For many people, life without a mobile phone is inconceivable. For the cell phone provides more than the opportunity merely to telephone: it is also a camera, a computer, a calendar, a flashlight and more. It shapes communication, influences consumer behaviour and makes transparent our preferences. The exhibition Hamster-Hipster-Handy (i.e. Hamster-Hipster-Mobile) focuses on these aspects and shows that the mobile phone is an object which shapes our cultural understanding of ourselves.
The hamster and the hipster function thereby as two opposing central figures. Around the turn of the millennium Cell Phone Radiation Tests, with whose help possible injuries to people can be detected, were conducted on rodents. The hamster therefore stands symbolically for the negative effects of mobile phones on human life. The hipster, on the other hand, represents the consumer of the twenty-first century and a new culture of mobile users which avails itself of the seemingly limitless possibilities of the device and the narcissistic self-presentation associated with it.
The exhibition broaches the issues of the use of mobile phones, the wasteful use of resources demanded by their production and the possibilities of global positioning and monitoring.
On display are photographs, interactive installations, video art, painting, Street Art and a collection of various mobile phone models.
24.04.2015 to 05.07.2015
Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt (Germany)
Schaumainkai 17
60594 Frankfurt am Main
Source:
Art Calendar – Goethe-Institut