{"id":7352,"date":"2025-11-16T15:02:55","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T14:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/ausstellungen\/the-unknown-ideal\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T10:27:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:27:22","slug":"zach-blas-the-unknown-ideal","status":"publish","type":"exhibition","link":"https:\/\/edi-typ-24154.stage.sites.vh3-schrittweiter.de\/en\/exhibitions\/zach-blas-the-unknown-ideal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unknown Ideal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Unknown Ideal <\/em>is the first solo exhibition in Germany by London-based artist, filmmaker, and writer Zach Blas. His expansive practice includes an emphasis on the relationship between digital technologies and the cultures and politics that animate them.<\/p>\n

Presenting a survey of Blas\u2019s practice, The Unknown Ideal<\/em> focuses on his interrogation of the philosophies and fantasies lurking in artificial intelligence, the internet, predictive policing, airport security, facial recognition, and biological warfare. These works, which span sculpture, video, music, and installation, include Icosahedron<\/em> (2019), an AI elf that predicts the future of prediction; transCoder<\/em> (2008), a queer programming anti-language; and video mummy <\/em>(2004), a mannequin mummified in videotape.<\/p>\n

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the world premiere of The Doors<\/em> (2019), a newly commissioned multimedia installation exploring psychedelia, drug use, and artificial intelligence. A sequel to Blas\u2019s Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033<\/em> (2018)\u2014a film that follows author Ayn Rand on an acid trip, in which she bears witness to a dystopian future of the internet\u2014The Doors <\/em>looks closer at Silicon Valley\u2019s connections to Californian counterculture from the 1960s. Set within a mystical artificial garden, The Doors<\/em> features a surround sound design and six channels of video comprised of computer graphics sequences and psychedelic machine learning\u2013generated imagery related to a new wave of drug use interested in \u201cnootropics.\u201d In contrast to the \u201cturn on, tune in, drop out\u201d ethos of the 1960s, taking nootropics has gained popularity in the tech industry, as \u201csmart drugs\u201d designed to unlock the mind to labor harder and faster. Nootropics include commercially available \u201cstacks\u201d and microdoses of LSD and psilocybin mushrooms.<\/p>\n

The Doors <\/em>envisions a psychedelic trip on nootropics, alluding to a constellation of Californian drug references including Aldous Huxley\u2019s writing on LSD and the 1960s rock band The Doors, fronted by Jim Morrison, who was nicknamed \u201cthe Lizard King.\u201d The installation features spoken word poetry, music, and video generated by artificial intelligence trained on a variety of media, including images of psychedelic rock posters, LSD blotter art, brains, sacred geometry, and lizard skin; music by The Doors, binaural beats, crystal bowl south baths, and ASMR keyboard typing; as well as corporate nootropics literature and Morrison\u2019s writing and voice. The machine-learning imagery, which is halted before it coheres into recognizable patterns, echoes the saturated, colorful imagery associated with psychedelia. Evoking a 1960s liquid light show, The Doors<\/em> proposes AI as generative of a new psychedelic experience for the nootropics age, provoking hallucinations of how to see and control the future, optimize the brain for labor, and live forever.<\/p>\n

In this vein, the exhibition draws its name from Rand\u2019s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal <\/em>(1966), which articulates her moralistic agenda of unregulated market capitalism and unrepentant individualism as unknown ideals. Long engaged with the legacy and popular reception of Rand in the oligopolies of Silicon Valley, Blas\u2019s evocation of Rand challenges her vision of the future. Instead, the unknown ideal might refer to the political challenges of the present: the difficulty of imagining and putting into practice viable political alternatives to dominant control systems of surveillance and technology.<\/p>\n

Zach Blas has exhibited, lectured, and held screenings recently at the Walker Art Center, 2018 Gwangju Biennale, Matadero Madrid, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 68th Berlin International Film Festival, Art in General, Gasworks, and e-flux. He is Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a 2018 recipient of the Media Art Grant from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg.<\/p>\n

The Doors<\/em> is co-commissioned by the Edith-Russ-Haus f\u00fcr Medienkunst, Oldenburg; de Young Museum, San Francisco; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.<\/p>\n

Curated by Edit Moln\u00e1r & Marcel Schwierin.<\/p>\n

The info booklet on the exhibition with brief descriptions of all exhibited works can be downloaded free of charge as a PDF. The use is exclusively for private purposes, other uses must be coordinated with the Edith-Russ-Haus. Download here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

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