OPENCOIL – A Roaming Speedshow

The OPENCOIL exhibition explores the impact of micro-mobility services on urban space by using its decentralized infrastructure as an exhibition space, while also addressing the conditions and effects of this infrastructure.

11 artists were invited to present their work on a small Wi-Fi controller with ~2MB offline memory.

These "digital gallery spaces" are attached to 11 randomly selected e-scooters. Thus the exhibition, unnoticed by the regular users of these scooters, drives through the city as a "roaming speed show".

While capacity restrictions and the preferred avoidance of gatherings in closed spaces pose challenges on traditional galleries and museums, OPENCOIL aims to combine the independence of the online with the materiality of the offline (and vice versa). The infrastructure of "micro-mobility services" will be taken over - climate-neutral and decentralized.

The pavements of many cities around the world have been flooded in recent years by so-called 'dockless sharing vehicles'. With promises of eco-friendliness and electromobility, these risk capitalism activists have occupied the grey zone between private and public space on the streets of our cities. However, this unscrupulous conscientiousness of 'micro-mobility services' raises important questions about urban space, ownership, agency, production, ecology and very late capitalism.

How to deal with the occupation of public space? What tools and ways are there to reclaim it?

OPENCOIL is not only meant to be a pandemic-proof way to show art in public offline space. OPENCOIL is also a creative (re)use of e-scooters, an attempt to approach them by artistic means. On show are works that deal with questions of the overlap between public and private space, the use of resources, as well as greenwashing, risk capitalism and vandalism.

The participating artists are:

  • Aram Bartholl
  • Constant Dullaart
  • Dennis de Bel & Anton Jehle
  • JODI
  • Jonas Lund
  • Martin Howse
  • !Mediengruppe Bitnik
  • Rosa Menkman
  • Sarah Grant
  • Sofya Aleynikova
  • Danja Vasiliev

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