House of Mirrors (STFU)
House of Mirrors (STFU) brings together four Berlin based artists who have all been working with digital media for a long time. Aram Bartholl, Nadja Buttendorf, Constant Dullaart and Sebastian Schmieg take us in front of uncanny boxes and mirrors adorned with “Walter Benjamin Nightmare” passwords (Bartholl), we find ourselves on the desktop of the artist displaying an unusual pink sweater and other performative jewelry objects (Buttendorf), they bring us face to face with „Loudly Crying Face“, the most popular emoji on Twitter, and insert the exhibition into uncanny social media feedback loops (Dullaart), and they send us on delirious Google image search trips which make us realize that the algorithm sees patterns where we don’t see any (Schmieg). House of Mirrors obviously is a tacky title, as it refers to a traditional attraction at funfairs and amusement parks. According to Wikipedia the basic concept behind a house of mirrors is „to be a maze-like puzzle” where “participants are also given mirrors as obstacles, and glass panes to parts of the maze they cannot yet get to. Sometimes the mirrors may be distorted because of different curves, convex, or concave in the glass to give the participants unusual and confusing reflections of themselves, some humorous and others frightening.“ STFU („Shut The F*** Up“), finally, is one of the many abbreviations found online which is used to abruptly end a conversation. House of Mirrors (STFU), however, is meant to open up a dialogue between us and the machines and algorithms out there – with a lot of humorous and some frightening moments. LOL.