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Benze De Ream & Sophie Publig– launch of new publications & conversation with the authors · part of Vorspiel 2026
https://panke.gallery/event/benze-de-ream-and-sophie-publig
📍 panke.gallery, Thursday, 29 January 2026, 7 PM (Gerichtstr. 23, Hof 5, 13347 Berlin)
Event organised in collaboration with Aksioma - Institute of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana.
Exactly one year after the presentation of Nestor Siré and Steffen Köhn's book HandMade Network, Aksioma returns to the panke.gallery to launch its brand new publishing line multithread and the latest issue of the PostscriptUM series.
multithread is dedicated to experimental and interdisciplinary writing. Embracing a diversity of approaches, languages and registers, this new series provides space for critical exploration and research, encouraging contributions ranging from speculative fiction to systematic analysis, including critical and political theory, philosophy, art and media studies.
↓ Benze De Ream: The Blue Flower Syndrome ↓
The first issue is dedicated to The Blue Flower Syndrome, a speculative essay by designer, artist, and researcher Benze De Ream on palatability, power and computation encoded in a single rushed train _[of thought] // [commute]_ to an interview on a Dutch iris farm. Blending autofiction, media theory and myth, it traces the entanglements between public-facing interfaces, machinic mathematics and the data that fuels them. The work reveals how life as a product of purely probabilistic and statistical decisions expresses and roots itself through both our daily essentials, such as clothes and food, as well as historical practices and technologies that shaped them. In the afterword, Metahaven expands on the text by outlining influence design – a project in which computation operates as an ideological carrier – placing The Blue Flower Syndrome within a contemporary media landscape read through a historical-materialist lens.
Benze De Ream is an designer, artist, and researcher whose practice investigates the political and cognitive mechanics of algorithmic systems. He has been trained at the Geo-Design department, Design Academy Eindhoven, and is a recipient of the Gijs Bakker Award. His research unfolds through moving image, performance, writing, and experiential installation, probing how computation choreographs social and affective realities.
↓ Sophie Publig: Swiping Right on God ↓
The 54th issue of PostScriptUM instead features Swiping Right on God, an essay by internet archaeologist and digital ecosystem explorer Sophie Publig investigating how spirituality mutates in the age of platform capitalism. Through media theory, meme analysis and posthuman philosophy, the author traces how angelcore aesthetics and digital mysticism reroute the internet as a sacred infrastructure, giving rise to Network Spirituality. Between post-irony and belief, kawaii semiotics disguise ideology in softness, forming an affective interface between ritualistic devotion and algorithmic governance.
Sophie Publig is an internet archaeologist exploring digital ecosystems and their artefacts. Based at the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, her research and teaching focus on the dynamics of digital cultures through critical post-humanism. She wrote her dissertation on the history of internet memes in 2023 and is currently examining the Girl Online, digital occultism and trajectories of schizoposting.
↓ Are You a Software Update? ↓
Last but not least, during the event, copies of Aksioma's latest book will be available for the first time ever!
Edited by Nora O'Murchú and Janez F. Janša 'Are You a Software Update?' brings together seven authors to examine the intensifying form of totalitarianism grounded in the quiet background logic of contemporary technology: Alberto Toscano, Alex Quicho, Nora O'Murchú, Noura Tafeche, Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne and Wassim Z. Alsindi.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
panke.gallery, Kolberger Straße 27, 13357 Berlin, Deutschland, Berlin, Germany
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
