In the past there was not necessarily more tinsel, but more noise and more fire. Cars were buzzing, cigarettes were glowing, fireworks exploded. This was probably not particularly wise, healthy or sustainable, and not everything was better in the past. This much is certain. Nevertheless, this noise-making is also a way of expressing one's joy at the mere fact that one is inexplicably alive. What happens when nothing glows any more because the e-cigarette (recently: tobacco heater) with blueberry flavor no longer burns anything crackling but only heats it moderately, when the Tesla glides silently through a frigid world and when the fireworks are consumed digitally via a screen instead of blowing up a proper bang and sulphur smell? 

That these things will be reduced in the future is pleasing. Because it is reasonable and because it will ensure a cleaner and healthier future. One that leaves a better world for generations to come. Yet the silence in which the present slowly begins to mantle itself also disguises its functionalities, the present is lost in empty speculations and commodities that are decoupled from their real value. 

Malte Bartsch lets these two poles collide in his work. The exhibition “Investment” shows five groups of works: “Risk Averse”, “Agave”, “Rakete”, “EC” and “Schneehaus”. Does one already invest time (which is money, as we know) into ones own cultural horizon by visiting the exhibition? The neoliberal pressure for self-optimization, which eats into every area of life, is heralded here.

Excerpt from the press text by Laura Helena Wurth

Malte Bartsch
Rakete, 2019
Video still
1-channel-projection, HD-Video, colour, audio, loop
12 min.
courtesy EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin