Doireann O’Malley
Prototype II & III
11.06.2022 – 20.08.2022Opening 11.06.2022, 18:00 – 21:00
BPA// Raum and Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung are pleased to co-present two upcoming, concurrent exhibitions by multidisciplinary artist Doireann O’Malley. Both presentations bring together new and existing works to create a thorough impression of the artist’s practice during the past few years. O’Malley was a participant in BPA// Berlin program for artists 2019/20, and a fellow of Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung 2020/21. In different ways, both programs are dedicated to supporting emerging Berlin-based artistic practices and research. The exhibitions are accompanied by a newly commissioned text by Stanton Taylor.
BPA// Raum presents two works of the three-part series Prototypes (2015–2020), created during O’Malley's participation in BPA// Berlin program for artists. Prototypes explores the potential of technological development for a more complex understanding of the world beyond Western binary systems, deeply ingrained behavioral and structural patterns. The video installation Prototype II: The Institute for the Enrichment of Computer Aided Post Gendered Prototypes (2018) follows protagonists through a series of improvisational exercises and psycho-therapeutic moments, set within the modernist architecture of the Interbau project in Berlin. Their self-reflections and descriptions of visions of a world without binary gender definitions mix with scenes of utopian implied science fiction. The virtual reality work Prototype III: New Maps of Hyperspace (2020), transforms the viewer into an actor, completing a shift from embodied experience to unprecedented entanglement with disembodied, floating simulacra or avatars. Doireann O'Malley is interested in exploring the appearance of unstable or shifting modes of existence and genders. Thus, Prototype II and III form an interrogation of trans semiotics by bringing together psychoanalytic practices, speculative technologies, and live-action role-playing techniques.
Doireann O’Malley (born 1981, Limerick, Ireland) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. Their research-led practice unites collaborative methodologies, healing and reparative movement, writing, and theory with a strong technological emphasis on new media, VR and film. O’Malley holds an MFA from University of Ulster in Belfast, UK. They were a research fellow at the Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung (2020/2021) and a participant of the BPA// Berlin program for artists (2019/2020). They were a mentor for the Live Art Forms program at AdBK Nuremberg in 2021 and are currently Professor of Gender & Space at Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Recent exhibitions, talks and screenings have been presented at IMMA, Dublin; Art Institute, Basel; Biennale Zielona Góra; Goethe-Institut Montreal; Goethe-Institut, New York; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.); National Sculpture Factory Ireland/Cork Film Festival; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art; Rencontres Internationales, Forum des Archives, Paris; HKW, Berlin; Mumok Kino, Vienna; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Berlin Art Prize 2018; and Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg.
BPA// RaumSophie-Gips-Höfe, Sophienstr. 21, 10178 BerlinOpening hours: Friday – Saturday, 15:00 – 18:00
Images: Doireann O’Malley, Prototype II: Institute for the Enrichment of Computer Aided Post Gendered Prototypes, still, two-channel video, 2018.
Photos of the exhibition by Eric Bell.
