Thom Kubli "Convolution is Alive"

May 18

May 18 Thom Kubli "Convolution is Alive"

Thom Kubli (DE) is a Berlin based artist working with new technologies, sound, surroundings and environment. His latest work Black Hole Horizon was part of the exhibition Radical Atoms at Ars Electronica 2016 in Linz, Austria.

The following is a transcript from the conversation between Stahl Stenslie and Thom Kubli on February 3rd, 2017 during the Transmediale Festival 2017 @Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin.

Stahl Stenslie (EE): Where do you think the experimental arts are heading?

Thom Kubli (TK): I totally love the idea of convolution. I think the artist is getting into a state of convolution. That means an algorithmic mix-up of things that come. I think that revolution is dead and convolution is alive.

“Revolution is dead and
convolution is alive!”

EE: Like the Black Hole Horizon installation, that transforms the space? Are we going to get sucked up into nothingness?

TK: No, it gets convoluted surrounding the space with people. I think it is an organic fusion-like process. It seems to me pretty natural. What you can say for sure is that the idea of the revolutionary gesture is totally dead. What happens is that you don’t grab your space violently or with force anymore. You get your space by getting into the range of the environment. This is a kind of intelligence in how you run yourself and how you get yourself into the spot.

EE: Is the age of grand visions over?

TK: It is a different age of different visions. I think it is a time of many, many, many disparate visions. This is the thing of the discourse of the modern - to have these great visions. We fly to the Moon, we build big houses like skyscrapers. We are having large concepts happening in our minds. And then you go out there and try to realize them. I hope it’s not over, but I think that much more than before you have to be aware of something that is somewhat called reality. And you have to make your concept bulletproof, so it works in this construction of reality that is your environment.

“It is a different age
of different visions”

EE: You have worked a lot with organic materials in your art. What about the organic future of arts?

TK: I think there weren’t so many ways to adjust material like nowadays when there are so many more ways to influence materials, create new materials or build them up from scratch. Before we took what was there, mixed it with other materials and just saw what happened. I think nowadays you can much more precisely design things towards an outcome.