in the last few months, we’ve been tending a new patch in what feels like an ever-growing garden of exchanges, spores, resonances, and questions — learning with @knowbotiq remains a joy, through what ferments, morphs, and sprouts into possible sonic worlds and mineral intimacies ✺
clean room alien.affects is ghostly chorus of clean room metals, haunting those sterile, dust-free environments where air, temperature, and humidity are meticulously controlled to prevent the slightest particle from disrupting the fabrication of microchips.
tungsten, tantalum, and gallium —conductors essential to the communications and automotive industries— tend to be mined under violent conditions, primarily in china (tungsten and gallium) and the congo (tantalum). in contrast, modern technology continues to be sold with a promise of happiness.
inside these clean rooms, the three metals awaken “alien affects,” undermining the constructed promises of innocence and happiness. while gallium claims with liquid consciousness, “this clean room is solving for happy,” tantalum responds with charged attention: “refusing to ‘be happy’ in a broken world is not a failure. it is solidarity.” and it calls on us — “be affect.aliens. those who don’t belong, those who don’t forget. those who remember the others. it’s not you who are failing. it’s the system.”
clean room alien.affects is on view at robotron. code & utopia at the @gfzk.leipzig until 22.02.26, and at the @hmkv_de from 14.03.26 to 26.07.26.
Today opening of the Loving Shedhalle 40 exhibition. If you don’t have the chance to visit the wunderfull exhibition and the exclusive collateral program /tumble.
We are really delighted to be part of the 40th anniversary celebrations at the Shedhalle:
Shedhalle Zürich, loving shedhalle, 24.10.25 – 11.1.26
TUMBLE_needs
let’s play syncretic abundance
https://shedhalle.ch/
The project was financed by nGbK Berlin and was shown there from June 21 to August 24, 2025.
With Paloma Ayala, Sabian Baumann, Ursula Biemann, Blablabor, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Donna Conlon, Shruti Belliappa and Kiran Kumār, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri, Sylvie Fleury, Barbara Heé, Lang/Baumann, knowbotiq, Pipilotti Rist, Roma Jam Session art Kollektiv (RJSaK) Archive, Susanne Sauter.
TUMBLE_needs –
an installation/mixed media work (automated objects, animations, 2025) – challenges both the property-based enclosure and control of land, and the idea of a lasting “natural” balance in remaining ecosystems. This work juxtaposes the systematic movements of agricultural machines, engineered for fully automated crop management, with the unruly abundance of so-called invasive plants, such as tumbleweeds (also known as windwitch) or Khalili ginger. The latter thrives along the narrow strips of neglected public land between private estates in the Azores, overtaking the property grid imposed during Portuguese colonization.
Channelling this feral proliferation—alien to both modern knowledge systems and idealized notions of ecological balance—TUMBLE_needs presents dense, sentient entities: some humanoid, others abstract-mechanical. Microbial, animal, mineral, electronic, plant-based, and techno-imaginary materials and affects interweave in syncretic relationships of constant motion. These entities tumble forward uncontrollably, defying containment and reorganizing space according to their own needs.
/tumble
The project was financed by nGbK Berlin and was exhibited there from June 21 to August 24, 2025. /de/programm/programm/sich-unverfuegbar-verknoten.
knowbotiq will shown its new project in: Robotron. Code und Utopie, 25. Oktober 2025 bis 22. Februar 2026, GfZK Neubau, Leipzig, Germany
/clean
Three “metallurgical ghosts” haunt the clean rooms of knowbotiq’s glove boxes: tungsten, tantalum, and gallium.These are conductors required for the production of computer chips for the communications and automotive industries, which are mined under problematic conditions, primarily in China (tungsten, gallium) and the Congo (tantalum). In contrast, technology is always sold with a promise of happiness.
In these clean rooms, the three metals activate “alien affects” that undermine the elaborately constructed promises of innocence and happiness. While gallium claims with liquid consciousness, “This clean room is solving for happy”—alluding to the book Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy (2017) by former GoogleX CEO Mo Gawdat—tantalum responds with charged attention: “Refusing to ‘be happy’ in a broken world is not a failure. It is solidarity.” And it calls on us: “Be affect.aliens. Those who don’t belong. Those who don’t forget. Those who remember the others. It’s not you who are failing. It’s the system.”
knowbotiq in collaboration with pablo torres
/ Mit
Karl-Heinz Adler, Tina Bara, Horst Bartnig, Nadja Buttendorf, Carlfriedrich Claus, Karl Clauss Dietel, Georg Eckelt, Antye Guenther, Su Yu Hsin, Margret Hoppe, Francis Hunger, knowbotiq, Irma Markulin, Helga Paris, A. R. Penck, Ramona Schacht und Luca Bublik mit Rita Große, Sandra Schäfer, Suzanne Treister, Werner Tübke, Marion Wenzel und Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt
Kuratorisches Team
Inke Arns, Sabine Weier, Jan Wenzel, Mathias Wittmann, Franciska Zólyom
Initiiert von
Jochen Becker
ORALITURE/MORE-THAN-LANDSCAPE
This winter we have explored morethanlandscape oralitures with QANAT @qanat_collective@free_masoero , Suza Husse @many_headed_hydra , Pablo Torres @pablotorresgomez_ , knowbotiq @knowbotiq@acephale10 , Aio Frei, and Margarida Mendes.
Following the desire to find ways to tell complex, crisis-ridden ecologies, we shared strategies, meditations, stories, and field recordings to leave the distance to the frame. Wormerly perspectives, sedimented witnessing, sentient sensorial ecologies, invitations to exercise, and two x 7 stratas in a field of attention guided us through this process.
Thank you to the Institute for Contemporary Art Research IfCAR of the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK for the grant xx
Pics:
1. Holding Land, Christian Hübler. With an excerpt of an interview with Varun Aiyer
2. Pies amarillos- yellow feet through the feet. Chicamocha Canyon 19.02.25, Pablo Torres
3. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel- Meditation. Selected by Aio Frei
4. 8 cards for 00Landscape picked by Aio Frei
5. Margarida Mendes on Rodão cliffs
6. Invitation by Aio Frei
7. 7 stata in a field of attention, 00Landscape
8. What comes from a rooster broken leg, one figuration by Francesca Masoero (QANAT)
9. Interscalar Meditation by Margarida Mendes
10. when mountains go, the clouds leave with them. a picture of one of the water mirrors in the Páramo in November 2024 by Suza Husse
11. Callum Angus, A Natural History of Transition selected by Aio Frei
12. Attunement from the rooftop of ZHdK shared by Yvonne Wilhelm
13. Yvonne and I presenting the research group
When The Jackal Leaves The Sun
A decolonial feminist infrastructure for politics, art & transformative justice / Nairobi, Windhoek, Kigali, Dakar, Dar Es Salam, Cape Town & Berlin. /when_the_jackal_leaves_the_sun/. #district #berlin #flutgraben #decoloniality #germancolonialism
Marta Herford Museum, SHIFT
KI und eine zukünftige Gemeinschaft
17.06.2023 – 15.10.2023 Künstler:innen: Louisa Clement, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Christoph Faulhaber, kennedy+swan, knowbotiq, Christian Kosmas Mayer, Philippe Parreno, Hito Steyerl, Jenna Sutela
Swiss Art Award, Art Basel, 13.06. - 18.06.23 Voices in the digital animations of "Amazonian Flesh - now it's us!" (2018/2023) demand from the viewer to give up wage labour forever. These voices are KI-bots, computer programmes that are responsible for the concepts of unleashed labour. Humans are supposed to hand over the work to the technologies and enjoy being idle. Dancing. Are the re-humanized bots capable of solidarity with humans? Should the create a union to strike for the rights to work in a unlimited matter.
knowbotiq in collaboration with: Nina Bandi (scripts), Leila Peacock, Sally Schonfeldt, Ian Wooldrige (voices), Pablo Torres (sound)Voices in the digital animations of "Amazonian Flesh - now it's us!" demand from the viewer to give up wage labour forever. These voices are bots, computer programmes that are responsible for automating work. Humans are supposed to hand over the work completely to the technologies and enjoy being idle. Are bots capable of solidarity?
knowbotiq in collaboration with: Nina Bandi (scripts), Leila Peacock, Sally Schonfeldt, Ian Wooldrige (voices), Pablo Torres (sound)
😍 knowbotiq @knowbotiq is one of the finalists in the #art category of the Swiss Art Awards 2023!
In this year's exhibition, 55 positions in the fields of art, architecture and critique, publishing, exhibition will be presented in June 2023 in Hall 1.1 in the context of the international fair Art Basel. At the same time, the 17 positions of the finalists of the Kiefer Hablitzel │ Göhner Kunstpreis will also be exhibited.
🗓 Save the date!
Swiss Art Awards 2023
12 – 18 June 2023
Hall 1.1, Messe Basel
Free entry
Award ceremony on Monday, June 12, 2023 in Hall 1.1.
#SwissArtAwards23 #SwissArtAwards #BundesamtfürKultur #BAK
Amazonian Flesh, how to hang in trees during strike @ Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
Meshes of bots, cables and digital artefacts, digital animations, voices.
knowbotiq in collaboration with Pablo Alarcon and Ira Wilhelm (cable-gems), Nina Bandi (research, scripts), Pablo Torres and Nicolas Buzzi (sound), Anna Bromley, Joerg Franzbecker, Leila Peacock, Sally Schoenfeldt, Ian Wooldrige, Christian Huebler (voices)
