REFERENCE GUIDE

Join us on the 30th of September for the opening of Reference Guide, an exhibition by Michiel De Cleene.

When machines do things beyond the intention of the maker, beyond what is included in the manual, we are inclined to say they falter, they malfunction, they go astray. However, these acts lie perfectly within the capabilities of the machine but they simply move beyond our grasp, our intention, our understanding, our expectations. The true artificiality of technology is not situated in technology itself but in the way we think about it, in the way we set it apart (from nature). Technology is ubiquitous and has achieved a degree of complexity that we can no longer fully understand, even in day to day machines and appliances. Exactly this lack of understanding may allow us to re-cognize technology; not as something apart from nature but as something that has always been nature. Reference Guide is a collection of transcripts that bear within them the spores of this recognition. This encyclopaedia treats these moments of technological candour not as malfunctions but as alternate, more generous capacities. Each lemma is a (tran)script of a moment where the possibility of this re-cognition of technology appears.

Reference Guide will always be a preliminary version: ever expanding, moving beyond its author’s grasp as it grows larger and larger. It is a contingent system carrying both the promise of endless possibilities and the constant threat of a dead end.

Although the main focus of Reference Guide lies within the aforementioned moments of technological candour, the encyclopaedia demonstrates a surprisingly high interest in characters and phenomena along the sidelines of these episodes (e.g. Gayle Hood, Miss A.E. Everard, Mount Egaleo’s shadow, fishermen in Aspropyrgos, a fire in Penryn…).

In 019 excerpts are taken from the referential whole for the first time.

Michiel De Cleene (BE, °1988) lives and works in Ghent and is affiliated to KASK/School of Arts Ghent as a researcher.
The exhibition will be open every Tuesday (from 10—18h), by appointment or on the following dates:

Friday 30/09/16: from 19h (Opening)
Saturday 01/10/16: 10—18h
Sunday 02/10/16: 10—18h
Thursday 06/10/16: 20h (Guided tour)
Sunday 09/10/16: 10—18h (Gent Matinees)
Thursday 13/10/16: 19—23h
Sunday 23/10/16: 14h (Guided tour)
Sunday 30/10/16: 10—18h (Finissage)

Made possible with the support of the city of Ghent