THE CHINESE ROOM

Solo show at The Ancient History Museum, Aarhus, Denamrk from April 1st – June 29th 2016

Opening April 1st 4pm  /// Finissage June 29th 2 pm

Opening hours: Sunday – Thursday 12 – 4 pm

The performance piece Dead Tthings will be shown at 2.30 pm on Jue 29th

The Chinese room is a thought experiment by the American philosopher John Searle, who tries to prove that computers will never be able to develop consciousness or think by themselves. The experiment is quite controversial and has both strong opponents as well as devoted advocates. Searle imagines himself sitting in a closed room with a book of instructions explaining the use of the Chinese alphabet without translating it. With this book he is able to answer messages from Chinese-speaking persons outside the room, who think he understands what they are writing while in reality he is only following the instructions of the book.  Searle thinks computers do the same: They seem intelligent but are  blindly following  their programming.

When following this thought the museum unfolds as a Chinese room where the exhibited objects are staged so they make sense in a closed environment. But they are detached from the original context, outside the museum which cannot be reproduced. But in the same way that the thought experiment has both advocates and opponents I am not quite sure either: Is the museum just a bad copy of something more real existing outside – or is it able to develop consciousness and think by itself? In that case, is the museum artificially intelligent? The exhibition The Chinese Room deals with questions about the self and the other, the copy and the original in relation to the presentation of other cultures in other times by museums in general and to the collections of plaster casts at The Ancient History Museum (Antikmuseet) in particular. The plaster casts as abject and fake in relation to their origin which is lost in ancient myths and generations of bronze, marble and casts of casts of casts. The museum space as a symbiotic lifeform, a possibly intelligent collage, a stomach with very slow digestion.

The exhibition consists of a series of video works, photo manipulations, ceramic sculptures, a number of interventions in the permanent exhibition and a sound performance piece titled Dead Things.

Invitation to have a conversation in the exhibition:

As a part of the exhibition I would like to invite you to have a conversation with me in the museum. You don't have to know me in advance. You don't have to say anything about art: It's not necessarily what we'll be talking about. You can ask me questions, tell me something you think I should know, or criticize my work. I'm curious what you have to say. If you feel like talking, please contact me on this address: samtaleromalt@gmail.com and we can arrange a time to meet.

All the best,

Louise Haugaard Jørgensen