< Program overview

Bridging Borders is a collaborative project between P–OST and Constant 1 0 1 | On Our Means and Perspectives. For this exhibition P–OST invited three artists that, in their work or practice, are engaging with the relationships between machines or technology and human-beings. In Bridging Borders the works of the participating artists are contextualized within the thinking of Constant Nieuwenhuys. Central to the exhibition is the question to what extent automation, machinery or technology provide humans with freedom or captivity when they become more and more intertwined with one another.

For Bridging Borders P–OST was inspired by the notion of a world without borders, which is central in the New Babylon project by Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920 – 2005). As a platform that is operating in a border-area, we would like to take this idea at heart and aim to break down the borders, in our case specifically between the Netherlands and Germany. Therefore P–OST invited for Bridging Borders a mixture of artists that are German based or based in Germany. 

In Bridging Borders national borders are not the only ones who are being questioned and lifted. The selected artists and artworks are specifically selected on their dealing with the relations between the human and the machine. In New Babylon, besides the borderless world, Constant also sketches a future world in which humans are liberated from labour through automation. All selected artworks deal in one way or another with the (possible) impact of technology, automation or blending of the human and the machine. We invited art-historian Tessa Kalsbeek to write a contextualizing text on how Constant’s ideas relate to the presented artworks and the ideas they bring forward.