X Subroutines by Constanze Ruhm is the third in a series of exhibitions following Salla Tykkä and Mark Lewis, both in 2002, on the reception of film in art.

At the heart of the exhibition is Ruhm’s latest project, X Nana / Subroutine, which is a continuation from the production of X Characters / RE(hers)AL shown earlier this year at the third berlin biennale and the Institut d’Art Contemporain in Villeurbanne / Lyon (France). Nana, the character from Godard’s film, Vivre sa vie, is used to examine the notions of representation, identity and script and sound production. The term ‚subroutine’ designates programmes (routines) running on computers and networks of which the users are not aware – the machine’s unconscious, as it were. Like her precursor in RE(hers)AL, the Nana of this project represents a ‚subroutine’ of Godard’s model – think of her as the realization of the potential of an ever changing identity. Ruhm foregrounds and displays something that was invisible in Godard’s film.

In Bern Constanze Ruhm presents two works that round off her fundamental observations on various visual and acoustic forms of perception and presentation. There is a (special) showcase as a place of exchange between subject and object. There is also blindstorey, the piece adapted to the architecture of the Kunsthalle, referring to the cinema, ornament, silence and blindness.

The exhibition X Subroutines attempts to show a ‚film’ that has been disassembled into its syntactic elements. It examines the cinematographic apparatus as a system consisting of various ‚idioms’ – architecture, performance, sound, script, etc. – in the medium of art, integrating them into an exhibition display. The symbolic ornament of the Kunsthalle skylight is turned into a key element of display architecture and into a kind of map guiding the viewers.

Constanze Ruhm, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1965. Art education at the Akademie für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna (with Peter Weibel), postgraduate at the Städelschule Frankfurt/M, Germany.
Various scholarships, stays abroad and guest professorships. Curatorships at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (Harun Farocki), at the Secession Vienna (Fate of Alien Modes), at the Neue Galerie Graz (film retrospective Isaac Julien) and at the ZKM Karlsruhe (film retrospective Noël Burch). Numerous projects and exhibitions all over Europe and in the U.S.