For Bridging Borders POST was inspired by the notion of a world without borders, which is central in the New Babylon project by Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920 – 2005). As a platform that is operating in a border-area, we would like to take this idea at heart and aim to break down the borders, in our case specifically between the Netherlands and Germany. Therefore POST invited for Bridging Borders a mixture of artists that are German based or based in Germany.

However, in Bridging Borders national borders are not the only ones who are being lifted. The selected artists and artworks are specifically selected on their dealing with the relations between the human and the machine. In New Babylon, besides the borderless world, Constant also sketches a future world in which humans are liberated from labour through automation. All selected artworks deal in one way or another with the (possible) impact of technology, automation or blending of the human and the machine. We invited art-historian Tessa Kalsbeek to write a contextualizing text on how Constant’s ideas relate to the presented artworks and the ideas they bring forward.