GLITCH: ONTOLOGICAL EXHAUSTIONS & SYSTEM FAILURES

GLITCH: ONTOLOGICAL EXHAUSTIONS & SYSTEM FAILURES
With GLITCH: ONTOLOGICAL EXHAUSTION & SYSTEM FAILURES, Spazju Kreattiv becomes an amplifier for reflections on digitality & resistance, history & remembrance: aesthetic “disruptions” (glitches) challenge the audience to reflect on their technology-dependent society.
East German resistance is a model that shows how hegemonic narratives can be rewritten. Glitch Art—a powerful tool to deconstruct the technocratic, dictatorial, and repressive dimensions of neoliberal, communist, or capitalist systems—pushes us to the boundaries of our world, governed by surveillance, algorithmic dependence, and systemic exhaustion.
How old is the glitch? It has always existed. The Tractatus de Penitentia (1285) by Johannes Galensis introduces a subversive demon named Titivillus, the “patron demon of scribes,” who collected omitted, mumbled, and mispronounced words—especially those clerics who were said to have “stolen from God” during their morning prayers—which he preserved for their indictment at the end of days.
Creative team:
Curator: Verena Voigt
Satellite events:
Ines Geipel
The German Double Helix of Memory
March 19, 7 p.m.
Reading and discussion with Ines Geipel on Fabelland: The East, the West, the Anger, and the Happiness, presented as part of the exhibition Glitch: Ontological Exhaustion & System Failures.
Curated and moderated by Verena Voigt at Spazju Kreattiv / St. James Cavalier, Valletta (Malta), supported by the German-Maltese Circle Valletta and the Goethe-Institut Rome.
The German writer, publicist, and university lecturer Ines Geipel explores the strategies of calculated silence in post-war East Germany in her essayistic research (Fabelland. Der Osten, der Westen, der Zorn und das Glück, 2024). Through meticulous archival research, including in the Stasi archives, she uncovers the gaps in memory surrounding a forgotten literary resistance. Geipel’s work makes an important contribution to making visible the thwarted fates of writers who nevertheless played a crucial role in advancing the “Peaceful Revolution” of 1989 in Germany (Gesperrte Ablage, Unterdrückte Literaturgeschichte in Ostdeutschland 1945–1989, in collaboration with Joachim Walter, 2015, new edition 2024).
The reading and discussion will revive literary biographies from the GDR (1945–1989) that remained officially forgotten—even after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The delayed reception of some meticulously edited authors, such as Jutta Petzold, Susanne Kerckhoff, Hannelore Becker, Inge Müller, Edeltraut Eckert, Gabriele Stötzer, Ralf-Günter Krolkiewicz, and Günter Ullmann, brings to life a literary resistance movement that may be more necessary than ever to understand contemporary developments (Die Verschwiegene Bibliothek, Edition Büchergilde, since 2005).
As part of the group exhibition Glitch: Ontological Exhaustion & System Failures (March 14 – May 4, 2025) at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta, Ines Geipel’s studies on Germany’s double dictatorship will enter into dialogue with international resistance movements of past decades—up to the present day. Geipel’s works, now finally translated into English (Beautiful New Sky, Fabricated Bodies for Outer Space in East Germany’s Military Laboratories, 2022, English 2024), offer contemporary memory communities a new literary glossary of critical analysis and ambiguity.
The reading and moderated discussion will take place with a translator. Afterwards, there will be an opportunity for an informal Walk & Talk through the group exhibition, together with Ines Geipel and the curator.
German-Maltese Circle Valletta and the Goethe-Institut Rome.
Daria’s Vision: Resistance, Spatial Dissolution, and Slowness
With Ruth Bianco & Verena Voigt
May 4, 11 a.m.
The artist talk explores concepts of resistance, spatial dissolution, and slowness. A moderated tour of the exhibition with curator Verena Voigt allows for comparisons of space and time.
Ruth Bianco approaches GLITCH ART through collage, film, and pre-digital processes. Her book Camouflage Revolution & Desire (2012) developed an analogue glitch aesthetic, inspired by the radical New Wave in filmmaking of the 1960s as a topical medium to explore new prospects in the collage language. In her installation, Bianco transforms the final explosion scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) into a 14-minute video collage, linking the 2011 Arab Spring protests with coded interpretations of global disquietudes and recurring social unrest.
Daria’s Vision plays with memory, media, and history. Using split-screen techniques, Antonioni’s iconic images are overlaid with journalistic footage of the 2011 protests. Past and present merge into a new, future narrative. First shown in Valletta in 2011, the installation highlights how glitch and collage can inform each other.
More information: https://www.ruthbianco.com/
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