The Whole Earth; article by Martina Angelotti at Domus, 2013.

The exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin demonstrates the intellectual commitment between the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in California, starting from the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand's manual, that Jobs considered the forerunner of Google.

Art / Martina Angelotti

The Blue Planet is the image of the Earth seen from space and has been one of the most popular icons of recent times, having replaced the Mushroom Cloud – the symbol of the post-war period and the Cold War.

Stewart Brand picked it in 1968 for the cover of the first issue of his Whole Earth Catalog, hoping it would make human beings see the Earth as a single place where racism and intolerance would shy into insignificance when viewed from a distance and as part of such a large universe.

Stewart Brand (Ed.): Whole Earth Catalog. Access to Tools, Spring 1969 (Backcover)

The Whole Earth Catalog was a manual encouraging people to create their own environment and lifestyle and to see the Earth as a precious asset to be respected and nurtured through knowledge.
“We are gods”, said Brand in 1968 when speaking about his Catalog “At a time when a New Left was calling for grass-roots political (i.e., referred) power, Whole Earth eschewed politics and pushed grassroots direct power – tools and skills. At a time when New Age hippies were deploring the intellectual world of arid abstraction, Whole Earth pushed science, intellectual endeavor, and new technology as well as old.”

Eleanor Antin, Merrit from California Lives, 1969; replicated 1998. Gasoline can, bush hat with “peace” decal, metal comb, and text panel. Dimensions variable. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

“The Whole Earth” exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt speaking on behalf of this approach, a demonstration of an intellectual commitment that has turned its focus to the decade between the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in California – a fertile and propitious terrain for the development of the American counterculture, a historical forerunner of that which shortly followed called the “Californian Ideology”. The legacy of the hippy culture and its fusion with cybernetics, the hard-won battles and ensuing projects linked to ecology and the environmental heritage, the fusion of black and white music and that of the dissidents, psychedelics and digital culture. California über Alles sang the Dead Kennedys in the 1980s. The curator Anselm Franke, along with Diedrich Diedrichsen, conveys this political, cultural and social vibrancy with the same intensity of its origins and growth, adopting visual, exhibition and scientific expedients that sustain Stewart Brand’s fundamental idea.

View of the exhibition "The Whole Earth California and the Disappearance of the Outside"

Written texts, archive images and video and audio recordings can be enjoyed on mini-displays installed on printed panels. These form micro theme-rooms inside the space that symbolises Western Modernism. The mobile stools that visitors can move at their will and convenience to enjoy the individual records convey a fluid and functional mobility. A section on psychedelic research and the experimental cinema, with Stan Vanderbeek’s Manifesto, Land Art and ecology works and experiments by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, the Beat Generation and its influence on music and performances including, to mention but one, a Lawrence Jordan film. Visitors can listen to music – from Bob Marley’s “Exodus” in the Babylon section to “We Can Be Together” sung by Jefferson Airplane in 1969 even though they were “outlaws in the eyes of America”.

Production in the Desert. In Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog, January 1971. Stewart Brand (Ed.): Whole Earth Catalog. Access to Tools, Spring 1969 (Backcover)

Renowned Otolith 1 work in the Otolith group’s trilogy which, as described by Brian Rogers, “evokes a non-metaphorical weightlessness of alien intimacy” to pictures by Jack Goldstein capturing “the spectacular instant” of natural and scientific phenomena.
This exhibition is a true statement and a fascinating experiment in how an institution known as a “house of culture” can pursue its informative, scientific and communication aims.

View of the exhibition "The Whole Earth California and the Disappearance of the Outside"

Not strictly speaking a museum that conducts experiments and exhibits products of artistic research but a public institution with broader aims and objectives that relates to the mass public, raising its awareness and involving it in a concept of culture.
The decision to be represented by someone like Anselm Franke, a curator with the finest of intellects and unquestioned ability, is also interesting. Even on his debut here, Franke impressed people with the great insight with which he conceived and staged the theme of animism, an exemplary result on his Ph.D subject. I appreciate and admire the professionalism and depth with which certain themes widely represented and at risk of generalisation in the public domain have, instead, been dealt with and become a part of what, in its own small way, is a keystone not only of the scientific/curatorial approach but also of the even more important one of the work/spectator dialectic.

Philipp Lachenmann, SHU-Still, 2003/2008 Lightjet print behind acrylic, framed, edition: 6 + 1 AP 125,5 x 167,5 cm, framed. © Galerie Andreas Binder und / and Philipp Lachenmann

It is symptomatic of a crucial moment in history that something similar should also have happened at Berlin’s Kunstwerk, which a year ago hosted Arthur Zmijewski’s controversial Biennale. In the same city but in a totally different institution and one with totally different aims, the curator Ellen Blumenstein, who recently took over as director, developed a wholly unusual exhibition by institutional standards. She then asked Nedko Solakov to translate the visual layout of her extensive curatorial project in the revamped spaces of the Kunstwerk with his texts and drawings – a sort of expanded statement in which each visitor has a chance to enter into direct dialogue with its programme and strategies, expressed in the form of teasers and even with an Avatar of Ellen herself.

Eleanor Antin, Going Home, 2004, from Roman Allegories, chromogenic print, 124 x 260 cm. Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York / Anonymouscollection

At a time in history when contemporary art (as too politics) needs to rediscover its rapport and dialogue with the public, two institutions have sought to pursue this aim in different manners and forms, here in Berlin.

In his Commencement address to Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs spoke the words “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. Jobs was quoting Stewart Brand (who also invented the term personal computer). His Catalog was repeatedly mentioned and Jobs considered it the forerunner of Google. Seeing this exhibition is an ideal exercise in putting this statement into practice. Don’t forget where you are coming from or where you are. The universe is immense. Martina Angelotti (@martinanji)


Article from here.