Can You Dig It?

Digital-even before this word signified research-based proces-sing, its original meaning referred to the fingers. The same goes for the artists Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov, whose Image Bank, founded in 1969, did not consist of ones and zeros but en-tirely of postal handwork. With the intent of a decentralized and network-based circulation and exchange of images, they antici-pated the structures of today’s image databases on the Internet. Moreover, from sending, receiving, and collecting, a multifaceted and expansive oeuvre formed, whose creator is no longer a single person, but a collective movement. Away from established insti-tutions such as museums and galleries, a utopia of non-hierarchi-cal and free exchange of images first took shape here, which has lost nothing of its topicality even from today’s perspective.

Exhibition: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 22.6.–1.9.2019