INFORMATION (Today)

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Marguerite Humeau, Riddles (Jaws), 2017–2021 (front) and Laura Owens, Untitled [SMS +41 79 807 86 34], 2021 (back). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Tobias Kaspar, All-over logo (black), 2020 (left) and Logotype (red rose), 2020 (right). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on American Artist, Veillance Caliper (Annotated), 2021 (front); Alejandro Cesarco, New York Public Library Picture Collection (Subject Headings), 2018 (back, left); Alejandro Cesarco, New York Public Library Picture Collection (Subject Headings – Cross References), 2018 (back, right). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Lawrence Abu Hamdan, For the Otherwise Unaccounted, 2020 (front). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Trevor Paglen, Autonomy Cube, 2015. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Liu Chuang, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Liu Chuang, still, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Antenna Space, Shanghai

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Sung Tieu, Loyalty Questionnaire, 2021 (front) and In Cold Print, 2020 (back, detail). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, detail view of Simon Denny, Remainder 2, 2019. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Simon Denny, Remainder 1, 2019 (right); Simon Denny, Remainder 2, 2019 (middle); Sondra Perry, IT’S IN THE GAME ‘18 or Mirror Gag for Projection and Three Universal Shot Trainers with Nasal Cavity, Pelvis, and Orbit, 2018 (left). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Sondra Perry, IT’S IN THE GAME ‘18 or Mirror Gag for Projection and Three Universal Shot Trainers with Nasal Cavity, Pelvis, and Orbit, 2018. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Gabriel Kuri, Balance of the Invisible and the Foreseeable, 2014 (front) and Nora Turato, your bed is a magical place where you remember all the things you forgot during the day / your vanity is powerful enough to defeat anything, 2021 (back). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021, view on Gabriel Kuri, Balance of the Invisible and the Foreseeable, 2014 (front); Laura Owens, Untitled [SMS +41 79 807 86 92], 2021 (left); Laura Owens, Untitled [SMS +41 79 807 86 29], 2021 (right). Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Poster for the exhibition INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Design: Shortnotice Studio

➔ Exhibition text (PDF)
Press images (ZIP)
➔ Simon Denny, Economist Chart NFT (with Moritz Schularick, Historical House Prices, Aggregate 

Encrypted networks, digital currencies, artificial intelligence, data harvesting, algorithmic biases, sentient machines—all are products of twenty-first-century data-based capitalism. As a result, the proliferation of information, and data’s nebulous modes of circulating and being processed, fundamentally shape our existence now. INFORMATION (Today) is a group show featuring contemporary artists seeking to unravel this phenomenon.

Intended as a loose response to the iconic INFORMATION show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, curated by Kynaston L. McShine in 1970, INFORMATION (Today) examines how contemporary artists deal with the relentless flow of information and data that inflects the present. MoMA’s exhibition was born from the late 1960s and early 1970s dawn of the “Information Age,” when advancements in new computing and communication technologies—and, with them, access to information—was suddenly on the rise. And, in the fifty years since, the ubiquity of access and connectivity has arguably lulled us into complacency with its flipside: ever more highly technologized forms of surveillance and the overexposure of our personal data. Exploring the myriad ways in which information signifies in our “post-truth” era, such a show seems more urgent than ever.

INFORMATION (Today) features a selection of international artists loosely culled from the two generations since 1970—which is to say, born after the original INFORMATION exhibition—for whom the processing and formalizing of data is among the central tenets of their work. The current exhibition presents a range of artistic positions, including recent work and new commissions in diverse media (from sculpture and painting, to video and performance, and from the undeniably material to the wholly immaterial), thus providing an overview of some of the most promising and challenging practices grappling with data, technology, and information today.

With Lawrence Abu Hamdan, American Artist, Alejandro Cesarco, Simon Denny, Marguerite Humeau, Zhana Ivanova, Tobias Kaspar, Gabriel Kuri, Liu Chuang, Ima-Abasi Okon, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Sondra Perry, Cameron Rowland, Sung Tieu, and Nora Turato, curated by Elena Filipovic.

Accompanying the exhibition, the INFORMATION (Today) Reader assembles various texts and text fragments selected by the exhibition’s participating artists. It gives access to their research and thinking and is available here and for free in the bookshop of Kunsthalle Basel.

Press clippings:
Information (Today) at Kunsthalle Basel Revisits a 1970s Classic, OCULA (06/2021)
INFORMATION (Today), Artforum, (04/2021)
Verschlüsselte Vermögen und Margaret Thatchers Mumie in der Kunsthalle Basel, bz Basel (07/2021)
Simon Denny Is Selling an Intentionally Lackluster NFT to Benefit Institutions Crypto Collectors Typically Don’t Care About, Artnet (08/2021)
Information (today): Politik der Datenströme, artline (08/2021)
Pour votre info, Le Courrier (09/2021)
Future: (Is) Now What? A Citywide Roundup of Art Basel 2021, Flash Art (10/2021)