A new group exhibition Glitch: Ontological Exhaustion & System Failures currently on show at Spazju Kreattiv aims to be an amplifier for reflections on digitality and resistance, history and remembrance.
It reflects on the state of our technology-dependent society by enabling an international comparison of protest movements over the past 100 years.
Indeed, aesthetic “disruptions” (glitches) created in the exhibits challenge the audience to think critically and historically about the state of today’s society and other such glitches that have taken place over the last century.
Curated by Verena Voigt, the show features artists Ruth Bianco, Joana Moll, Katrin Leitner, Nadja Verena Marcin, Michael Betancourt, Ian Keaveny and Niklas Washausen, with editorial design by Luis Borchardt and Dean Schwarz.
Post Futuristic Archeology by Katrin Leitner, 2022“Glitching reveals the fragile boundaries of existence we no longer perceive as our own but as belonging to technology – a discomforting realm of technocracy and external, authoritarian control,” says Voigt.
“We encounter a world of the non-physical, one that we neither fully understand nor control, where surveillance, automation and algorithmic dependency creates complex states of exhaustion and learned helplessness, which leads us down uncertain passages.”
The exhibition Glitch: Ontological Exhaustion & System Failures makes use of Glitch Art – a powerful tool to deconstruct the technocratic, dictatorial and repressive dimensions of neoliberal, communist, or capitalist systems and pushes us to the boundaries of our world, governed by surveillance, algorithmic dependence and systemic exhaustion.
The exhibition demonstrates that Glitch Art is much more than a flickering or flashing screen, says the curator.
“Through the collaborative works of Betancourt, Keaveny and Washausen, we experience an expansion of the modernist and formal perspective,” she continues.
Eastalgia by Michael Betancourt, 2025The exhibition also features two satellite events. The first, on Thursday, March 19, titled The German Double Helix of Memory, is a reading and discussion with Ines Geipel on Fabelland: The East, the West, the Anger, and the Happiness.
The German writer, publicist and university lecturer Geipel explores the strategies of calculated silence in post-war East Germany in her essayistic research.
Through meticulous archival research, including in the Stasi archives, she uncovers the gaps in memory surrounding a forgotten literary resistance. Geipel’s work makes an important contribution to making visible the thwarted fates of writers who nevertheless played a crucial role in advancing the “Peaceful Revolution” of 1989 in Germany.
The second on May 4 is Daria’s Vision: Resistance, Spatial Dissolution, and Slowness with Bianco and Voigt.
In this event, the talk explores concepts of resistance, spatial dissolution, and slowness. A moderated tour of the exhibition with curator Voigt allows for comparisons of space and time.
Daria’s Vision by Ruth Bianco, 2011Bianco approaches Glitch Art through collage, film and pre-digital processes. Her book Camouflage Revolution & Desire (2012) developed an analogue glitch aesthetic, inspired by the radical New Wave in film-making of the 1960s as a topical medium to explore new prospects in the collage language.
In her installation, Bianco transforms the final explosion scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) into a 14-minute video collage, linking the 2011 Arab Spring protests with coded interpretations of global disquietudes and recurring social unrest.
Daria’s Vision plays with memory, media and history. Using split-screen techniques, Antonioni’s iconic images are overlaid with journalistic footage of the 2011 protests. Past and present merge into a new, future narrative. First shown in Valletta in 2011, the installation highlights how glitch and collage can inform each other.
Glitch: Ontological Exhaustion & System Failures is taking place at Spazju Kreattiv between March 19 and May 4. It is part of the Spazju Kreattiv Programme 2024/2025, supported by Goethe Institute, German-Maltese Circle, Valletta Cultural Agency and Valletta Design Cluster. For more information, visit here.