the crystal world

The Crystal World Open Laboratory, CTM12, Berlin

Six day open lab with Ralf Baecker, Jonathan Kemp, Martin Howse, and Ryan Jordan for CTM12 at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Jan. 30 - Feb. 05. 2012 and exhibition Feb. 05 - 19. 2012

The absolute silence of the vegetation along the banks and the deep prismatic glow almost convinced him that the entire earth had been transformed and that any progress through this crystal world had become pointless.

J.G. Ballard, The Crystal World

The Serpent that announces, “The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,” is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle.

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

If life itself starts from aperiodic crystals that encode infinite futures within a small number of atoms, then the digital crystallization of the geo-biologic by Capital limits these futures to the point of exhaustion. Where computers and the minerals from which they are made are considered as equally crystalline, then their decrystallization is only possible through the introduction of vigorous and noisy positive feedback loops.

The Crystal World Open Laboratory, through various chemical decrystallizations of the digital, returns to the earth redundant electronics, the poisonous support for a synthesised dystopic world, as the recrystallized mineral. Mimicking the often dangerous processes undertaken in the recovery of rare and precious metals by the dispossessed, the Crystal World proposes to expand these world interventions through experimentation in the formation of novel crystal geologies aimed to etch unexpected psychophysical distortions and contingencies into our contemporary crystalline cycles.

During the six day open laboratory activities will include rare earth or mineral precipitations, high heat synthetic geology and inductive crystallography, anthropocenic fossilizations, water crystal cryptography, kirlian photography, hi-voltage fulgurite construction, odic diffractions, and the ingestion of colloidals to stem the contemporary plague.

Participants

Jay Cousins, Darsavini, Kathrin Guenter, Martin Howse, Ryan Jordan, Hye Joo Jun, Jonathan Kemp, Joon Kim, Martin Kuentz, Victor Mazon, Mariko Ogawa, Andrea Marco Ricci, Kate Rich, Anna Vo, Rachael Ward

CW Lab Index

Schedule

CTM12 Opening 27th January, 7pm+ including The Crystal World Open Laboratory.

The Crystal World Open Laboratory then runs daily from 12pm - late, Monday 30th January - Saturday February 4th

The Crystal World Salon (presentations, discussion + performances) is on Sunday February 5th at 4PM