Minna Kangasmaa | Sonja Bendel | Christiane Bergelt | Christine Düwel | Eija Hirvonen | Catherine Ludwig
Project Room, Helsinki, Finland
6.-29.7.2018
As in hotels in general, in Hotel Infinity people come and go, but during their visit they become a part of the exhibition and modify the content of it. Hotel infinity is an artistic expedition about the process of creating a collective: about the things and people who create it. Hotel Infinity leans on the writings of the sociologist Bruno Latour about communities, collectives, and operative networks as well as their forming and their characters.
Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, who has written about Latour in Finnish, says that Latour does not think about leaning on a structure given in advance or on a group of variables, because a collective is always case-based. The character of it cannot be predicted. What is given in advance is only that there are collectives: unions as well as networks of operatives and forces. Latour uses the concept "Parliament of Things", which Hotel Infinity high-handed associates with the collective taking a form equally from all the factors that modify it.
Hotel Infinity links into the prevailing situation in contemporary society where new forms of social belonging are being searched. By raising different bonds, interfaces and networks through the artistic activity Hotel Infinity show how (human) betweenness has become an important part of art in 2010’s. Hotel Infinity opening for the public for the first time in July 2018 in Project Room of the Academy of Fine Arts shows that making visual art is not, after all, as individual centered as often perceived.
In Project Room the artists Sonja Bendel, Christiane Bergelt, Christine Düwel, Eija Hirvonen and Catherine Ludwig, all invited by artist Minna Kangasmaa, are working in the space and the process also reflects on the character of Hotel Infinity in the future. The artists are producing documented material about their working process, among other things, in the form of an essayistic video work. Artist talks, public discussion and events are also a part of the exhibition.