Maria Antelman
Disassembler
159 Pioneer Street Red Hook, Brooklyn
In Disassembler, Maria Antelman presents four installation works across two floors of the Pioneer Works building. Antelman creates collage-like videos that pull from a well of sources, including scenarios about rewilding the American West, ideas of techno-animism, and early reconnaissance images from outer space. Crafted from unexpected juxtapositions, her often foreboding filmic compositions decode what it means to exist in a networks system.
In the third floor gallery, Antelman will debut the namesake video installation Disassembler, newly commissioned by Pioneer Works and co-produced by the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (EMST). Titled after a computer tool that translates machine code into assembly language for humans to understand, the piece raises questions about the physical and psychological impact of automation processes on the individual and society. Disassemblerconfronts a post-automated experience, where bodies and gestures return to an organic, experiential world.
Additionally, three video sculptures will be exhibited in the second floor gallery, including The Wild West (2017), Stones Make The Rivers Move (2016), and Darth Vader (2014). As a whole, Antelman’s installations bring together the cerebral with the comic, and the alarming with the absurd in an attempt to suggest new meanings and raise new questions. Disassembler points toward the grasp of the unthinkable, the moment where our ability to reasonably understand reality collapses.
