What does it mean to navigate a grey, dimensionless space? To move without visual or auditory references or to physically plot a course when there is no conventional sense of direction or even horizon? In Whiteout, Rosa Menkman tells the story of an exhausting hike during a snowstorm, leading to an inability to hear, see or orient herself. While steadily moving forward, the spatial dimensions that were at first seemingly wiped out, start to offer themselves in new ways. Whiteout is based on an essay of the same title. In 2019 Menkman premiered Whiteout as a performative lecture at the Transmediale. The work is inspired by her Collide at CERN residency and research trip to Antartica.

Biography

Rosa Menkman is a Dutch artist and researcher. Her work focuses on noise artifacts that result from accidents in both analogue and digital media. According to Menkman, these artifacts can offer precious insights into the otherwise obscure alchemy of standardisation and resolution setting. In 2011 Menkman wrote the Glitch Moment/um, a little book on the exploitation and popularization of glitch artifacts (published by the Institute of Network Cultures), co-facilitated the GLI.TC/H festivals in both Chicago and Amsterdam and curated the Incompatible Aesthetics symposium of Transmediale (2012).

In 2015 she initiated the institutions for Resolution Disputes [i.R.D.], a solo show at Transfer Gallery New York. The i.R.D. are institutions dedicated to researching the interests of anti-utopic, lost and unseen or simply "too good to be implemented" resolutions. In follow up exhibitions, Behind White Shadows (2017) and Shadow Knowledge (2020) and Im/Possible Images (2021) Menkman developed and highlighted the politics of resolution setting further, which resulted in a second book titled Beyond Resolution (i.R.D.: 2020). In 2019 Menkman won the Collide, Arts at CERN Barcelona award, which came with a 3 month residency that inspired her recent research.