8 September 2016
It’s accumulation without end. But without end doesn’t mean without limits. It’s the possibility of always pushing those limits further. Setting limits, destroying them, overstepping them, setting them anew, is always a regenerative phenomenon. Except that at the same time that it produces life, it also produces death. Maurizio Lazzarato in Dominique Koch, Perpetual Operator, 2016.
The Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish, considered by biologists to be immortal because it can regenerate its DNA up to 14 times and therefore technically be born again, thus becomes the comic hero of a complex work, capable of commenting on the state of a capitalist model on the verge of collapse. In the exhibition, Dominique Koch combines the fate of a particular type of jellyfish, statements by the philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi as well as a vocal interpretation by the poet Seijiro Murayama, who reads out the possible combinations of DNA in the jellyfish as if reciting a Dada poem.
Noah Stolz
The film Perpetual Operator as well as the sound installation are kindly supported by: Fachausschuss Audiovision und Multimedia der Kantone Basel-Stadt und Basel-Landschaft and Futurum Stiftung Basel.
With: Dominique Koch