Reprovolution is coming.

At least that's what Transformella predicts.

The medicine woman is dedicated to global in-vitro fertilization, so she immerses herself completely in the repro-reality of artificial insemination and has been showing entourages of invited guests in Ikea branches for several years to question the classic family ideal and alternative forms of To identify small communities.

A few years ago in Düsseldorf-Reisholz such a performance met with critical inquiries from the staff, who did not fully agree with the external advice, as could not be missed by those present.

Protektorama, the spiritual sister of Transformella under the sign of occult intelligence, stretched the house rights in a Berlin Apple store in a prime city location on Kurfürstendamm in 2016: it caused a tangible scandal there on a Saturday afternoon.

The soul healer had gallium, a harmless but dangerous metal that looked like mercury, liquefied in the shop windows, triggering a police operation including evacuation and closure.

She was just as sure to receive approval from critics of capitalism as the group's thymos.

Technology-Enhanced Spirituality

In the exhibition “Technoschamanismus” of the Dortmund Hartware Medienkunstverein, the reproduction techniques are revealed in objects by means of which in-vitro meat is produced or, one hears and astonishes, diamonds are extracted from human ashes. The cylinders made of red and white clay look as if they had rolled out of Marcel Duchamp's “Big Glass”; What the performance artist Johannes Paul Raether develops in terms of visions of the future needs to be explained in the exhibition. To do this, you can put on 3-D glasses and navigate through your installation.

Why is a technologically supported spirituality experiencing such a noticeable impetus among artists today that one could see oneself set back in Madame Blavatsky's times? The Iranian Moreshin Allahyari confronts the visitors, also in virtual reality, with female genie figures who are held responsible for paranormal events in a sura of the Koran. Anja Dornieden and David González Monroy feel the Indonesian

wayang topeng

after, a necromancy shadow play that was displayed with masked monkeys until it was banned in 2013 after protests in Jakarta.

In a “Cyberwitches Manifesto”, Lycile Olympe Haute proclaims the collaboration between witches and hackers who are actually rather alien to each other: “Let's use smartphones and tarot cards to get in touch with spirits” and receive feminist signals.

Cosmological Models for Survival

The Dortmund group show makes its selection according to the point of view of a whole social, even planetary transformation, about which the secretive people from all over the world are concerned. Individual enlightenment, ego trip, self-optimization do not play a special role. What is at stake is the healing of global symptoms of illness such as “toxic capitalism and extractivism” - the exploitation of raw materials for export purposes. What knowledge from the past is worth reactivating? The artists conjure up anti-rationalist practices, but at the same time rely on the latest technology: shamanism in magical channels.

A contribution by Tabita Rezaire is technically advanced and with credible conviction of its own mission. The artist, who lives in French Guiana, is using the White Cube to reconstruct one of the numerous stone circles that were laid in Senegambia, West Africa, a long time ago and are now a World Heritage Site. In the center of her installation, a huge screen is tilted horizontally like a sky mirror; Local guardians of the megaliths, priests, archaeologists and farmers tell of the ancestors' observation of space, which must be reactivated for a successful harvest as well as for a successful life - this is how the gong therapist, yoga teacher and economist sparked a captivating feeling computer-generated stream of images about the mythical knowledge of the cosmos.

Some artists envision a post-Anthropocene like Jana Kerima Stolzer and Lex Rütten, for whom the exploited Ruhr area serves as a model for a world that only exists as a museum: In their video series, a lonely drone watches over the deserted mother earth as the last remaining intelligence .

Suzanne Treister, on the other hand, puts “new cosmological models for survival” on paper in color drawings, designs interplanetary social structures, space habitats, and art networks.

In view of all this, it is astonishing that contemporary shamanism, at least in Dortmund, leaves a complex with an urgent need for healing to lie fallow: the pandemic.

Perhaps it is better that way - our personal guru is now a minister.

Techno-shamanism.

In the Hartware Medienkunstverein, Dortmund, until March 6th.

No catalog.