BUNNY ROGERS SOCIÉTÉ Being There Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2017 The exhibition presents 10 international contemporary artists who seek to depict the human con- dition and way of living in an era, where the physical and digital worlds are growing ever closer together. Our lives are increasingly influenced by digital technologies and as a result the perception and concept of body, machine, life,death, sociality, isolation, nature and time are changing and taking on new meanings. At the same time, the notion that there is a physical world that is real, and a digital world that is unreal, seems to be rapidly breaking down. The artists in this exhibition are engaged in exploring how these changes affect the way we live with each other and ourselves, and how we navigate among the ruins of an old world and the building blocks for a new one. In the exhibition’s nine scenarios, the physical and the digital intermingle. There is no clear dis- tinction between where one ends and the other begins. Perhaps our existence right now can best be described as permanently having a foot in both camps – a state of simultaneous presence and absence, as indicated by the title, BEING THERE. Bunny Rogers erects a self-initiated memorial to a dead high school student. She creates an image of a collapsed reality between a physical and a virtual existence by linking a one-dimensional com- ic-strip universe with a number of objects in detailed craftsmanship. The work has been created for the exhibition. Installation view Being There Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2017 Installation view Being There Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2017 Installation view Installation view Being There Being There Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2017 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2017 Brig Und Ladder Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 Organized by assistant curator Elisabeth Sherman and curatorial assistant Margaret Kross. Bunny Rogers (b. 1990) interweaves reality and fiction throughout her work to reflect on experienc- es of loss, alienation, and community. For her first museum exhibition in the United States, Rogers has realized an installation in two parts. The first resembles a high-school auditorium in which an animated video takes the place of a stage. The second, accessed though a curtain, evokes a backstage area and is populated with sculptures that act as props, awaiting use in a theatrical scene that will never occur. Titled to bury private meanings in a phrase of familiar-sounding words, Bunny Rogers: Brig Und Ladder presents a mysterious and mournful narrative rife with encrypted intimate details of the artist’s life. In building these tableaux and the surreal sculptures that fill them, Rogers aims to materialize her inner world—a personal constellation of TV shows, movies, Internet forums, and common objects— and to connect emotionally with the viewer. Culling from these sources, she reveals how emblems of youth culture have consumed her identity since childhood, much of which she spent online. She also touches on the collective as well as personal trauma of the Columbine High School shooting, which took place when she was nine years old. Rogers’s cast of characters features archetypes of the social outsider and other tragic figures, ranging from the misanthropic outcast Joan from MTV’s short-lived animated series Clone High (2002–3) to the SeaWorld orca Tilikum, who killed three people during captivity, eliciting public shock and pity. By juxtaposing plotlines and bringing together an array of avatars for herself, friends, and family, Rogers creates a memorial for failed relationships. The diverse works on view here are united by the suggestion that sincerity and deceit, empathy and violence, are not as op- posed as they may seem. Instead, Rogers says “both extremes exist within themselves.’’ Installation view Brig Und Ladder Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 A Very Special Holiday Performance in Columbine Auditorium, 2017 Digital video, color, sound 8:27 min. https://youtu.be/vkAcR5oDdtQ Installation view Brig Und Ladder Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 Installation view Brig Und Ladder Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 Memorial wall (fall), 2017 Aluminum and inkjet prints on die-cut paper with ribbons 182.9 x 396.2 cm / 6 x 13 ft Lady train set, 2017 Wood, latex paint with chalk, and snail fossil 63.5 x 181 x 58.4 cm / 25 x 71 1/4 x 23 in Installation view Brig Und Ladder Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017 Computer chair A (Reject), 2017 Plastic, chrome metal, polyurethane, and polyethelene fleece pile 137.2 x 49.5 x 71.1 cm / 54 x 19 1/2 x 28 in Computer chair D (Reject), 2017 Plastic, chrome metal, polyurethane, and polyethelene fleece pile 137.2 x 49.5 x 71.1 cm / 54 x 19 1/2 x 28 in Computer chair C (Reject), 2017 Plastic, chrome metal, polyurethane, and polyethelene fleece pile 137.2 x 49.5 x 71.1 cm / 54 x 19 1/2 x 28 in TBT, 2017 Styrofoam, resin, paint 180 x 110 x 120 cm / 70 3/4 x 43 1/3 x 47 1/4 in moving is in every direction. Environments – Installations – Narrative Spaces Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2017 Bunny Rogers’ installation is part of a series that revolves around the processing of a collective trauma: the school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. In a meticu- lously planned attack modelled on military task forces and copying the type of video game know as first-person shooters, two students shot and killed twelve of their classmates, a teacher, and them- selves. The video shows a wine-drinking Mandy Moore as she appears in the episode Snowflake Day: A Very Special Holiday Special od the animated series Clone High (2003), playing three songs by Elliott Smith on a piano in the school cafeteria. Installation view moving is in every direction. Environments – Installations – Narrative Spaces Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2017 Installation view The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, 2016 Untitled (Texas), 2016 Dried infinity roses, dried red berries, plastic hydrangeas, black ribbon, artist frame 94 x 154.5 x 18 cm / 37 x 60 3/4 x 7 in Untitled (Poland), 2016 Dried infinity roses, dried red berries, plastic hydrangeas, black ribbon, artist frame 94 x 154.5 x 18 cm / 37 x 60 3/4 x 7 in Untitled (Russia), 2016 Dried infinity roses, dried red berries, plastic hydrangeas, black ribbon, artist frame 94 x 154.5 x 18 cm / 37 x 60 3/4 x 7 in WRJNGER Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, 2016 Co-curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist for 89plus The exhibition title comes from the young adult book ‘Wringer’ by Jerry Spinelli, which tells the com- ing-of-age story of a boy refusing a small town’s tradition of pigeon shooting and the subsequent ‘wringing’ of the necks of pigeons to ensure death. Bunny Rogers is part of the first generation of artists who grew up with the Internet as part of ev- eryday life. Her work is not specific to a medium, since she makes sculpture, installation, video, animation, etc., but rather is produced at certain points through digital processes (3D modelling, video editing, Second Life photography) and is in part exhibited and distributed through the in- ternet. Moreover, her works show a frequent use of elements and tools borrowed from her online presence. In her work, Bunny Rogers threads together uncanny representations of cultural icons, revealing something intimate about herself in the process. At the same time, she exposes societal norms and cultural memory for what they are: collective and constructed. For Foundation ‘De 11 Lijnen’ Rogers has created a sculptural installation composed of ceramic pigeons displayed on the gallery floor. Alongside specially made curtains and flags, the exhibition includes five new mops using different colour variations with specially dyed grey yarn. The artist explains: ‘The mops exemplify ideas of grey morality, a lens in which to see the world, and the defi- nition of grey itself. Grey is the most important and all encompassing shade, the absence of what is distinguishable—the dissolution of that which is representable.’ Installation view WRJNGER Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, 2016 Installation view Pure Fiction Marian Goodman, Paris, 2016 Study for Joan Portrait, 2016 Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag Ultrasmooth 305g 5 x (36 x 31 x 3 cm / 14 x 12 x 1 in) Study for Joan Portrait (Silence of the Lambs red), 2016 Fine Art Print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag Ultrasmooth 305g 4 x (36 x 31 x 3 cm / 14 x 12 x 1 in) Columbine Cafeteria Société, Berlin, 2016 My last show at Société was Columbine Library in 2014. I knew early on there would be a second part. I wanted the two main settings where the 1999 Columbine High School shooting took place to be acknowledged. But the ideas needed to be spaced out. I wanted it to be a subsequent experi- ence, even if you didn’t know about the first show or didn’t see it. I think of the library as being slow and dark, filled with obstacles. That’s also how it looks in police photos. The cafeteria was open and well-lit, with tons of people and bombs hidden in duffel bags in plain sight. The cafeteria was more confusing. There’s not the same closure as in the library, where Dylan and Eric committed suicide. The first show referenced characters from two TV series that I watched when I was younger: Joan of Arc from Clone High and Gaz from Invader Zim.