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Concept "HIGH ALITTUDE"
"Ever more areas of life are seeing the disappearance of the material as the baseline on which all things are founded and its replacement by information, coding and structure. Instead of a pre-established fixed order, what we now have is the notion of generalized interaction." (Jean-François Lyotard)
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On 29 January 2009 at 2.25 in the afternoon Michael Najjar stood on the summit of Mount Aconcagua, at 6,962 meters the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas. After a strenuous six months program of physical preparation, in early January Najjar flew to Argentina to join a six-man expedition setting out to scale this imposing peak. The photographic material gathered in the course of the three week trek forms the basis of the picture world of the "high altitude" work series.
"High altitude" visualizes the development of the leading global stock market indices over the past 20-30 years. The virtual data mountains of the stock market charts are resublimated in the craggy materiality of the Argentinean mountainscape. Just like the indices, mountains too have their timeline, their own biography. The rock formations soaring skywards like so many layered folds of a palimpsest bear witness to the life history of the mountain - stone storehouses of deep time unmeasureable on any human scale. The mountain reveals itself as something whose rhythm can be experienced and savored on the emotional level while in equal measure it embodies a life-challenging threat. Yet such rhythm cannot be assimilated on the rational level. We might feel the beating pulse of the mountain and be aware of it, but it always remains extraneous to the beat of our own life. The immediate reality of nature thus becomes a virtual experience.
Such experience of virtuality is strikingly exemplified by the global economic and financial system. If the focus used to be on the exchange of goods and commodities, it is now securely on the exchange of immaterial information. The current economic and financial crisis is a dramatically cogent illustration of the fact that we now no longer deal mainly with real things, real products, real trade, goods and commodities but with chains of signifiers. Each sign refers to another sign and not to something in the real world. Everything becomes a sign. Each sign conceals others signs and behind all the signs, codes and simulacra stretches the open gaping void of the system crash. As Jean Baudrillard already admonished back in the 90s, "If all virtual assets were one day to flow back into the production economy, they would trigger a catastrophe."
The high degree of simulation inherent in our present and future world coupled with the power of simulation to appear as its very reverse makes it seductive and dangerous at one and the same time. Scaling a mountain and reaching its summit is a borderline experience on the extreme limits of physical and mental endurance. The sky seems so close you could reach up and touch it with your hand while the far distant horizon is a mere thin line separating the finite from the infinite beyond. Serious lack of oxygen coupled with extreme physical exhaustion blurs the line between reality and imagination, scrambling perceptions of time and space. The feeling of sublimity is overwhelming.
We describe something as exalted or sublime when it transcends our usual modes of perception and gives us a glimpse of a dimension superior to our own everyday reality, like the entry to another world. As the media philosopher, Vilém Flusser puts it, "The person who has never climbed a mountain has never lived. He merely vegetates on a level plain. What he lacks is the third dimension, the dimension of the sublime."
The incredible volumes of money circulating the globe in real time likewise defy our imagination and can only be grasped in terms of immaterial values. The sublime bears a close affinity to the immaterial. In the natural sciences the term "sublimation" refers to the direct transition of a solid substance to a gaseous state. Such a process can equally characterize the general transformations undergone by our society over the past decades as it has moved from being a material processing industrialized to a data processing computerized society. Such de-materialization has led to a high degree of complexity in terms of networking where multiple synergy effects can generate accelerations of such exponential rapidity as to place them simply beyond the reach of any human comprehension. The information society has brought about a tectonic shift in our understanding of space and time. Humankind is confronted with a process of such dynamic complexity that the borderlines we seemingly identify at one moment are already sublimated in the next. In future the virtual value system could demand its proper reincarnation in the real world. The jagged rock formations of "high altitude" are emblematic of the thin edge separating reality and simulation.
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Concept "HIGH ALITTUDE"
"De plus en plus de domaines de notre existence voient la disparition du matériau comme base où se fondent toutes choses et son remplacement par l'information, le codage et la structure. Au lieu d'un ordre fixe préétabli, ce que nous avons maintenant, c'est la notion d'interaction générale." (Jean-François Lyotard)
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Le 29 janvier 2009 à 14 h 25, Michael Najjar atteignit le sommet de l'Aconcagua qui est, à 6 962 m, la montagne plus haute au monde en dehors de l'Himalaya.
Après six durs mois de préparation physique, début janvier, Najjar se rendit en Argentine pour rejoindre une équipe de six hommes qui s'apprêtait à escalader ce pic imposant. Les photographies rassemblées au cours des trois semaines d'expédition forment la base de l'univers visuel de la série High Altitude.
High Altitude dépeint l'évolution des principaux indices boursiers mondiaux depuis vingt à trente ans. Les courbes des indices boursiers dessinent des montagnes de données virtuelles qui sont resublimées dans les escarpements réels des Andes argentines. À l'instar des indices, les montagnes ont aussi leur chronologie, leur propre biographie. Les formations rocheuses qui s'élancent vers le ciel comme autant de plis superposés d'un palimpseste témoignent du passé de la montagne : dépôts pierreux d'un temps incommensurable à l'échelle humaine. La montagne, qui incarne un danger de mort, possède en même temps un rythme que l'on peut percevoir et savourer de manière purement affective. Pourtant, cette sorte de rythme n'est pas assimilable sur le mode rationnel. On peut sentir battre le pouls de la montagne et en prendre conscience, mais il reste toujours étranger aux pulsations de notre existence. La réalité immédiate de la nature devient ainsi une sensation virtuelle.
Ce rapport au virtuel trouve une illustration saisissante dans l'économie et la finance mondiales. Le système qui reposait autrefois sur les échanges de biens et de marchandises s'est résolument recentré sur les échanges d'informations immatérielles. La crise économique et financière actuelle démontre de manière spectaculaire que nous n'avons plus affaire essentiellement à des objets réels, des produits réels, un commerce réel de biens et de marchandises, mais à des chaînes de signifiants. Chaque signe renvoie à un autre, sans référence à la réalité. Tout devient signe. Chaque signe en dissimule d'autres et derrière tous les signes, les codes et les simulacres, s'étend le vide béant de l'effondrement du système. Déjà dans les années 1990, Jean Baudrillard nous avait prévenus que si tous les avoirs virtuels devaient retourner un jour dans l'économie de production, ils déclencheraient une catastrophe.
Le haut degré de simulation inhérent à notre environnement actuel et futur, joint à la capacité que possède le simulacre de passer pour son inverse même, le rend séduisant et dangereux en même temps. Escalader une montagne et parvenir au sommet, c'est éprouver la sensation extrême d'aller aux limites de l'endurance physique et mentale. Le ciel semble si près que l'on croit le toucher en levant le bras, et l'horizon au loin n'est qu'une ligne très mince entre le fini et l'infini. Le grave manque d'oxygène ajouté à l'épuisement physique brouille la frontière entre réel et imaginaire, en altérant la perception du temps et de l'espace. Le sentiment du sublime envahit tout.
On qualifie de sublime ce qui dépasse les modes de perception habituels pour laisser entrevoir une dimension supérieure à la réalité quotidienne, comme un accès à un autre monde. "Celui qui n'a jamais escaladé une montagne , écrit le philosophe des nouveaux médias Vilém Flusser, n'a jamais vécu. Il végète sur une plaine horizontale. Ce qui lui manque, c'est la troisième dimension, la dimension du sublime. "
Les quantités incroyables d'argent qui circulent sur la planète en temps réel défient pareillement notre imagination et ne peuvent se concevoir qu'en termes de valeurs immatérielles. Le sublime s'apparente étroitement à l'immatériel. En chimie, la " sublimation " désigne la transformation d'une substance solide qui passe directement à l'état gazeux. Ce terme pourrait aussi bien servir à décrire l'évolution de notre société depuis quelques dizaines d'années, qui est passée directement de l'industrialisation axée sur le traitement des matériaux à l'informatisation axée sur le traitement des données. Cette dématérialisation a engendré une très grande complexité dans la création de réseaux où des effets de synergie multiples peuvent produire de telles accélérations qu'ils finissent par échapper à l'entendement humain. La société de l'information a provoqué une mutation radicale de notre appréhension de l'espace et du temps. L'humanité fait face à un phénomène d'une telle complexité que les lignes de démarcation à peine identifiées sont aussitôt sublimées. À l'avenir, le système de valeurs virtuel aura peut-être besoin de se réincarner vraiment dans le monde réel. Les formations rocheuses déchiquetées de High Altitude sont emblématiques de la frontière très mince entre réalité et simulation.
Michael Najjar
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The work series entitled "netropolis" is an exploration of the way global cities will develop in the future.
Of similar magnitude to the impact of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century, it is now computer networks and the information society based on them which are the main vehicles for change, the key elements transforming the face of our urban living spaces.
Three main components characterise this transformation: space becomes the image of space, the city itself becomes a terminal as real space fuses with telematic space.
in the telematic society material embodiment is further supplemented and extended by virtual representation :
the so-called "tele-polis". Telematic space endows the urban environment with a new form of structure, intermingling with it and giving birth to a completely unprecedented form of urban space.
The panoramic view transforms the reality of urban spatial structure into landscape. The digital fusion of panoramic views taken from different angles transforms the landscape into a woven fabric of relationships which is abstract and multi-layered yet still underpinned by a geographic reference point. Viewing the city from a distance inverses the perceptual order of objects viewed in close-up.
The view from afar is orientated on what is clearly visible from a distance and provides a context for objects which appear too close when viewed close up and thus retain their strangeness. In virtual space, however, distance and proximity lie on the selfsame level. The different cities and relationship strands need first to be combined and interwoven before they can give rise to a completely unprecedented and imaginary form of urbanity - the telematic netropolis.
The "netropolis" series of works portrays the megacities of berlin, beijing, dubai, hongkong, london, los angeles, mexico city, new york, paris, são paulo, shanghai and tokyo.
It comprises of twelve hybrid-photographies, one video work and one image sculpture.
BIOGRAPHY
Photo : ©Thomas Rusch 2010
Photolocation : LEONARDO Glass Cube
One of the central themes of Michael Najjar's art is the telematic society. Focusing on key
components of a society driven and controlled by computer and information technology, his works
reflect contemporary developments and create visions and utopias of future social structures
emerging from the impact of new technologies. Projections of the future render old modes of
perception obsolete and allow novel ways of seeing.
The fusion of realistic elements with fictitious realities is a recurrent hallmark of his photographic
productions and video work, which are composed in thematically focused series. Simulation and
hyper-reality are the foundations of Najjar's art as he utilizes digital and computer-generated
visual elements to fuse and create new forms of imagery. In a time of exponential acceleration
and transformation, his work as a media artist attempts to sound out the possibilities inherent
within the boundaries of the real.
In 2008 Michael Najjar had his first large retrospective on view at the Museum for Photography
and the Museum for Contemporary Art GEM in The Hague, curated by Wim van Sinderen.
Michael Najjar's work was part of the 2006 Venice Biennale's 10th International Architecture
Exhibition, he was also included in the 9th Havana Biennale 2006 and Convergence Biennale Beijing 2007. Harald Szeemann exhibited his work in 2004 in "the beauty of failure / the failure of beauty" at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona.
He has also exhibited at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kunsthalle Hamburg / Galerie der Gegenwart, Hamburg; Deichtorhallen - International Museum of Photography, Hamburg; Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Oldenburg; Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Berlin; Goethe Institute, New York, Tuscon Museum of Art; Tucson; Science Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Birmingham; New Media Art Insitute, Amsterdam; Museum Trapholt, Kolding; FORMA International Centre for Photography, Milan; Centre pour L´ image Contemporaine; Geneva, Museo DA2 (Domus Artium 2002), Salamanca; Museo CAC, Malaga, Spain; Museo Es Baluard, Palma, Mallorca; National Museum of Science, Taipeh; Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
His work is also shown frequently at international art fairs in Basel, New York, Miami, London, and Madrid.
Michael Najjar's work is collected by the Gemeente Museum, The Hague; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Deichtorhallen - the International House of Photography, Hamburg; Museum für Kunst and Gewerbe, Hamburg; Museum DA2, Salamanca; Museum CAC , Malaga; Willy-Brandt Haus, Berlin; Sony Collection, Cologne; Kulczyk Foundation, Poznan; Fidelity Collection, Boston; Sprint Collection, Kansas City; Coff Foundation, San Sebastian; Lutz Teutloff Collection, Bielefeld; Lord Norman Foster Collection, Madrid; Ron Dennis Collection, London; and many celebrated private collectors.
PRICE LIST
Serie "high altitude" framed on diasec with frame alu
67 x 102 cm, edition of 6 - 11 500 eur taxes incl.
132 x 202 cm, edition of 6 - 22 400 eur taxes incl.
Serie "netropolis" framed on diasec
60 x 90 cm, edition of 6 - 12 700 eur, taxes incl.
120 x 180 cm, edition of 6 - 23 600 eur taxes incl.
Please contact the gallery for current pricing and availability > CLICK HERE
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