Reclaim the White Space: 'Kosturnica, Monument to Local Victims in WWII, Prilep, Macedonia', 2009, photographic print, 50 x 60 cm, Ed.: 1/5, 2AP; courtesy Klosterfelde Gallery

In the wake of this year’s very successful transmediale.10 tag line “Futurity Now!” a Twitter link thrown at me and referring to a current exhibition of Armin Linke’s at Future Archaeologies at Klosterfelde Gallery, Berlin draw my attention. The exhibition is quite small, but well selected. The collection of Linke’s photographs provides images of really existing kind of science fiction scenarios that have come to life long ago – and now are just stranded and obsolete artifacts and subject to slow-fading decay. [1]

Most impressing work of art is Linke’s exceptional 3D video Nuclear Voyage which looks like the never seen prologue to Andrei Tarkowsky’s masterpiece Stalker in a deeply sad Post-Tchernobyl world of “eternal coma.” The former future technology looks anything, but shiny. The obligatory radiation- and security-checks documented in long takes by the left-over staff of the actually inactive nuclear power stations and waste sites are a long farewell to yesterday’s high hopes of a better tomorrow.

An ironic twist by the artist is to present this footage from the glory holes of nuclear ambitions in colorful 3D-technology which could be seen as a perspicacious comment on the current hype regarding spatial viewing of images in mainstream movie spectacles like John Cameron’s Avatar or Tim Burton’s current re-interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. Armin Linke’s melancholic 3D masterpiece is a voyage into the phantom limb syndrome of our past’s failed futures.

Duration of the exhibition until March 13, 2010. Opening hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays 11 – 6 pm and by appointment.

[1] Website of Klosterfelde Gallery, Potsdamer Strasse 93, 10785 Berlin