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DVD Dead Drop Opens Tonight At Museum Of The Moving Image

You can burn Aram Bartholl’s latest installation to DVD-R. In fact, that’s the only way you can experience it.

When we spoke to Berlin-based artist and architect Aram Bartholl earlier this year, he was really interested in how the Internet was inspiring and organizing movements. SOPA, PIPA, and Occupy were on his mind, and informing his works-in-progress.

But it wasn't just the politics that caught Bartholl's attention. He was also intrigued by the ways in which social media and online data transfer were shaping an alternate world.

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"There are certain rules of what you do in public space and what you do online, and that is a big gap," Bartholl said.

Or is it? Bartholl's new interactive installation, DVD Dead Drop, makes you think twice. You should check it out—that is, if you can find it. Literally a crack in the side of the Museum of the Moving Image, the Dead Drop is a slot-loading DVD burner. Visitors are invited to insert blank DVD-R discs to receive the actual exhibition content, which will vary from burn to burn.

This isn’t the first time Bartholl has asked his audience to take their experiences with them. Dead Drops is a part of a larger series of file-sharing installations, composed of USB flash drives cemented to public spaces without permission. This commissioned work breathes new life into the disc medium, long-obsolete in the age of the MP3 player—which itself has even lost its flair.

DVD Dead Drop opens tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image with a reception from 6-8 PM. The opening exhibition is called HOT and is curated by Bartholl. It includes work from artists 0100101110101101.org (Eva & Franco Mattes), Constant Dullaart, Curating YouTube (Robert Sakrowski), Joel Holmberg, JODI, JK Keller, Olia Lialina, Jonas Lund, Rosa Menkman, Katja Novitskova, Niko Princen, Casey Reas, Evan Roth, Andrew Salomone, Borna Sammak, and UBERMORGEN.COM. DVD Dead Drop runs through September 15.

@bmwertheim