Reflexive Algorithms / Algorithmic Dérives

published in: Gerold Tagwerker (ed.): "_zeroXVII", Wien, SCHLEBRÜGGE.EDITOR, 2017

 (excerpt)

The works of Gerold Tagwerker run the danger of being overtaken by the present. At least, that is the conclusion one could come to if, from the perspective of cultural theory, one were trying to understand the present on the basis of cultural production. Of course, it is not necessarily the role of art to provide diagnostic models of the present in order to enhance our understanding of here and now, but instead to question or even critique such models. But in taking a close look at the works of Gerold Tagwerker, one cannot help having the impression of having entered the empty arenas of the present, ones that have been abandoned by their protagonists: scenarios, symptomatic places, scenes of a crime …

Lamps flicker in isolation; sculptural processes set in motion have been interrupted at seemingly critical junction points; mirrors have been scratched or broken, or else they are dysfunctional, reflecting only a blur. Traces of mechanical noises, fragmented sounds and echoes hang in the air, somehow frozen in an idle state. Even the sculptural objects in the space seem like estranged echoes, reflections of the architecture, or selected elements of its formal matrix placed on view. Or a deconstructed ensemble of three-dimensional elements, which in the largest sense reflect the formal and infrastructural vocabulary of modernism. A modernism viewed through the lens of architecture—a ruptured code that assumes three-dimensional form.

(...)

find out more on the book _zeroXVII here.