The World in My Hand

The curators, Dr Jörg Garbrecht and Katharina Wenkler, have chosen a narrative approach to the exhibition. In eight chapters, they summarize various aspects and debates surrounding the smartphone, ranging from the launch date of our daily digital companion to its characteristic touchscreen and the contractions of time and space it enables. Deeply personal moments – such as Ai Weiwei’s selfie at the moment of his arrest or Sergey Melnitchenko’s photograph of his son during a blackout in Kyiv – appear alongside themes of perception and presentation of the self, as realized in the glass sculpture Stability by Julija Pociūtė. Other subjects include: looking for love online, as in Ariane Forkel’s Casanova’s Kabinett or John Yuyi’s Tinder Match; the complexities and pitfalls of digital communication, for example in the works of James Akers or Alejandra Seeber; and the smartphone as a means of staying in touch during pandemic lockdown isolation, for instance in the work of George McLeod. Edward Burtynsky’s photograph of lithium mines in the Atacama Desert calls attention to the topic of raw materials for electronic devices.

 The exhibition design, created by Berlin architects Ester Bruzkus Architekten, consists of eight themed rooms along a central axis. This arrangement recalls the origins of public art exhibitions in historic palaces, while the translucent wall coverings reference contemporary art installations such as those by Robert Irwin or Do Ho Suh.

By playing with the geometry of the space and materials specifically designed for the exhibition, the architecture offers visitors to the BlackBox a new and unique exhibition space and experience.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication designed to resemble the former household item known as the telephone directory or “phone book” for short. Six writers have been invited to give us their expert take on the smartphone from the perspective of their respective fields. The book also includes a foreword by Dr Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek and essays by Dr Jörg Garbrecht, and the exhibition designers Ester Bruzkus and Peter Greenberg.