Jeremy Knowles

Werke

Dark Sky City

Dark Sky City is an ongoing art and research project which explores the changing margins between light, sound, technology, and ecology. The aim of this investigation is to bring greater awareness to the impacts of artificial light at night upon humans and our environment, and to engage a wider audience with the issue of light pollution in general - a growing concern that demands our immediate attention. The core outcome of this project is a two-channel video and sound artwork (Sprichst du Licht?), which documents the 1-hour and 18-minute public intervention I performed in Berlin in October 2022. In the video, the camera follows my journey with an unknown sound-making device from Lichtenberg, which lies just outside the public transport ring in Berlin, to the unofficial city centre of Alexanderplatz. This concept is expanded in the form of a group workshop (the Sound Safari) in which participants discover new tools in order to reveal a hidden soundscape within the city. Both outcomes have the same intention - to prompt us to question the passivity of our sensorial experience of the urban environment at night.

Sound Safari

The Sound Safari was first held in 2022 on Martinstag - an event which is celebrated each year in Germany on 11th November, predominantly by children and their parents. Traditionally, Martinstag is observed in the acts of creating homemade paper lanterns that house tealights and then walking in procession through the neighborhood at night. Though its historical context is Catholic, Martinstag for Berliners is viewed in a largely secular way and is more often referred to as Laternenfest (Lantern Festival). It is a celebration of hope and generosity in hard times (the winter), represented by light in the darkness. It is within this context - a context in which light is accepted as a metaphor for good - that we lent our ears and eyes to the city at night in order to become more aware of the presence and effects of urban street and commercial lighting. As a group, we explored the neighborhood according to our desire to listen to, and categorize, different sources of light. We learned about the effects of light pollution on human health, biodiversity, our environment and changing climate, and our ability to view the stars.

Bats in the Belfry

‘Cities are more taxing than they seem. Psychiatric disorders and anxiety are 34% more common in urban areas, and growing up in one at least doubles the chances of developing schizophrenia. Urban living actually changes the biology of the brain.’ - Michael Bond, ‘Wayfinding’, 2020 Bats in the Belfry was a VR experience created for the 2022 program of 48 Stunden Neukölln in Berlin. During the opening times, guests visiting the courtyard at Polymedialer Ponyhof were asked to put on VR headsets, leave the city, and enter a simulation of my own private space. During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, the spaces I occupied in Berlin contracted. My bedroom in Lichtenberg became the control centre for the most pressing concerns of my life: work, exercise, creativity, communication, free time, nutrition and, of course, sleep. It was simultaneously an office, gym, studio, cafe, cinema, bar and bedroom at any given time of the day. A city contained within a room. Sometimes I wonder how to reconnect my control centre with the Berlin it once simulated. How do we memorialize the spaces we elevated to the status of ‘city-like’ over the course of the pandemic?

Pressing Matters

Pressing Matters was a participatory street workshop and art installation featured in the 2021 program of 48 Stunden Neukölln in Berlin. The theme of the festival this year was Luft (air). Pressing Matters was realised from outside of ReTramp Gallery, on Reuterstraße, over the festival weekend in June (18th - 20th). The aim of Pressing Matters was to both re-imagine and re-contextualise a number of the lasting social impacts of the COVID-19 crisis: loss of closeness, connection, and physical touch. Over the festival weekend, participants from the community in Neukölln, and many other visitors to the festival from elsewhere, volunteered to scan parts of their bodies by pressing against a flatbed scanner outside of the gallery. The workshop was concluded after the window space of ReTramp Gallery was filled with the resulting black and white prints.

Eckdaten

https://jeremyknowles.co.uk/

Fotografie, Installation, Klangkunst, Medienkunst, Performance

Jeremy is a British artist addressing questions of urbanism, surveillance, public space, and changing ecologies within his projects, which range in expression from photography, sound, and video art to installation and public intervention. Since 2016, Jeremy has been based in Berlin, where his practice has developed into a playful study of the built environment and the everyday. He holds a BA in Photography from Camberwell College of Art and a Foundation Diploma in Art & Design from Oaklands College of Art.

Vita

/ Education
2022 - (Current) - MA Raum Strategien, Kunsthochschule Weißensee, DE
2012 - 2015 - BA Fine Art Photography, University of the Arts London, UK
2010 - 2011 - Foundation Diploma, Art & Design, Oaklands College of Art, UK

/ Solo Shows
May 2021 - YOU ARE HERE - DISKURS Gallery, Berlin

/ Selected Group Shows
Mar 2022 - Sensing the City, Sense of the City - Zwitschermaschine, Berlin
Sep 2021 - Wiedersehen - DISKURS Gallery, Berlin
Jul 2021 - Obsessions - Tête Gallery, Berlin
Jul 2021 - Routes - Scalo Lambrate, Milan
Jun 2021 - Kreuzungen - LiTE-HAUS Galerie, Berlin
Jun 2021 - Hot Air - ReTramp Gallery, Berlin
Dec 2020 - Action on Hold - Green Hill Gallery, Berlin
Dec 2020 - Novel (s) of Places or Abstract Topophilia - Rozenau Gallery, Kaliningrad
Nov 2020 - Locked + Loaded - DegreeArt, Online
Nov 2020 - Neukölln Stories - LiTE-HAUS Galerie, Berlin
Oct 2019 - Blind Date - Fotogalerie Friedrichshain, Berlin
Aug 2019 - Public, Private & In Between - Green Hill Gallery, Berlin
Jul 2019 - Summer Mood - GRRL Haus Cinema, Berlin
Apr 2019 - Anxiety & Minimalism - Liebig12, Berlin
Mar 2019 - Stop, Look, Listen, Feel – (Platform Projects) Affordable Art Fair, London
Nov 2018 - 50 Under 50 - Studio Baustelle, Berlin
Mar 2018 - 8am Walks - HOM Cafe, Berlin
Nov 2017 - Unexpected - Hoxton Arches, London
Jun 2015 - Undergraduate Degree Show - Camberwell College of Arts, London
Mar 2015 - Art Academy Summer Exhibition - Today Art Museum, Beijing
Oct 2014 - New State - Peckham Liberal Club, London
Mar 2014 - UNIT - Cafe Gallery & Dilston Grove, London

/ Projects & Residencies
Mar 2021 - Lab #04, Das Haus, Remote/International
Nov 2020 - In-Between #5, Green Hill Gallery, Berlin
Apr 2020 - Neukölln Stories, nomadicArt, Berlin
Jun 2019 - In-Between #4, Green Hill Gallery, Berlin

/ Art Fairs & Festivals
Jun 2022 - 48 Stunden Neukölln, Berlin
Jun 2021 - 48 Stunden Neukölln, Berlin
Nov 2020 - Photo Kyiv, Online
Dec 2020 - Raum Space Festival, Kaliningrad
Jun 2020 - ReA! Emerging Artist’s Fair, Milan
Nov 2019 - Independent Photo Fair, Berlin
Oct 2015 - Kiosk Independent Publishers Book Fair, London

/ Awards
2022 - Stiftung Kunstfonds, Neustart Kultur
2020 - ReA! Art Prize (IT), Winner
2020 - Verzasca Foto Awards (CH), Shortlist
2019 - Signature Art Prize (UK), Shortlist
2018 - BLOOOM Award (DE), Shortlist

/ Publications
2020 - FRESH EYES - New European Photography, GUP Magazine, Amsterdam

/ Workshops

Leader
Nov 2022 - Sound Safari - Humbolt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin
Jun 2022 - Bats in the Belfry - Polymedialer Ponyhof, Berlin
Jun 2021 - Pressing Matters - ReTramp Gallery, Berlin
Oct 2020 - Common Ground - Georg-Weerth-Schule, Berlin
Jun 2019 - Trea S c Ur lpture Hunt - Flash Palace, Berlin
Participant
Oct 2020 - Tools Without Rules - Alexandra Goloborodko & Sergej Morozov
Jun 2019 - (Re) Discovering the City - Sophia New & Daniel Belasco Rogers
Apr 2015 - Self-Publish, Be Happy - Bruno Ceschel
Feb 2015 - Book Club - Marios Stamatis & Christopher Lacy
Sep 2014 - On Collaboration - Thijs groot Wassink & Ruben Lundgren