Artspace Makes A Feedback Loop

People walking by Artspace since December have been treated to It Takes a Global Village Idiot, the chaotic kinetic sculpture by Jon Kessler that serves as a gateway to the rest of Strange Loops, the exhibit running at Artspace through Feb. 29. Curated by Johannes DeYoung and Federico Solmi, the exhibit seeks to explore ​“the social and psychological impacts of rapid technological change, and the consequential ways in which contemporary notions of self might be transforming.” The exhibit itself just might prove to be as distracting as a constantly pinging cell phone — and that’s part of the point.

“With optimism, humor and critique, the artists explore sites of expression, experience, and reflection, asking timely and challenging questions of our cultural embrace of techno-fetishism, digital colonialism, and born obsolescence,” the exhibition’s accompanying text reads. In perhaps plainer English, this is an exhibit about the bright shiny object known as technology — our phones, our social media, and the virtual lives we lead on them — and it succeeds in offering some sharp criticisms while at the same time demonstrating that the virtual world really can be, well, quite alluring. As Kessler’s sculpture demonstrates, we’re plunging headlong into the future with no real sense of where we’re headed. In one sense, we’re falling without a net, and smiling all the way down.

Of the ten artists in the show, Ana Maria Gómez López presents the literally most visceral work. The photographs in Punctum aren’t for the squeamish, particularly for people who don’t like needles. But these simple, very powerful images conjure a host of ideas about our relationship to technology. We hook ourselves into it. We maybe do some harm to ourselves in the process. It appears to connect us to a larger system, but Gómez López points out that it ultimately leads us back to ourselves. The lifeblood, the energy, that we feel we get from it is our own.

But just around the corner in the gallery is a virtual-reality setup from The Virtual Dream Center that demonstrates amply how enticing, even addictive, virtual reality can be, from social media to video games. The setup is simple: the designers have created a virtual gallery space modeled after Artspace’s own. That should be familiar enough to anyone who enters the actual gallery. And yet this reporter spent about 20 minutes exploring this geometric virtual space (as did the reporter’s son, pictured). Afterward, I had spent so much time flying around that I felt nauseated, which was perhaps part of the point. The sly takeaway: At least for some of us, it doesn’t even matter what the content is. The medium itself holds allure — whether it’s current events or celebrity gossip or playing a multiplayer online game, or just walking through a technological demonstration, it’s a little hypnotic simply to be able to feel like you’re going somewhere else while sitting at your own desk.

If María Gómez and the Virtual Dream Center outline the contours of the exhibit’s questions, several of the artists offer avenues for dealing with it, for stepping outside of it so that perhaps we can use the technology rather than the other way around. Sam Messer’s surreal and playful sculptures of typewriters remind us of the communication technology we left behind. Their melting state on one level is a nod to the way the typewriter has receded into the past. But they also nod to some of the truly bizarre works of literature that were created on those machines. Some of those feats of imagination helped shape our current technological reality. Others imagined things that are still far beyond it.

Meanwhile, Ilana Harris-Babou’s humble handmade pieces reach back into American history to imagine a much brighter future. In some sense the art is in the accompanying, sun-filled video, in which the artist herself explains the thinking behind the project in contagiously clear-eyed and optimistic terms. The initial materials for Harris-Babou’s pieces are essentially reclaimed lumber and other historical artifacts. Can they be remade, and made useful again? For Harris-Babou, this is an analogy for coming to terms with the possibilities for reparations for slavery.

“Reparations — what is it?” she asks on the video. She answers: ​“It’s a way to give back a little…. Truly dealing with how we live and recognizing our differences is something that hasn’t happened yet — until now.” The certainty in her voice when she intones those last two words make you want to believe her. ​“There’s still time to make it right and get the space we deserve.” Listening to her talk about the technological future she has in mind, and the way old things can be made anew to repair past wrongs, makes you want to be a part of it.

“Strange Loops” is at Artspace, 50 Orange St., until Feb. 29. Visit Artspace’s website for hours and more information.