LIBERATION IN PANOPTICON "We live in the panopticon. There is no way out. The only passageway is the way IN." Barbara Kowa

Liberation in Panopticon - Live Streaming This work radically deals with the fact that the only way to liberation is inward. While the artist sits alone in a completely dark cell in for seven weeks, she is permanently filmed with an infrared camera and streamed to the internet. Thus, Foucault's panopticon, which has long since become a reality on the Internet, is brought in line with a spiritual practice that is used for initiation, enlightenment and overcoming of the fear of death by numerous cultures. Explanatory of the brain's biological changes in a darkness- retreat, explain an inner process, that no control-center could ever detect. The live streaming is projected into a model of the panopticon, made as an installation of printed circuit boards, which adds to the interior-based action and the diffuse size of the Internet, also a concrete outside perspective in virtuality.

The Panopticon was developed in 1791 by Jeremy Bentham as a model for a prison or a factory. From the central observation tower, everyone can be monitored in the panopticon, while they can not see the guard themselves. The structure corresponds to that of an eyeball. At the end of the twentieth century, Michel Foucault developed a philosophy of Western Liberal society, the so called Disciplinary Society, which essentially describes the current structure of secret services and military states. The digital age has perfected the concept. We are all living in the panopticon.

Starting on the 21th of Oct 2019, the artist Barbara Kowa is filmed for seven weeks in a completely dark cell by a theremal infrared camera and projected via an online streaming into a panopticon of printed circuit boards. Thus, Foucault's panopticon, which has long since become a reality on the Internet, is brought into line with a spiritual practice practiced in various cultures for the initiation, enlightenment and overcoming of the fear of death. The darkness dramatically affects the chemistry of the brain. The transformation of a hormone (melatonin) by the pineal gland triggers a cascade of hormone metabolism inhibiting reactions until the brain continues to synthesize the so-called mind molecule DMT, leading to the transcendental experience of universal love. The mind molecules are made of the amino acid tryptophan in a row synthesized by biochemical steps that are simplified : tryptophan> serotonin> melatonin> pinolines> 5-MeO-DMT> DMT. So, when artist Barbara Kowa is filmed for seven weeks in a completely dark cell with a thermal imager and projected via online streaming, a hologram of inner and outer reality emerges: while she can not see anything at all, anyone online has access to it see everything she does, but never what appears inside her due to the neurochemical reactions she creates. At the entrance to the panopticon, drawings and plans of the surveillance system and explanatory drawings of the brain's biological changes hang as a result of the dark retreat.

THE INSTALLATION The Panopticon stands in the middle of the showroom as an accessible octahedron with seven partitions made of circuit boards and a door with molton. The livestream from Berlin is projected onto a triangular mirror in the middle of it, where Jeremy Bentham's plans are the watchtower. It would be wonderful to have an extra room near the installation that is completely dark, like the room Kowa is in, so that visitors can experience complete darkness themselves

The impression of a control center arises, as windows are cut-out in the partitions, witch show the back-side of photos, also writings and drawings that represent each chapter of the performance-cycle. Everything is turned around here, it is not possible to read the text or understand the sketches, as you can when you are outside the panopticon.The attempt to control, is turning reality around in this work. That digital innovations have become a lifestyle object in ever newer versions and with an ever shorter half-life, is therefore an unpredictable kamikaze act, comparable to atomic use.The videos for both versions will not be exactly the sections I send you, but sometimes longer. They are played as loops. All videos used, will receive a professional post production. All videos will receive periodically occurring image noise. To show that external control is always subject to practical limitations, and reflect on the shadowiness of the phenomenal world. . While entering the panopticon, everything turns around, it is no longer possible to read the text or to understand the sketches as it is possible from outside the panopticon. By entering the control center, trying to control, reality around in this work

LETTING GO "Our lives and all our efforts inevitably lead to death. Consequently nothing seems as important to me as learning surrender and letting go. Every loss is liberating." ​ Barbara Kowa

A special feature of Barbara Kowa´s art is that she works in cycles. She brackets video performances, site-specifics and live-art together over the time span of many years. This allows her to achieve a broad view with a constantly deepening perspective containing many facets. The following describes a cycle she has been working on since 2015. The individual chapters contain videos, prints and drawings. The individual chapters

LETTING GO OF EGO LETTING GO OF GREED LETTING GO OF PREJUDICE LETTING GO OF PRIDE LETTING GO OF BORDERS LETTING GO OF PAIN AND PLEASURE LETTING GO OF LOVE There are video performances, prints of video stills and drawings The quintessence of this cycle is that last chapter: LETTING GO OF FEAR (LIP) A profound live Art process that can be followed live online.

On each of the seven walls of the panopticon, a chapter of the cycle is presented. In the center of the cut-outs in each wall a triptic of videostills from the particular videoperformance for each chapter is shown.

On the other windows you can read texts on the individual chapters as well as mental sketches, drawings, and a QR code with which every visitor can watch the videos on their own mobile phone. Likewise, one can get through QR codes to informal pages and the permanent private online account for performance. The codes avoids a permanently running video installation - as well as the upcycling of the printed circuit boards to indicate a conscious use of the digital resources. This recycling of circuit- boards is re-interpreting of a commodity that is used on a daily basis without question, directs the attention to the fact that very valuable substances are processed here,whose extraction is just as environmentally unfriendly due to their rarity, as their scrapping is.

The previous Chapters of the Performance Cycle are: Chapter 1 Letting go of Ego (V.U.P: very unimportant person) The performance “V.U.P.”, in which the artist interviews bystanders on the red carpet at the Berlinale Festival, addresses the subject of importance in complex, ironic ways. To whom do we attribute importance - and why? This work is also a very personal exploration of a “perceived meaning trauma” and forms the starting point for further questions of this cycle.

"What V.I.P. means? Very insignificant person." Dada Devatananda

V.U.P. short-film and video-loop ​ ​https://vimeo.com/214245193 As part of this live art piece, Kowa interviewed the people in the role of a television journalist, in order to trigger a certain "awareness of importance" in the interview partners. This resulted in an almost classical docu-feature with surprising cross-references. https://vimeo.com/194336821 (​password: vup-20161117-vup)

Chapter 2 Letting go of Greed (Hommage to Richter) This video performance, in which Barbara Kowa licks out a candle, refers to Gerhard Richter's 'candle', which made Richter the most expensive contemporary artist at the time and induced a new era of the art market. Richter himself said: "the sum is scary and incomprehensible. Today it's all about the sum, not about the art anymore. "

"Since usually only those have money who do not want the revolution, those who do not really want the revolution naturally must pay for it. Hahaha. This shows the importance of art." Joseph Beuys

https://vimeo.com/213925122

Chapter 2 Letting go of Prejudice (shame shame shame) The video performance, in which the artist is painted white, as she gradually wraps herself in black veils and strokes a silver fox that covers her private parts, ironically addresses her feeling of shame as a caucasian in regards to global injustice and the unreflected idiocy of racism.

"You are talking politics and that is nonsense. My whole life was about making art, and that is political. Use your intelligence" Nan Hoover

https://vimeo.com/264749701/782954fe87

Chapter3 Letting go of Pride ( Homage to Marcel Duchamp) During her performance “V.U.P.”, in which she tried to interview the toilet staff of the Berlinale Gala (but no one agreed to be interviewed), Kowa was inspired for this long-term, live-art piece. In it, she looks after people suffering from dementia in geriatric daycare. The low appreciation of this culturally important work is based on our unwillingness to deal with the permanent process of decay and death. And yet this process transforms into fertile humus for new and powerful growth.

"The Art-world, well, I was in it all my life and I'm still trying to get rid of it." Marcel Duchamp

live-art- documentation ​https://vimeo.com/292605607/02a62f9cf0 An endless sequence of cleaning the same toilet is shown from different perspectives

Chapter 3 Letting go of Borders (abstract bodies / body language) In this site-specific video performance set on the border between Israel and Jordan the body of the artist becomes an abstraction with some of its parts sticking out of the Dead Sea and reflected in its mineral-rich, oily water. The surface of the water becomes a metaphor. For in nature, nothing is really confined. The separation between the sky and the sea is just a reflection.

"Art must have begun as nature, in a dialectical relationship between the people and the natural world from which we can not be separated." Ana Mendieta

https://vimeo.com/214244262

Chapter 4 Letting go of Pain and Pleasure (Homage to Niki de St. Phalle) In admiration of the vital and sensual feminist views of Niki de St. Phalle, who processed her personal abuse experiences with a shooting performance that produced powerful images, Barbara created lush, colorful women's that can be walked on. Kowa observes her Nana and Niki's name (Niki of Saint Phallus) in a new way. “man has the Phallus but woman is the Phallus “ Eva&Adele

The teaser I LOVE ART EXHIBITIONS can be used for the panopticon installation.

https://vimeo.com/301219008 ​ password:nikishortteaser

Chapter 5 Letting go of Love The short, intense collaboration with Ely Daou embodies the merging of two people on a mental, physical and spiritual level, while simultaneously revealing its impossibility. Daou met Kowa during her six-week gallery performance in Berlin at which only numbers were spoken, and two long performances in and Riga originated, addressing this encounter in the matrix, and a love that is already a memory once it has been recognized.

"Those who are disgusting to me will no longer be, who is dear to me will no longer be, I myself will be no more, all that I experience will be remembered." S​ antideva

https://vimeo.com/301221253​ Password: I count on you

“In great reverence and gratitude to the artists and teachers whose works give hope and inspiration. I had the great honor of meeting some in person (Beuys, Cantor, Nitsch, Hoover,Vostell,Eva&Adele ) and strive to live up to this honor.” Barbara Kowa

"Freedom can only be found on the inside, and freedom cannot be proven. If it were dependent on evidence, it would not be free. But we can train, develop, and cultivate our sense of freedom. For if we assume that the problems that exist everywhere have a cause, it is of course rooted in the needs the people have developed: the focus of their needs is on ever-increasing consumption and on growing demands of the external, unfortunately only the external. Absolute needlessness is the aspired goal, because without this needlessness the world problems can not be solved." Joseph Beuys 1921-1986

"To know oneself is to know the world, and, paradoxically, it is also a kind of exile from the world. I know it is this presence of myself that makes me enter into dialogue with the world, by creating art." Ana Mendieta 1948-1985 “I declare peace as the greatest ” Wolf Vostell 1932-1998

"If Art should trigger a realisation, first of all it must be honest. Now what could be more honest than the personal and intimate. Everything else is plain speculation." Ellen Cantor 1961-2013

"Our world is a tragic one, everything life affirming faces death and must integrate the tragic. The sensual and the spiritual are not repugnant." Hermann Nitsch

"The difference between theater and performance is, while in theater you can use ketchup, in performance it has to be real blood. Performance art is all about situation." Marina Abramovic

"People see themselves as free, but in reality the common state of consciousness is totally automatic. Observing this Automatism is the beginning of waking up to life. Life is only real then, when I AM." George I. Gurdjieff 1866-1949

"I am not interested in art, I am interested in philosophy, interested in what life is all about. My strength is coming from my silence." Nan Hoover 1931-2008

"The table must be round, like the ball. And it must not be bigger than the ball. Barbara, maybe you can help get the table round again."(Vision of my dying father) Wieland Schmied 1929-2014 "My love, my Love, my Love" Mahatma AMMA

"The revolution is inside of us." Barbara Kowa

Production Team: professional post-production video - Matthias Albrecht/ Rotorfilm technical assistant/ panopticon - Christian Wagner/ Potsdam TV technical assistant/ streaming - Benjamin Ditzen ( who did the set up for the streaming of my 7 weeks gallery performance T​ HE CALCULATING MIND CAN NOT BE TRUSTED ​ 2018) personal assistant darkspace berlin - Michael von Surya artistic assistants - Benjamin Ditzen - Sara Ramming ​ contact: [email protected]

VITA

The international artist and actress was born into the world of fine art as the daughter of the curator and art historian Wieland Schmied. Seeking distance and identity, she initially focused primarily on theater acting, and found the freedom of fine art in a performance that is surely influenced by art history and theater as well. Kowa discovers the essentials through the process of live-art with is embodiment in space and time, and likes to work in cycles that offer her a continuity of inner debate, within artistic freedom.She founded ACT.ART.OUT. performance theater in 2013 and is focusing fully performance art ever since. Studies 1993-97 ERNST BUSCH academy for performing arts and theater Berlin (Diploma)1994-98 studies with Nan Hoover, Vallie Export and Ellen Cantor video and performance summer academy , Austria 2007 Producers seminar at the bavarian academy for Film BAF (Diploma) Assistance 1998 artistic assistant at the Wooster Group Performing Garage New York Training IFS Cologne-masterclasses-Mike Figgis and Tom diChillio Maisner Technique at actors space Berlin Scholarships 2009 the studio Hollywood/LA Awards 2010 best feature film for DREAMING MALI at the TBFF Dallas,USA Presented in collaboration with the Dallas Museum of Art 2011 best feature nominations at the ÉCU fest Paris and New Jersey filmfest Workshops she gave workshops in different places and festivals in Latvia, Austria, New Zealand, Indonesia and in amongst others at the Ernst Busch Academy for performing arts Berlin List Of Works (Selection) Performance/ Video works/ Festivals Barbara Kowa´s main interest is live-art- performance, process, co-creative and site- specific work, so exhibitions have never been her main focus. Nevertheless you can find some in this general List of works marked in italic writing. 1994​-video installation THE REALITY OF A DREAM Saline Hallein TIME SIGN 5 hour-landart performance in Salzburg Austria curated by Nan Hoover 1995 MIND AND MATTER performance at the gallery Utaku in Bern 1996 AMOR EST UN ZIETKE at the performance festival „working for the mental internet“ Bern 1996-99 actress at the Renaissance Theater Berlin 1998 ​HEIMKEHR videoinstallation and performance at gallery mainblau, Berlin 1999 Maria in "the proof of the soul" by Rudolf Steiner, Documenta X 2000 ​INTIMACY 2 Pan+ barakowa Galery Alcatraz, Hallein, Austria 2001-2 Monolog "Molloy" Beckett for the Academy of arts Munich 2002 Videoinstallation SEVEN STEPS AND BEYOND Kunstraum Berlin (Solo show) 2004 Ifs:experimental film real time project with Mike Figgis 2005-6 performer/dancer in "Takemitsu–my way of life"States-Opera-Berlin touring Paris (Theatre du Châtelét) and Tokio (Bunka Kai Kahn) 2005 video-interlay performance at the Transitstation Berlin 2005 choreography and performance"open air Art Museum" Pédvale, Latvia 2007 MIND AND MATTER 2 performance with Markus Schaller,Tansitstation Edinburg 2006-9 TREETALKS video performance (UNTIL DEATH DO US PART) 2008 ONEAN(D)OTHER live-art in Mali, with Markus Schaller Video installation BASIC KNOWLEDGE Bologna, Giardino del Guasto 2008-interactive Video-performance in the Watercastel in Bad Rappenau 2009 performance and Videoinstallation of TREETALKS in Berlin Theater chappel 2010 H​ EART VENTRICLE Royal Danish academy of arts Copenhagen/Transitstation 2011 Live-art-project WATER WISDOM China/Shanghai/ Beijing 2012 E​ .V.E. fest female performers from New York + Berlin,curated by SilverSilverSilver SEEDS AND EGGS Cell63 Luisa Catucci Gallery 2013 S​ EVEN SEALS performative installation (art.endart and Uferhallen Berlin) 2014 ​MAO+TAO Feature Film on "water wisdom" shown at art.endart Berlin BLOOD AND BREATH at Cell 63 Berlin HEART OF UNITY in Israel during the operation `protective edge´(Tel Aviv, Haifa, Acco) 2014+2015 SEVEN SEALS at NEW HEALING festival Germany 2015 SEVEN SEALS in New Zealand (Prana festival) +Lithuania (Yaga Gathering) ABSTRACT BODIES/ BODY LANGUAGE site-specific dead sea, between Israel and Jordan SKIN at Cell 63 Berlin weekend of performance art curated by Dagmar-Glausnitzer Smith SEEDS AND EGGS at open-air-arts museum pédvale, Latvia 2016 SEVEN SEALS on Gili Air ,Indonesia V.U.P. Live-art during the Berlinale Festival, Berlin HOMAGE TO RICHTER videoperformance INVOLUTION (SHAME SHAME SHAME) videoperformance 2017 SEVEN SEALS in Nazaré Carneval, Portugal PERIPHERIE WITHOUT CENTER performative installation at gr_und Berlin, curated by L.Hungh HOMAGE TO NIKI DE ST PHALLE intimate videoperformance/multmediaskulptuer BREATH IN BLOOD with Collin Edina Leach at weekend of performance art, curated by Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith 2018 T​ HE CALCULATING MIND CAN NOT BE TRUSTED 42 days non-stop-gallery durational and solo show, Luisa Cattucci Gallery Berlin HOMAGE TO DUCHAMP ongoing live-art Berlin SKIN,HEART, BRAIN at ANGST festival Paris curated by Francesca Sand and Action Hybrid in collaboration with Ely Daou I COUNT ON YOU at starptelpa performance festival Riga in collaboration with Ely Daou 2018 SEVEN SEALS in Spain La Gomera Magic Tree Festival 2019 VIRGIN MARY AT THE CRADLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in Vienna Künstlerhaus 1050 at the opening of the NCW6° Festival curated by Nina Fountedakis THE ICONIC TURN durational performance installation at Riga performance festival: starptelpa curated by Laura Feldberga and Laine Kristaberga