ATTENTION IS ALL I NEED

Self-Representation as Curatorial Practice

OnCurating Academy x HEK Basel

Opening April 4th, 6 pm CEST Online

Talk by Damjanski, introduction by Jonny-Bix Bongers 

 

April 4 – May 30, 2025 — 24×7 live online platform of HEK, Basel

In the digital age, the self becomes a curatorial practice: we stage, edit, and present our identities, shaping avatars, social media profiles, and digital personas. Whether in virtual spaces or social networks, our self-images are constantly evolving, influenced by platform logic, algorithms, and societal expectations.

The exhibition ATTENTION IS ALL I NEED explores how digital self-representation transforms into an artistic practice. A diverse group of media artists examines the tension between individual autonomy and algorithmic control: What freedoms does the digital self offer? What constraints arise from the mechanics of visibility? Through a fusion of deepfakes, 3D avatars, and social media performances, the exhibition investigates how technology shapes identity—oscillating between playful reinvention and capitalist determinism.

Moving beyond a purely narcissistic perspective, the exhibition shifts focus to global contexts. Self-representation is always both social and political: it crosses cultural boundaries and redefines gender, origin, and belonging. ATTENTION IS ALL I NEED brings together a diverse group of participants from the OnCurating Academy and international media artists to reflect on how digital identity can become a form of participation and resistance.

Artists: allapopp, Carla Streckwall, Charmaine Poh, Damjanski, Kim Albrecht, Orhun Mersin aka kekik

Common.Garden Design: Yun Kuo 

Curated by: Jonny-Bix Bongers

OnCurating Academy Project Lead: Dorothee Richter

Contributions and Collaborations: Carlos Moore, Christopher Goscomb, Dan Kanin, Evgeniia Skvortsova, Leonie Rinze, Leo Kerrigan, Martina Menegon, Maya Malik, Miguel ‘EdKe’ Keerveld, Quinnie Tan

Kim Albrecht 

Kim Albrecht conducts research at the intersection of data visualization, technology, and culture. He holds a BA in Graphic Design, an MA in Interface Design, and a Ph.D. in Media Theory. Albrecht’s professional journey includes roles such as researcher at the Center for Complex Network Research with Prof. Laszlo Barabasi, Principal at metaLAB (at) Harvard with Jeffrey Schnapp, Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Professor at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf from 2023 to 2024. Since 2025, he has served as Professor of Information Design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. Known for his exploration of the aesthetic properties of data, his work spans teaching, research, and application.

Allapopp ( Workshop MInquiring a Digital Self.

allapopp is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary digital media and performance artist, originally from Tatarstan in Russia. allapopp’s work fuses post-soviet, mixed Tatar, queer, and migrant experiences with tech-inclusive envisioning, performance, and digital art. Formally working within the domains of performance, media and sound, research, storytelling, machine learning, and interactive live phygital formats and experiences in XR and the web, allapopp’s practice is directed toward fostering new worlds and visions as sources of inspiration and pathways to self-determination. allapopp has trained and practiced art in Germany, across the EU, China, Rwanda, Japan, and the USA. They are the co-founder of the TATAR KYZ:LAR and BBB_ music projects and a member of the dgtlfmnsm collective.

Orhun Mersin, (workshop March 22nd)

Dragging the Self: Phantasizing through drag, dreaming with deepfakes

In this workshop, Orhun Mersin, aka Kekik—a Berlin-based drag artist and AI researcher—will explore the intersections of self-representation, technology, and performance. As a member of the research platform New Practice in Art & Technology, and with a background in contemporary dance and computer science, Orhun’s work blends artistic and academic perspectives, using phantasy as a methodological tool to investigate identity and transformation in contemporary digital culture.

Drag and deepfakes share a common thread: both employ methods of appropriation to reimagine and subvert reality. The workshop will engage with Orhun’s queer-feminist research, which draws parallels between these practices. Through hands-on experimentation with a “curious queer-use” of deepfake technologies, participants will embark on a personal journey, playfully reappropriating their dreams. No technical experience is necessary— just a good dose of curiosity is all you need.

The artists are contributing to the platform through workshops, where they produce works for the platform in collaboration with students. €450 will be paid to each artist.

Carla Streackwall 

Carla Streckwall is a media artist and designer based in Berlin, working at the intersection of digital culture, perception, and spatial experience. Her practice explores the impact of digitization on everyday life, translating research and personal archives into immersive installations and speculative environments. Her work is rooted in experimental uses of 3D software and photogrammetry, creating landscapes and surfaces that oscillate between the real and the synthetic.

Carla Streckwall ist eine Medienkünstlerin und Designerin mit Sitz in Berlin. In ihrer Arbeit bewegt sie sich an der Schnittstelle von digitaler Kultur, Wahrnehmung und räumlicher Erfahrung. Sie untersucht die Auswirkungen der Digitalisierung auf den Alltag und übersetzt Forschung sowie persönliche Archive in immersive Installationen und spekulative Umgebungen. Ihre Arbeiten basieren auf dem experimentellen Einsatz von 3D-Software und Fotogrammetrie und erzeugen Landschaften und Oberflächen, die zwischen Realität und künstlicher Materialität changieren.

Charmaine Poh 

Charmaine Poh (b. 1990) is an artist from Singapore working across media, moving image, and performance to peel apart, interrogate, and hold ideas of agency, repair, and the body across worlds. She aligns herself with strategies of visibility, opacity, deviance, and futurity.

She has exhibited at the Singapore Art Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, Blindspot Gallery, REDCAT LA, Huis Marseille, and the 60th Venice Biennale – Foreigners Everywhere, among others. In 2019, she was one of Forbes Asia’s 30 under 30 in the arts. Her work has been collected by Vega Foundation, Sunpride Foundation, and KADIST. She was recently named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year for 2025.

Based between Berlin and Singapore, she is a co-founder of the magazine Jom and a member of Asian Feminist Studio for Art and Research (AFSAR).

Charmaine is currently working on two video-based works, THE MOON IS WET and A IS FOR ANDRA. A IS FOR ANDRA is an experimental documentary on an Indonesian trans public figure, and THE MOON IS WET examines cosmologies and migrant histories through three femme figures in Singapore.

Damjanski

Damjanski is an artist living in a browser. Concerned with themes of power, poetry and participation, he explores the concept of apps as artworks. The app ‘Bye Bye Camera‘ is the camera for the post-human era. Every picture people take automatically removes any person. The app ‘Never Not There‘ transformed the ZKM museum in Karlsruhe and the Centre Pompidou in Paris into dystopian server rooms and the ‘LongARcat‘ app creates long cats in Augmented Reality.

In 2018, he co-founded ‘MoMAR‘, an Augmented Reality gallery app aimed at democratizing physical exhibition spaces, art institutions and curatorial processes within New York’s Museum of Modern Art. WIRED covered the launch with the headline “Augmented Reality Is Transforming Museums“.

In 2019, he created an online space that only programs can access. This software performance, called ‘Humans not invited‘, first hit Reddit’s front page before it was shown at the König Galerie in Berlin.

In 2023, he launched ‘Still Here‘, a site-specific and permanent Augmented Reality sculpture of himself floating above the entire island of Manhattan in New York.

His work has appeared internationally at the ZKM Karlsruhe, Centre Pompidou, NRW-Forum, Postmasters, Office Impart, Roehrs & Boetsch, Pioneer Works, König Galerie, MoCDA, Tropez, Import Projects.

Currently Damjanski resides in New York.

Short Bio: Damjanski is an artist living in a browser. Concerned with themes of power, poetry and participation, he explores the concept of apps as artworks.

Exhibitions: ZKM Karlsruhe, Centre Pompidou, Postmasters, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Goethe Institute Buenos Aires, Pioneer Works, Roehrs & Boetsch, König Galerie, MoCDA, Artemis Lisbon, Import Projects.

Press: New York Times, Wired, Kunstforum, Frieze, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Artnome, FAZ, Vice, Paper Magazine, The Guardian, Le Monde, BBC, Bijutso Techo, Washington Post.

Lectures: Harvard (Cambridge), Schering Stiftung (Berlin), NRW Forum Düsseldorf, MUTEK (Montreal), Academy of Media Arts (Cologne), CADAF (Art Basel Miami).

Residencies:

NEW INC 5, New Museum, New York 2018–2019
NEW INC 6, New Museum, New York 2019–2020
YBYTU, São Paulo 2023