LAWKI-ALIVE

Volcanic eruptions, cat videos, elections: our screens fill up every day with images that talk to us of life. LAWKI-Alive shows thousands of online videos, in ten different languages. Together, they don’t tell one single story on a single screen, but they are shattered across the exhibition space instead.

Your presence as a visitor is indispensable as you tie all images together again, nothing happens without your movement through the space. The number of people and the way we move, both offline and online, also determine what we see and hear. The videos respond to each other and play with us. Dance with the machine and get to know life (all over).

Let’s not beat around the bush: the video landscape — life! — that LAWKI—Alive shows us is fragmented. There is no story from a to b to c, no plot, no narrator or text and explanation. The question is not whether that is bad, the question is whether it can be done differently. Of course: in novels, films, series and games we still find the old, familiar schemes with a problem, a challenge or a quest that is brought to a successful conclusion with many setbacks and adventures. The world has been saved, the suffering suffered, the last level completed – the illusion of an uncluttered world remains. Meanwhile, we experience daily that there is no all-encompassing truth, only local stories coloured by conflicting interests. Fake news? Alternative facts! Is that bad?