Into the Valley of Despair
Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, NY | April 14 - 17, 2022
Anna Witt, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Julian Louis Phillips, Florian Aschka & Larissa Knopp, Kim Kielhofner, Mia Raadik
Into the Valley of Despair stages a conversation between broad artistic works and practices that contemplate the role discomfort plays in art and processes of learning. The project highlights artists’ attempts to capture what fundamentally lies outside of conceivability, challenging themselves or their audiences to remain vulnerable in approaching the unknown. In surveying the overlapping territories of discomfort and truth-seeking, this curatorial project seeks the points where new understandings of the world destabilize previous worlds. Into the Valley of Despair argues that embracing discomfort is not only healthy and necessary for (un)learning, but also for perceiving a more just world through art.
Irit Rogoff’s essay “The Expanded Field” argues that today’s shifting landscapes of art, culture, and knowledge production necessitate that “each idea or concept we take up be subjected to pressures from other modes of knowledge and of knowing—it cannot simply stay within its own comfortable paradigm and celebrate itself and its achievements.” The solution lies not in just including underrepresented perspectives through the language of multiplicity and diversity; rather, it is in reconsidering the situation entirely as a series of enactments of what Rogoff calls “an epistemological crisis”— an “exiting from previous definitions, refusing moral inscription… risking a capacity for misunderstanding.” Arguably at the core of contemporary art’s—and society’s—needs is an intentional rappelling into the contradictions, injustices, and enclosures of the past and present, which begins with us making peace with their coexistence.
Into the Valley of Despair takes as a point of departure the common feeling of discomfort that arises when we adopt new ideas that challenge what has previously been understood or indubitably accepted. In 1999, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger collected data across four studies that measured participants’ skills through tests of grammar and logic, and found that those who scored in the bottom percentile consistently believed they scored much higher. However, as those participants improved their skills, their metacognitive competence increased and they were better able to recognize the limitations of their abilities. Dunning and Kruger developed a graph to represent this phenomenon: Plotted on a y-axis labeled “Confidence” and an x-axis labeled “Competence,” a line sharply plummets from its highest point to its lowest, the “Valley of Despair.”
Although the descending stretch between these points goes unnamed, it is comparable to the notion of collective disorientation that artist and cultural theorist Hito Steyerl discusses in her essay “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective.” Using linear perspective as a metaphor for dominant, colonially rooted paradigms of seeing, Steyerl hypothesizes that contemporary societies are increasingly witnessing the collapse of the illusion of a stable horizon line, leaving us in a collective state of free fall. Caught in the crossfire of contradicting ideas, one must choose to sink or swim (or sync and swim) alongside them. To survive and remain open to what these transformations entail for individual and collective growth means to slow down and feel out the curves of the valley, a zone of perpetual remapping where uncertainty and radical possibility live like neighbors.
The works featured in Into the Valley of Despair suggest that, rather than wince and turn away from the destabilizing truth of one’s limited purview, embarking on a winding journey through the valley with openness—waiting, listening, experimenting—might be the most sustainable path that one could take in pursuit of transformative justice. Seven participating artists attempt to highlight that which fundamentally lies outside of sight lines by challenging themselves, their subjects, or their audiences to remain vulnerable in considering new perceptions, roles, and realms. The works also share elements of documentation, each capturing moments of social exchange that involve the complicating of private and public, intrapersonal and interpersonal, subjective and objective.
Read the full exhibitiion catalog essay here.
Into the Valley of Despair takes as a point of departure the common feeling of discomfort that arises when we adopt new ideas that challenge what has previously been understood or indubitably accepted. In 1999, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger collected data across four studies that measured participants’ skills through tests of grammar and logic, and found that those who scored in the bottom percentile consistently believed they scored much higher. However, as those participants improved their skills, their metacognitive competence increased and they were better able to recognize the limitations of their abilities. Dunning and Kruger developed a graph to represent this phenomenon: Plotted on a y-axis labeled “Confidence” and an x-axis labeled “Competence,” a line sharply plummets from its highest point to its lowest, the “Valley of Despair.”
Although the descending stretch between these points goes unnamed, it is comparable to the notion of collective disorientation that artist and cultural theorist Hito Steyerl discusses in her essay “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective.” Using linear perspective as a metaphor for dominant, colonially rooted paradigms of seeing, Steyerl hypothesizes that contemporary societies are increasingly witnessing the collapse of the illusion of a stable horizon line, leaving us in a collective state of free fall. Caught in the crossfire of contradicting ideas, one must choose to sink or swim (or sync and swim) alongside them. To survive and remain open to what these transformations entail for individual and collective growth means to slow down and feel out the curves of the valley, a zone of perpetual remapping where uncertainty and radical possibility live like neighbors.
The works featured in Into the Valley of Despair suggest that, rather than wince and turn away from the destabilizing truth of one’s limited purview, embarking on a winding journey through the valley with openness—waiting, listening, experimenting—might be the most sustainable path that one could take in pursuit of transformative justice. Seven participating artists attempt to highlight that which fundamentally lies outside of sight lines by challenging themselves, their subjects, or their audiences to remain vulnerable in considering new perceptions, roles, and realms. The works also share elements of documentation, each capturing moments of social exchange that involve the complicating of private and public, intrapersonal and interpersonal, subjective and objective.
Read the full exhibitiion catalog essay here.
Featured Artworks
Kim Kielhofner, Third Reading, 2017, from the Reading Patterns series, video, 11 min.
Anna Witt, Radical Thinking, 2021, two-channel installation, looped video installation with two monitors on podiums.
Anna Witt, Body in Progress, 2018, 5-channel video installation.
Larissa Kopp and Florian Aschka, Private Property, 2021, two embroidered textile fabric flags and site-specific photo documentation, approx. 60 x 84 in. each.
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, I Have Been There, 2015-ongoing, performance-based photograph series, 40 × 32 in. each, documenting 35 cities; virtual reality-rendered video element.
Mia Raadik, Autoportrait, 2020, interactive installation.
Mia Raadik, Self Care, 2020, sculpture, 10 bowls overflowing with shaving foam.
Julian Louis Phillips, The Strategic Response Group (TSRG), 2022, live performance.
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![Installation view, Into the Valley of Despair, Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, NY, April 14-17, 2022.]()
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Kim Kielhofner, Third Reading, 2017, from the Reading Patterns series, video, 11 min.
Anna Witt, Radical Thinking, 2021, two-channel installation, looped video installation with two monitors on podiums.
Anna Witt, Body in Progress, 2018, 5-channel video installation.
Larissa Kopp and Florian Aschka, Private Property, 2021, two embroidered textile fabric flags and site-specific photo documentation, approx. 60 x 84 in. each.
Chun Hua Catherine Dong, I Have Been There, 2015-ongoing, performance-based photograph series, 40 × 32 in. each, documenting 35 cities; virtual reality-rendered video element.
Mia Raadik, Autoportrait, 2020, interactive installation.
Mia Raadik, Self Care, 2020, sculpture, 10 bowls overflowing with shaving foam.
Julian Louis Phillips, The Strategic Response Group (TSRG), 2022, live performance.
