Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019
Shortlist exhibition of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019

Katja Novitskova
Katja Novitskova became known as one of the pioneers of an artistic language called "Post-Internet Art". For the shortlist exhibition, she creates a virtuoso, multi-part and multi-layered "environment" of sculptural elements, murals and projections of various kinds. Here, too, the works in the overall installation form a common, closely interlocking structure. The works are based on Novitskova's interest in current research in biotechnology and revolve around the question of the future existence of the organic as a component of technological processes.

Katja Novitskova’s work tackles the ecological dimension of visual information technologies: from attention economies to scientific research and machine vision. More specifically, Novitskova focuses on the ongoing expansion of data sets of all things that are alive or have been at some point: genomes, cells, human and non-human bodies, endangered species, the planet itself. The new frontiers in computational mapping are not just geographical territories, but also inner biological surfaces and brain activities. As algorithmic processing of biology turns into new resource industries, unforeseen ethical and political conflicts arise.

The images produced by machine visions of the last decade act as cultural fossils and, the more those get displaced by the rapid development of computational pattern in processing and creation of images, turning their functions obsolete, the more their poetic potential grows, which is something Novitskova celebrates in her work.

In this edition, the focus is on capturing colonial expansion that is not geographical (as applied to peoples, territories, and mineral resources) but rather biological: genomes, biomolecular structures, neuron firings, embryogenesis, and other inner workings of human and nonhuman life. The frontier logic comes with the requirement for extensive mapping, and in an era of big-data analysis, genetic engineering, and AI, that means a colossal amount of digital pattern processing, a lot of it in the form of images.  I’m curious about how translations of light waves drive profit.

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