Synchronicity Show


Although it began in the 1990s as another technology-derived term giddily applied to human activities, the word "multitasking" has gone on to not only enter the day-to-day lexicon, but also to provide a defining metaphor for cultural life in the era of portable media. Action, accelerated and condensed to the point of simultaneity--and even schizophrenia--at the level of perception, communication, and interaction underpins the work on view in Multitasking: Synchronitat als kulturelle Praxis at the Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst in Berlin through October 7th. Demonstrating the ubiquity of the act of doing many things at once, the NGBK has brought together work ranging from D.I.Y. digital media to politically charged performances by an equally far-reaching group of artists which includes Cory Arcangel, Constantin Luser, Bill Shackelford, and Adrian Piper. Two symposia on October 5th and 6th also draw on an appropriately wide-ranging group of disciplines, putting specialists in medicine and neurology in conversation with their counterparts in media studies and art history. The entire exhibition posits the phenomenon as the most overarching characteristic of a contemporary culture that fetishizes immediacy.