Songs of the Sky: Photography and the Cloud at C/O Berlin

The group exhibition 'Songs of the Sky: Photography & the Cloud' at C/O Berlin, curated by Kathrin Schönegg, explores the intersection of cloud imagery and digital technology through photography. The title references Alfred Stieglitz's 1922 series 'Songs of the Sky' (later known as 'Equivalents'), which freed photography from representational obligations. Contemporary artists in the show investigate the technological cloud—network structures underpinning daily life—with ironic and insightful approaches. The Korean duo Shinseungback Kimyonghun uses facial recognition algorithms to find faces of famous figures or mythological creatures in cloud formations. Stefan Karrer examines links between images and language by displaying his PC desktop with clouds found online, classified into folders and described by a computer-generated female voice. Noa Jansma sells clouds via her project 'Buy Cloud', turning natural phenomena into exploitable resources; buyers can track a cloud in real time and purchase it through an e-commerce platform developed with Michael Tjia, referencing research that clouds may disappear in 100–150 years due to emissions. Mario Santamaria downloads cloud charts used for data collection, removes content, and isolates the perimeter outlines to strip them of their business-model function, highlighting capitalist hypertrophy and the environmental and geopolitical impact of cloud computing. The exhibition runs until April 21, 2022, at C/O Berlin Amerika Haus.