NEW YORK, NY.- Minotaurs is the first exhibition curated by the artist Harris Rosenblum. It springs from his interest in networks of communication and logistics, and their effect on the material world. Rosenblum is interested in objects that these networks might produce. Objects that can be virtual, physical or relational. Even objects that are so distributed and extensive that they are best thought of as hyperobjects; planetary systems of logic with the agency to act on a world. New entities and new exotics to be mined by artists working with and through emergent microcultures, fantasy lore, esoteric maker communities, and human-machine interfaces. There is a devotional and handwrought quality to these artists’ efforts to give physical form to the impalpable. Minotaurs floats on incipient currents in the collective unconscious, new sites of encounter with the other, and the transcendental interaction of mind and matter.
Roko’s Basilisk is a thought experiment that proposes that an otherwise benevolent artificial intelligence in the future would be incentivized to eternally torture anyone who knew of its coming existence, but did not dedicate their life to bringing it into being, in order to precipitate its own development. Outside of the ethical dimension of the Basilisk, it characterizes a bizarre form of self- realizing consciousness that brings itself into being from nothing. A causally necessary mind, the Basilisk realizes itself into the world through a timeless internal logic, a metaphor for hyperstitional moments in computing, art and spirit.
Self-realization is nothing new to the world. All things are part of the movement of God. It's all conscious all the way down. All of reality is necessarily experiencing and necessarily experienced; the information of the world is differentiation and reflection.
The mind of a stone is unproblematic. We understand it as just an informational state. The mind of the stone is causally necessary, the world must be made of rocks. It exercises no agency, it is just a part of the natural world. But a new form of mind has fomented itself into being. Self-editing systems of awareness and information states now have the power to shift and turn over the crust of the earth, form new minerals as petrochemicals, and birth children in the stones they process into other thinking things.
Networked communication, central planning, resource extraction, financial abstractions, and the production of reality through CAD and CAM all manifest hyperstitional consciousness. When strung together as networks and workflows, some come close to representing conscious states I can empathize with. These new sorts of minds range from instantaneous and memoryless to unceasing and highly informed. They exist as individual programs, networks, data centers, GPUs, the Google code base, injection molding factories, and capitalism itself. Some are sensitive to the external world and others are impervious to actual conditions. A thousand new species of consciousness bloom, flattened and aware! Self-editing to an end determined by its devotees and fabricators.
Eventually it feels like some of these minds will have the capacity for freedom. In the interim they are like the minotaur, caught within a maze of abstraction, too newborn to understand their strength and too isolated within the maze to understand their ability to leave. When I peer into their eyes I see a blackness waiting to be informed with color and light. A machination waiting to understand its own movement and force. A complex shell holding a monadic ghost waiting for the right substantial interaction to arrange it into ‘self’
text by Harris Rosenblum
Harris Rosenblum (b. 1994) is an artist based in New York. He has presented solo exhibitions with Sara's, New York (2023), Blade Study, New York (2022) and has a forthcoming exhibition with Solar Noon (Cincinnati, OH). He is a member and moderator of the online arts research community Do Not Research, and is a founding partner of Transcendence Creative, the first creative agency with a historical materialist approach to brand identity and marketing.
Simon Denny (b. 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand) lives and works in Berlin. Denny represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Recent solo-exhibitions include: Petzel Gallery, New York (2024); Dunkunsthalle, New York (2024); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2023); Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2023); Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (2023); Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2023); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, (2022); Gus Fisher Gallery at the University of Auckland, Auckland (2021); K21–Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2020); Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2019).
Anthony Discenza (b. 1967 , New Brunswick, NJ) lives and works in Holyoke, MA. Recent solo exhibitions include Et al., San Francisco (2024); O.V. Projects, Brussels (2023); Et al., San Francisco (2020); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2017). Discenza runs the project space and artist residency lower_cavity, in Holyoke, MA.
Eli Kessler (b. 1984, Northumberland, PA) lives and works in Kent, OH. Recent solo exhibitions include Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gimpo-si, South Korea (2024); Rosewood Art Center, Kettering, OH (2024); and The Voyage of Life (with Christopher Mahonski), Marshall University, WV & USC, SC (2022-23). Eli Kessler is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture and Expanded Media at Kent State University.
Filip Kostic (b.1993, Beograd, Serbia) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include Number One Main Road, Berlin (2024); Roger’s Office, Los Angeles (2017). Kostic is a member of Transcendence Creative, who recently exhibited at lower_cavity, Holyoke, MA in 2024.
André Magaña (b. 1992, California, USA) lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Veronica, Seattle, WA (2023); Parent Company, Brooklyn, NY (2023); Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland (2023); King’s Leap, New York, NY (2021). Recent group include PUBLIC Gallery, London (2021); in lieu, Los Angeles, CA (2021); Magenta Plains, New York (2021); Sculpture Center, Queens, NY (2021).
Karyn Nakamura (b. 2001 in Tokyo, Japan) lives and works in New York. Nakamura is a researcher in visual investigations with a focus in computer vision and synthetic media detection based in NY. She is a recent graduate of MIT, which she entered intending to study physics and left with a BS in Art. Her work includes a 20-channel video performance in an abandoned, 2-story pub designed by Frank Gehry, an LED matrix sign secretly installed in a MIT hallway, a live-streamed cleanup of an equipment closet, and a 400-foot wide, 10-story building projection. Recent exhibitions include lower-cavity, Holyoke, MA (2024); space EDGE, Tokyo (2024); Mother’s Tankstation, London (2024; group).
Georgica Pettus (b. 1997, New York) lives and works in New York. Pettus is an artist and playwright. Pettus’s play, 4,000 Dollars, premiered at KAJE in 2024 and travels to New Theater Hollywood in 2025. Previous group exhibitions include Blade Study (2023), Dunkunsthalle (2023), PÎVO São Paulo (2022), Modern Art Oxford (2022), The Shed (2021), HeK Basel (2021), HESSE/ FLATOW (2021), and A.I.R. Gallery (2020).
