Encounters with Incomprehension
Encounters with Incomprehension is a pavilion in The Wrong, a digital art biennale. The pavilion is, itself, difficult to comprehend by design. Spanning platforms: the work can be experienced via a publication, physical objects created on demand, email, video, the web, a podcast, and more. The art from the pavilion moves through spaces and takes up different forms in each space that you encounter it. We encourage you to click around, get confused, and embrace your confusion.
Artists from the pavilion responded to the following prompt:
We all experience encounters with incomprehension: times when meaning is obscured on purpose, forces act upon us that are difficult to understand much less accept, and/or ideas and beliefs of others seem beyond belief. Undoubtedly, there are others out there who have similar reactions to the way we each inhabit the world.
The aesthetic space is one in which incomprehension or the inaccessibility of clear, concise meaning often carries cachet. We want our art to continue to be mysterious, to have additional lessons to teach in the future. Encounters with art can be encounters with incomprehension. Poetry operates on a similar register, where meanings are often obscured, layered, or otherwise complicated.
We want to avoid too much framing and instead let the work speak for itself and the ultimate message of the pavilion to be as incomprehensible as the subject matter that it engages. Instead of framing, here are some images from the pavilion, we hope they speak to you although not too coherently:
