Broken smartphone displays, crackling in the radio broadcast, frozen images in the video call. Only at the moment of disruption does our attention turn to the nature of the technical media that surrounds us every day, without, however, pushing itself into the foreground. As one of the youngest and most unpredictable art forms, glitch art specifically draws attention to the productive side of error. First used in the technical jargon of radio and television technicians in the 1950s, the term glitch (Early New High German “glitschen” – to slide, let slide – or Yiddish “gletshn” – to slip, slide away) soon describes programming or graphics errors in the context of computer games . A glitch is the unexpected result of a malfunction that occurs not only in computer games but also in other digital software. In the context of art, technical disruptions also find their direct expression in the area of computer-generated images and the digital. The roots of technical glitches go back to the early days of photography; As an artistic counter-movement to recognized forms of expression, they range from photography to avant-garde film, video and sound art to digital image media and net art, in which image disruptions are consciously provoked or specifically programmed.
The special exhibition Glitch will explore the “art of disruption” as a global phenomenon on 1,200 square meters of exhibition space in the Pinakothek der Moderne. International artists critically question the realism of the media, create new worlds or uncover normative orders and socio-political disparities and, last but not least, make the invisible visible.
With works by Erwin Blumenfeld, Monika von Boch, Kilian Breier, Nick Briz, Broomberg & Chanarin, Chargesheimer, Pierre Cordier, Inge Dick, Christian Doeller, Maya Dunietz, Walter Ebenhofer, Jake Elwes, Jamie Faye Fenton, Ralf Filges, William Forsythe, Marc Foucault, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Fabian Hesse & Mitra Wakil, John Hilliard, Esther Hunziker, Lotte Jacobi, Gottfried Jäger, Arthur Jafa, JODI, Joan Jonas, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, Ryoichi Kurokawa, !Mediengruppe Bitnik and Sven König, Rosa Menkman, Ugo Mulas, Mame-Diarra Niang, Carsten Nicolai, Kazuma Obara, Nam June Paik, Jiang Pengyi, Sondra Perry, Sigmar Polke, Timm Rautert, Man Ray, Johanna Reich, Evelyn Richter, Pipilotti Rist, Barry Stone, ariella tai , Wolfgang Tillmans, Raoul Ubac, Timm Ulrichs, Steina Vasulka, Peter Weibel