Ludlow 38
Archive
Johannes Paul Raether’s practice can be described as that of an anticapitalist identitect, who creates a growing set of fictional identities and roaming personalities. His creations occur in diverse places to preach alternative models of knowledge production, self-organization, and reproduction. Though they have traveled separately to Tehran, Johannesburg, Varanasi and Florence, the gallery space in New York hosts the first imaginary encounter between three of them. As an analogue to this continuous transformation of identities, Ludlow 38 is transformed into a cave-like, tribal-futurist environment, comprised of digital interfaces as well as low-tech fetish objects, and manually-crafted cultic tools. Beyond being autonomous works of art, the artifacts of this installational scenario constitute the means for establishing a unique cosmos for each of his characters, as well as the backdrops and props for their appearances.
