Berlin might be the IT start-up capital of the world right now, but half a century ago, the original nerds hung out in Silicon Valley.
At the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s newest exhibition, The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside (opening Friday, April 26) you can travel back in time to California’s techological and political revolution of the late 1960s/early 1970s.
The exhibition is set up like as a narrative, with seven ‘chapters’ about the Californian beatnik ideological movement sparked by the Apollo mission’s photograph of the Blue Planet. That first photo of the whole Earth brought a newfound sense consciousness and interconnectedness. With spectacular pieces on display, like Andy Warhol’s Outer and Inner Space, the exhibition gives a multimedia history lesson with a biographical tone.
You can expect to learn about the history of computers and the internet, but with more of a focus on hippy counterculture and political thought as you listen to Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead in the ‘music library’.
However, just as the beatnik movement found out by the 1980s, the final chapter of the exhibition, entitled “The World is Not Whole” brings you back to reality and is meant to leave you with a big question mark in your head.
The Whole Earth: California and the Disappearance of the Outside, Apr 26-Jul 1 | Haus der Kulturen der Welt