KARACHI BIENNALE 2022
For the Karachi Biennale 2022 I worked with the Shahnama, The Book of Kings, a 1000 year old Iranian poetry epic. It is the oldest book they had around in the school library of the NJV High School where my work is exhibited. You activate the work by scanning the illustration of Zarathustra from the book with the Simurgh App developed by me. The magical bird Simurgh appears and guides you on a trail outside the school building to three paintings that activate more AR paintings depicting stories from the Shahnama: 1. Simurgh appears 2. Rostam meets Tahmine (they will never meet again but she will have his child: Zohrab.) 3. Rostam kills Zohrab his own son without knowing only realizing it afterwards 4. Zahaak, an evil king who made a deal with the devil and subsequently had two snakes growing out of his shoulders. The snakes had to be fed with brains of young children. So every day two families had to sacrifice a child. He wasn’t very popular as a king. This whole work wouldn’t have come to life without the curatorial guidance of Faisal Anwar and his team. Kindly supported by the GOETHE-INSTITUT Pakistan.
EUROPA, 2021
AR installation „EUROPA“ commissioned by Oude Kerk for the Museumnacht. The church is the oldest building of Amsterdam. It is build on a cemetery The tombstones create the floor on which you walk. People are given iPads at the entrance to scan the painting which triggers the virtual reality 3D painted figure EUROPA. It passes through the canvas to the tunes of Beethoven's 9th and wanders through the building while thousands of stock fotos of all the different cultures living in Europe are flashing on the tombstones.
THE 5 MINUTE APOCALYPSE – GLOBAL EDITION, 2021
Following Nam June Paik's work TV Buddha, multidisciplinary artist Dennis Rudolph (Berlin, 1979) creates a digital work of art for your living room. It turns your own computer screen into a digital altarpiece. Scan the marker on the Oude Kerk website (look for 'home apocalypse') and seven messengers of the AI, all painted by Rudolph in a VR 3D painting program, will choreograph around your monitor to the music of Baroque composer Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, eventually shattering on your smartphone to make room for the gigantic figure of 'Europa' entering your home through the monitor.
Record and share your experience with the camera button in the app and post it on Instagram using #homeapocalypse. Oude Kerk will collect all the videos and combine them in a feed. With your publicly shared videos you will help to complete this artwork and become part of a kaleidoscope which is truly global.
