WHAT THINKS ME

Program

The exhibition What thinks me seeks to understand how the concept of the self is being constructed and/or reflected through artworks. The show revolves around this subject through metaphors, object-based stories and artworks themselves.

The name of the show derives from a text written by artist John Baldessari (b. 1931). J. Baldessari is an American conceptual artist whose work was famously criticized as ‘a mere parody of conceptualism’. However we see the importance of Baldessari’s work for the next generation of artists.

In his text-work titled What thinks me now (1982) the artist named a continuous list of things, enumerating abstract ideas that think him - who said it is not the right expression to describe a process of idea circulation? The text encompasses a wide list; as wide as one’s consciousness, or one’s self. This text work became a premise for the show, where the artworks were chosen and exhibition was composed according to it. One could say this is a show dedicated to a single artwork. ‘What thinks me’ became a tool to generate content.

Euthanasia Coaster by designer Julijonas Urbonas will be presented in exhibition in Saint Petersburg too.

http://designandviolence.moma.org/euthanasia-coaster-julijonas-urbonas/

EUTHANASIA COASTER

Designer Julijonas Urbonas “Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in mechanical engineering, space medicine, fairground psychology  and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasant, elegant and ritualistic. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster: John Allen, former president of the famed Philadelphia Toboggan Company, once sad that “the ultimate roller coaster is built when you send out twenty-four people and they all come back dead. This could be done, you know.”