Since its debut in 2012, Berlin Art Week has brought together the city’s museums, galleries, fairs and independent art spaces for a citywide celebration of contemporary art. This year, the action runs September 9–13, with work by international artists including Poland’s Izabella Gustowska, Los Angeles-based Kate Mosher Hall and the anonymous NYC art activists Guerrilla Girls.
One artist worth seeking out is LuYang, whose work sits somewhere between 3D animation, video game aesthetics and explorations of what it means to be human. Housed in a historic hospital, the installation features the artist’s digital avatar alongside video from her DOKU series. During Berlin Art Week, visitors can lie down on decommissioned hospital beds, put on headphones and enter Yang’s digital worlds in private.
Speaking with LOST iN about the installation, LuYang said, “For this exhibition, I chose DOKU The Self and DOKU The Flow because a hospital is not simply a place associated with illness and treatment, but a threshold where continuity and interruption, existence and disappearance, certainty and impermanence become simultaneously perceptible. For me, the ‘self’ has never been a stable, complete or closed entity, but rather a temporary structure that is constantly forming, dissolving, migrating and reappearing. DOKU exists within this uncertainty: as an avatar, a projection of consciousness and a figure continually moving through transformations of identity, death, reincarnation and rebirth. What we call ‘I’ may itself be only a momentary convergence of perception, memory, desire and states of consciousness, without any permanent center behind it. Within the hospital environment, where the fragility and impermanence of life become especially tangible, these two works ultimately point not toward illness, but toward a more fundamental question: If everything is continuously changing, what can still be called the self?”
LOST iN was born in the German capital, with LOST iN Berlin as our very first guide. Our latest edition has already sold out, so watch this space for news on what’s next.
