metamoderne — Florian Kuhlmann · a collective theory, 2012

where it started

the NON mailing list

Sometime in the early 2010s, a loose group of artists scattered across Germany started a mailing list called NON — the NON-Verteiler, as it's still known. No manifesto, no membership, no clear list of names — just a shared address and the habit of sending each other things. Out of it came happenings, in-jokes, road trips, recorded phone calls, a Facebook-era aesthetic of appropriated images, and a running argument about what any of it meant.

NON itself resisted definition on purpose. "NON is serious, absolutely factual, and yet entirely without irony," one of the list's own texts put it — a dialectical partner to art rather than its opposite: "NON is strong where contemporary art is weak, and the other way around. Art is NON's successful, profitable half."

The clearest action was shitcologne (from 2011), gatherings around Cologne's Ebertplatz organised largely by Johannes Thies — open sessions where, per the house rule, "everyone who comes may say what they want, and must write it down." Collective diary entries, typed on the spot, signed by whoever happened to be in the room.

Somewhere in the middle of it, unsigned, in the raw and slightly overexcited voice the list liked to use: "Es ist eine eigenwillige und in vielerlei Hinsicht auch verstörende Zeit, in der das Alte wegbricht und das Neue hinzu kommt. Noch weiss keiner so richtig was es ist [...]. Das neue Wort für die neue Zeit ist hier die METAMODERNE. [...] Wer nicht denken wollte ist bereits raus geflogen, wers checkt ist jetzt dran. Herzliche Willkommen in der METAMODERNE. Und by-the-way: Jeder macht mit, ob ersie will oder nicht." More of it is still up on the original page, floriankuhlmann.com/NON.html.

A framed sheet of paper with '#NON' handwritten in green marker — #NON, framed. One of many versions of the same two characters.

the manifesto, 2017

"In der Metamoderne wissen alle alles und alle nichts." Complete confusion and total information, almost simultaneous, switching so fast they start to look like one state. Niemand weiß, was die Metamoderne ist. Die Metamoderne beginnt jetzt.

Florian Kuhlmann, manifesto text, May 2017 — written for METAMODERNE JETZT and quoted since on every version of the piece.

a running thread

2012 – 2024

2012

metamoderne_non_interviews

21 July 2012 — three taped conversations made on the road, the earliest recorded attempts to pin down what the NON-Verteiler was actually circling.

metamoderne 1 — speedboat, Vienna–Bratislava (4:51)

metamoderne 2 (4:22)

pissen, scheissen, sein am fuße der metamoderne (4:25)

2013?

berlinon

A NON-Verteiler gathering in Berlin — likely the Neukölln meet-up Florian remembers from the group's early years, though the date is inferred from the photo file and unconfirmed. On the wall: "0+0=non / 1+0=enough / 1+1=best / ∞=all", next to "EIN KÄSE" — beer bottles, a typewriter, a slip archive.

A room with a formula on the wall, '0+0=non 1+0=enough 1+1=best', a typewriter and beer bottles on a table, someone walking away in motion blur

2015 – 16

shitcologne, cologne

Open sessions at Ebertplatz, organised by Johannes Thies and others — collective writing, no editing, no names required. "Das NON beschreibt als zeitgemäßes Dada unsere Generation, die alles kann, nichts weiß — und nichts kann und alles weiß."

A typewritten flyer page from the shitcologne sessions at Ebertplatz, Cologne

Looking through a glass pane into the shitcologne room: hanging 'TUT-TUT' portraits, a bag reading 'RAINBOW SHIT TUT COLOGNE', handwritten notes taped to the ceiling

2016

calling the metamoderne

"Neuestes Neues von der Metamoderne" — on 17 August 2016 a phone call got recorded and titled "Anruf in der Metamoderne". A one-minute edit of it later became the only sound on the metamoderne.jetzt page (see 2017, below).

anruf in der metamoderne — the edit used on metamoderne.jetzt (1:12)

the full calls, unedited (3:03 / 2:09)

two remixes, run through Google Translate's text-to-speech (0:31 / 0:32)

2017

metamoderne now and never

"What we definitely do not know about metamoderne" — a netart show curated by Florian Kuhlmann with router.gallery (Berlin), played out through a hacked WLAN router instead of a website. Off-site at Panke Gallery, Berlin (21 Jan – 13 Feb), then at digital3mpire, Düsseldorf (10 March). With Æther-Design, David Quiles Guillo, Dominik Rinnhofer, ENKI Live, Faith Holland, Götz Gramlich, Igor Štromajer, Julia Vanishtor, Johannes Thies, Jonathan Monaghan, Keren Cytter, Lorna Mills, Marieke Verkoelen, Oliver Haidutschek, Timothy Shearer and Phillip Meier. The Düsseldorf leg is also teased on digital3mpire.

A phone with a red screen held out at the Berlin vernissage, people in dark winter coats on a stairwell in the background

Someone photographing the show on an old smartphone at the Berlin vernissage, a small crowd in the dark hallway behind them

2017

die metamoderne beginnt jetzt

A poster under a railway bridge in Düsseldorf, pointing to a since-retired website, metamoderne.jetzt, a co-production with Asphalt Festival 2017 (funded by the state of NRW and the city of Düsseldorf) — photographs by Ralf Puder.

The same poster by day, a car passing in motion blur

DIE
METAMODERNE
BEGINNT
JETZT

The whole site was this: black background, four lines of type, one audio file (the call above). No navigation, no second page.

2017

international NON society, founded

A wall statement and an edition of aluminium cans reading "METAMODERN SEIN JETZT" — Cologne, July 2017. See the piece above.

2018

high res low brow

Group show with Götz Gramlich and Timothy Shearer at the Institut für moderne Kunst, Nürnberg — bots, a mysterious hum, and Bluetooth in Babylon, "under the premise of a metamodern artistic practice." Documented on the Institut für moderne Kunst show page. Previewed at the time as a chat interview on LÜCKE (no longer online), where Florian Kuhlmann gave the clearest three-line version of the thesis to date: "1. niemand weiß, was die Metamoderne ist [...]. 2. die Metamoderne ist nur so ein Gefühl [...]. 3. die Metamoderne beginnt immer jetzt." And on where it comes from: "unsere Interpretation ist sicherlich stärker geprägt von Dada, Fluxus, Internet und dem NON."

2019

são paulo, the wrong symposium

A lecture, "A brief history of metamodernism (and a very subjective approach to this term)", and a workshop, "Is it a trap?" — asking whether social networks are metamodern traps for consciousness. Florian Kuhlmann's contribution to the wrong biennale's São Paulo chapter. The same year: metamoderne_non_art, a digital continuation of the motif.

A stage set for 'the wrong' biennale, a copy of METAMODERN WISSEN FÜHLEN SEIN resting on a wooden crate in front of the lectern

2021

metamodern talking

"Hey Google! Shut up Siri!!!" — the Metamoderne meets voice assistants, shown at AUTOMATIC DREAMS, Galerie Wundersee, Düsseldorf, alongside Gretta Louw and Sebastian Schmieg (see collaborations). Also as an edition print and an animated version; the print edition is a drop on objkt.com (Tezos).

Neon-outline lettering on black reading 'HEY GOOGLE!' in green and 'SHUT UP SIRI!!!' in blue, framed

Detail of the framed print: 'HEY GOOGLE!' corner, glossy reflection across the glass

Detail of the framed print: 'SHUT UP SIRI!!!' corner, foam wall panels reflected in the glass

animated version

Animated version of the 'HEY GOOGLE! SHUT UP SIRI!!!' lettering

2021

metamodern now + never

A second, independent piece under the same title as the 2017 show — the collapsing Twin Towers, overwritten by hand with "METAMODERN NOW + NEVER". Digital fine art print, 60 × 90 cm. A unique NFT drop is under consideration for 2027.

2022 – 24

metamodern talking 2 · metamodern trigrams

The thread keeps running: a second Metamodern Talking piece in 2022, then Metamodern Trigrams (2023) — a generative video and web work built on the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching — continued in 2024 as part of the "displacement" group of works. The theoretical line runs on into Die Kybernetische Gesellschaft.

the book, 2017

metamodern wissen fühlen sein

An open book held in a hand, two facing pages each carrying a single oversized letter, 'T' and 'A' — One letter per spread, for roughly 240 pages.

The book's entire text — the full manifesto sentence, three chapter titles, 207 characters in total — is spread across the book one oversized letter at a time: "Metamoderne now and never, alles was wir nicht über die Metamoderne wissen. Kapitel 1 'Wissen' — niemand weiß, was die Metamoderne ist. Kapitel 2 'Fühlen' — die Metamoderne ist nur so ein Gefühl. Kapitel 3 'Sein' — die Metamoderne beginnt jetzt." Reading it means paging through the whole object, letter by letter — the not-knowing built into the format itself.

the non book, 2016

das non buch

Black book cover, hand-marker lettering: THE NON BOOK

If METAMODERN WISSEN FÜHLEN SEIN spreads a sentence out until it's barely legible, THE NON BOOK / DAS NON BUCH goes all the way: German and English editions, each existing in three sizes that double — 256, 4096, 8192 pages. The source, as far as it can be reconstructed from a 2016 email thread still floating around (Max Hathaway, Dominik Rinnhofer, Götz Gramlich, Kai Erdmann and others, cc'd on the NON-Verteiler), was a real text run through a NON-ifying process — every word replaced with some inflection of "Non" — until it was set so densely that the print resolves to a single, unbroken black.

A completely solid black page — an interior page of THE NON BOOK — Every interior page, at every size, in both languages. This is not a rendering error.

Not yet catalogued in the Werkverzeichnis — currently only in the private source repository.

a note on authorship

Metamoderne didn't start as a single-author project and this page doesn't pretend it did. Texts, images and actions here came out of a mailing list and a handful of gatherings involving artists across Germany — Johannes Thies foremost among them — whose individual contributions have not always stayed traceable. What's shown is Florian Kuhlmann's own material and his account of a shared history; where the record is thin, it stays thin rather than getting filled in.

Portrait of Florian Kuhlmann, 2017 — Florian Kuhlmann, 2017 — photo: Alec Crichton.