It’s easy to get lured in by systems. They exist to create sense in a world that appears to make very little of it. We are born into myriad organizations — anatomical, environmental and ecological; social, cultural and linguistic; economic, political and religious; physical, cosmological, even metaphysical. Whether any of these systems actually exist outside of the human imagination is anyone’s guess. Their construction ultimately hinges on a drive to organize the meaning of life in all its terrible complexity.

Running from October 23 to 27, 3hd 2018: System.Lure explores ways to act inside and outside of the conventions that regulate and effect the truths we embrace. Its “Complex Realities” group exhibition — happening at Studio 1 at Kunstquartier Bethanien — takes the ‘∞’ symbol for infinity and turns it upright to ‘8’. Here, eight participants explore the endless possibilities for shaping and disrupting the existing systems that dominate us, while also envisioning brand new ones. Within this eternal oppositional loop of control and resistance, the show and its artists push ideas and perspectives beyond their limits through video, sculpture, photography and installation.

Josefin Arnell, Salim Bayri, Mariechen Danz, Selin Davasse, DD, Georges Jacotey, Alexa Vachon and Miriam Yammad address questions around relationships, knowledge production, identity construction, ideas of community, family, language, ritual, and more. They ask, ‘what are systems, and what does it mean to belong (or not belong) to them?’

Opening performances

8.30pm
Head too far West and You End up in the East
Performance by Selin Davasse

10pm
You have confused the true and the real
Live Set by Lamin Fofana

Ongoing
YOUR UNLIKELY Friend
1:1 show by Philipp Bergmann & Thea Reifler in collaboration with Maximilian Reichert