Current Program

Gretchen Andrew's Facetune Portraits

HOLON brings artists from different fields together as a way to expand the limits of their work and explore new contexts. Their findings are documented and showcased at the end of each project period as a site-specific exhibition.

ATELIER-E
(DE)

Media Studio

ATELIER-E is an interdisciplinary laboratory for new media founded by visual artist Daniel Dalfovo and sound artist Christian Losert. Both work and teach at the intersection of art, technology and science. In their artistic practice they create multimedia spaces, audio-visual narratives and collaborate with international artists and research institutions.

Image copyright © ATELIER-E

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Hybrid Studio

11 – 15 SEP

Gretchen Andrew's Facetune Portraits

'Facetune Portraits' by Gretchen Andrew is a new series that deploys generative art and oil painting. What happens when we take the beautifying AI algorithms popular on social media and bring them into the physical world and traditional portraiture? The resulting artworks reveal the tension between who we are and who AI says we should be.

For Berlin Art Week, Gretchen’s creative robotics facility migrates from London to Berlin, transforming HOLON’s space into a blended physical/digital studio. The algorithmic filters of facetuning, readily available on social media platforms and video conferencing tools (such as Instagram, TikTok, and Zoom's "Touch Up My Appearance"), promise a more "appealing" version of ourselves. Gretchen challenges this ideal by employing custom-built robots to physically apply these "beautifying" algorithms onto wet oil-painted paintings–portraits of Berlin-based influencers interviewed and photographed by the artist herself. As a result, viewers are exposed to a captivating exploration of the dissonance between our natural state and the constructed image we strive for. 

The project is curated and presented in collaboration between HOLON, a Berlin-based exhibition space, and fx(hash), a generative art platform. 

Technical collaboration: MatrLabs
Exhibition soundscape: Olivier Fröhlich

PROGRAM

Exhibition is open daily 12 – 15 September, 2024, 12:00 – 21:00

11 SEP Wednesday

19:00 - Exhibition Opening *RSVP

12 SEP Thursday 

14:00 - Hybrid Studio Tour (DE) 
18:30 - Hybrid Studio Tour (ENG)

13 SEP Friday 

12:30 - Hybrid Studio Tour (DE)
19:00 - Hybrid Studio Tour (ENG)

14 SEP Saturday

12:30 - Hybrid Studio Tour (DE)
14:00 - Gretchen Andrew and Nora O Murchú in conversation with influencers
18:30 - Hybrid Studio Tour (ENG)

15 SEP Sunday

12:30 - Hybrid Studio Tour (ENG) 
14:00 - How to create Generative Art. Coding workshop *RSVP
15:30 - Behind Facetune Portraits. Artist talk with Gretchen Andrew


& by special appointment ↗
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Maria Braune
(DE)

Visual Artist

Maria Braune (1988, DE) is a visual artist originally hailing from Berlin, who has lived and worked between Munich and Chiemsee since 2008. She completed an apprenticeship in sculpture at the Berchtesgaden School of Sculpture between 2008-2011, studied Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and received her diploma in 2017. She organizes the collective artist-run space LANGEVIN in Munich, has received nominations for various prizes and participated in numerous group exhibitions in Germany and internationally.

Over the course of a few years, she’s developed Migma: a substance composed of eight raw materials which is heated, poured, shaped and dried over multiple weeks. During this time, she adds further industrially manufactured materials to activate ruptures and changes which proliferate and claim their space. Her works provide insights into growth processes, especially those which are uncontrollable, and ask questions on transformation, symbiosis, and decay.

Text by Anabel Roque Rodríguez
Image copyright © Maria Braune

Maria Braune's work is kindly supported by NEUSTART Kultur.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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11v151131_m06
(MX)

Visual / Sound Artist

11v151131_m06(MX) is a visual and sound artist interested in speculative approaches to sound and visuals. Since 2012, his research has focused on Computer Generated Imagery and he has lived and worked with New Media Art and Technology Studios across Europe, America and Asia.

11v151131_M06 studied composition at Pompeu Fabra University in 2008 and has collaborated with artists such as Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, Yoshida Tatsuya, William Winant. He is currently researching concepts around Ancient futurism & Occultism.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Hannelore Braisch
(RO / DE)

Digital 3D Artist

Hannelore Braisch (RO/DE) is a digital 3D artist with a focus on CGI and motion design. Having completed a bachelor’s degree in communication design, she now produces 3D generated artworks for contemporary visual content and mostly in cooperation with clients across the fields of art, music and fashion.

Braisch’s digital artworks are organic shapes and structures inspired by summers visiting the Carpathian Mountains and her deep connection to nature. Her intuitive art practice challenges visual design norms through experimental encounters with reality and the metaverse. She often finds that something entirely new emerges when combining futuristic, surreal shapes with the organic, physical world. It’s what has shaped her personal aesthetic expression that is both alien and tactile.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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ATELIER-E
(DE)

Media Studio

ATELIER-E is an interdisciplinary laboratory for new media founded by visual artist Daniel Dalfovo and sound artist Christian Losert. Both work and teach at the intersection of art, technology and science. In their artistic practice they create multimedia spaces, audiovisual narratives and collaborate with international artists and research institutions.

Image copyright © ATELIER-E

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Stina Baudin
(HT/CA)

Visual Artist

Stina Baudin (she/her) is an emerging Haitian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. She has studied both at Concordia University in Montreal and The Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Using her own idiosyncratic visual language of pattern and relationships, Baudin’s large-scale, hand-woven fiber works create a counter-patriarchal, anti-capitalist and anticolonial way of narrating meaning from data. By collapsing the division between anecdotal and statistical data, her work removes the hierarchical distinctions between the scientific and the personal. They then start to operate as an entangled web of cohabiting knowledge centers - the scientific data indivisible from other knowledge forms that are affective and embodied. It’s important to note that her weavings are not merely data visualization. Instead they are an interpretative recontextualisation of the datascape as a way to speak beyond binaries, a way to fashion a subversive lexicon that is haptic and relational rather than representational. She has participated in national and international art residencies and exhibitions including Banff Center for the Arts Creativity (CA), and Pocoapoco in Mexico. In 2022, she completed an arts fellowship at Wildseed Center for Art & Activism, a project birthed by Black Lives Matter activists who hope to build an enduring space that could cultivate the most transformative and radical ideas from Canada’s diverse Black communities and beyond.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Abigail Toll
(EN/DE)

Sound Artist / Composer

Abigail Toll (she/her) is a British experimental music artist based in Berlin who makes ambient, psychoacoustic soundworlds. Her artistic research focuses on data aesthetics and harmonic chaos as a mode for critical thinking, often in collaboration with musicians, artists and writers.Matrices of Vision is the title of her debut record, released on Shelter Press in August 2023, which she composed during her Masters in Electroacoustic Composition at the KMH, Stockholm. It is based on a dataset which details the (in)accessibility to higher education in Sweden across seven decades and reveals the complexities around representation. In 2022, the piece premiered as an ensemble performance featuring Lucy Railton, Rebecca Lane and Evelyn Saylor, and took place at the Klosterruine in Berlin which was organized by KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Toll’s work and performances have also been shown at Kunsthalle Gent; Pawilon, Posnan; Volksbühne Berlin among others.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Harriet Davey
(EN/DE)

3D Artist

Harriet Davey is a 3D Artist and Art Director based in Berlin. Through the exploration of gender non-conforming virtual avatars, Davey restores and reclaims the bodies extorted by a male dominated gaming industry. Obsessed with questioning what it means to be fluid and human in a digital world: their work examines and interrogates the ugly and the beautiful; the maximum and the minimum; the online and the offline.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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snake_case (EN)

Musician

snake_case consists of Imogen Davey and Callum Murray, two accomplished performers, improvisers, and composers. They create work which explores the boundaries of human-machine interaction, with far reaching implications for ideas of authorship and perception. Together they investigate the convergence of art, sound, and technology. They strive to redefine the notion of creativity in the digital age.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Hexorcismos
(MX/DE)

Composer / Creative Technologist

For the last seven years, sound artist, technologist, and electronic musician Moisés Horta Valenzuela (aka Hexorcismos) has studied artificial intelligence and generative art. Born in Tijuana and currently based in Berlin, Hexorcismos has long attempted to break down the permeable borders between musical styles and expressions, using the spaces in between to reinforce his politics and worldview.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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AH! KOSMOS

Composer

Başak Günak is a sound artist and composer, also internationally known as AH! KOSMOS in the field of electronic music. Her work includes sound art, performance, sound installation, composition for theater & contemporary dance.

Günak pursues her sound experimentations as a sound artist, composing soundscapes for theatre, contemporary dance, film and visual art projects, and realising site-specific performances. Her works have been featured worldwide in several festivals and institutions, such as Barbican Theatre (UK), Royal Theater Carré (NL), Sonar Festival (SP), Berlin CTM Festival (DE), Tokyo Electronic Music of Arts Festival (JP), Maxim Gorki (DE), Berliner Festspiele (DE), Rotterdamse Schouwburg and Prague Quadrennial. In the last years, she has done composition and sound design for Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin-Gropius Bau and granted residencies in HELLERAU European Centre for the Arts, Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Gretchen Andrew

Visual Artist

Gretchen Andrew manipulates systems of power with art, glitter and code. She is best known for her playful hacks on major art world and political institutions, including Frieze, The Whitney Biennial, Artforum, The Turner Prize, and The Next American President.  In these digital performances she reimagines reality with art and desire. She does this by making assemblage “vision boards” that she programs to become top internet search results. The feminine and trivialized materials of her vision boards purposefully clash with the male-dominated worlds of AI, programming, and political control they also operate within.

In Gretchen’s new Facetune Portrait series the artist uses custom robotics to physically apply popular “beautifying” AI algorithms into oil paintings. She trained in London with the artist Billy Childish from 2012-2017. In 2018 the V&A Museum released her book Search Engine Art. Gretchen’s work has recently been featured in Fast Company, Flash Art, The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, Monopol, Wirtschaftswoche, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, and The Financial Times.

Instagram ↗Website ↗
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Listening Session

Sound exchanges #1 – Sonic Foraging

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Event

TouchDesigner Event Berlin 2024

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Record Release

22 FEB 2024

MUTUALISMX

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Artist Pairing

27 OCT — 04 NOV 2023

Energy Drinks & Bisexual Lighting

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Residency

1 SEP — 3 SEP 2023

A Fractal Manifesto

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Event

25 APR — 26 APR 2023

TouchDesigner Event Berlin 2023

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Exhibition

21 JAN — 03 FEB 2023

LOOM

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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Artist Pairing

24 NOV— 16 DEC 2022

Blurring Barriers

In this special site-specific installation between visual artist Maria Braune and multidisciplinary collaborators Hannelore Braisch and 11v151131_m06, the three artists dissolve, blossom and resemble each others works through HOLON’s physical and digital portal.

Flowing forms, tentacles outstretched, Braune’s physical sculpture crawls into the interfaces of Braisch and 11v151131_m06’s virtual worlds where it develops, modifies and reappears optically on the other side. Like the transition from air to water, the artists compensate for what each cannot replace in both spheres, blurring the barriers between what is tangible in both.

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11v151131_m06

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AH! KOSMOS

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ATELIER-E

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Abigail Toll

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Gretchen Andrew

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Hannelore Braisch

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Harriet Davey

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Hexorcismos

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Maria Braune

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Stina Baudin

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snake_case

HOLON is a nonprofit interdisciplinary format for research and play. It uses creative technologies to support knowledge transfer, collaboration, and connect people within virtual and physical spheres.

Vision

STAGE
DISCUSSIONS

that shed light on new technologies and their social impact

LEARN
TOGETHER

and gain new insights through collaboration

EXPLORE HOW

to blend physical and virtual spaces with spatial sound and responsive lighting

CONNECT WITH

wider audiences and networks

Find us here

Greifswalder Str. 29 Berlin
2nd courtyard
left entrance, 1st floor

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info (at) holon . berlin

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MONOMANGO ↗