildförster on the subject of the ‘new (digital) abject’.

Being enacted in the artist’s name, this system of directives — including microwaved CDs and self-made ‘unboxing’ videos — explore the viral spread of information mediated by technology through manifold (human) bodies. Anticipating their absorption into the infinite feedback loop of artworks online and offline, the works further probe modes of authorship, and the fate of authenticity within the distributed image and data form.

Co-organised by Import Projects & Franziska Wildförster.

Artist bio: Paul Kneale (1986), is a Canadian artist based in London. He has exhibited at international venues including Evelyn Yard, London; TANK.TV, Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario; Fondation Galleries Lafayette, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; First Biennale Online; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; ARTUNER and more.

Kneale works across multiple media and infrastructures to process aesthetics out of experiences mediated by technology.  In his sculptures, paintings and performances, he incorporates the seemingly abstract and physical as materials and stages the new mechanisms and sensibilities native to the controlled, networked mind. The „new abject“ to Kneale here marks a reaction of disgust arising from engagement with cultural products and consumer objects within shifting flows of global communications and production.

Festival insight by Nora Heine.