Signal
Thread
Signal is a long-term collaboration between Tan Mu and BEK. It began with the cables on the ocean floor that carry most of the world's data, infrastructure almost nobody sees, painted into view. From there the thread widens to transmission at large: the first photograph shared by phone, a rover that photographs itself, the light of the observable universe.
Around the paintings, a performance and a book. The canvases were read as musical scores and played in the room, and the catalogue collects three essays on the series.
We notice infrastructure only when it fails. What would it take to see it before it breaks?
Can a painting picture a system too large to see?
A signal is not yet a message. What turns transmission into meaning?
Is technology something we use, or something we are?
If every connection can be severed, is fragility part of what connection means?
Exhibition · 5 September – 15 November 2025
Tan Mu: Signal
Five paintings of the submarine cable networks that carry the world's data, with further works on transmission and perception.
Exhibition page →
Production · music performance · 2 September 2025
Everything on the Line
Sophie Steiner and Chatori Shimizu read the Signal paintings as graphic notation; lines on canvas become phrasings on strings.
Programme note →
Publication · catalogue
Signal, the catalogue
Essays by Nick Koenigsknecht, Li Yizhuo, and Sophie Steiner. Limited editions carry a unique drawing by Tan Mu.
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Catalogue
The exhibition catalogue for Tan Mu: Signal, with essays by Nick Koenigsknecht, Li Yizhuo, and Sophie Steiner. Limited editions carry a unique drawing by Tan Mu.
Texts filed under Signal.
- Quantum GazeFrom the Morning Desk
- Signal ist daFrom the Morning Desk
- Signal, the cataloguePublication · read online
- Tan Mu's Interwoven World — Yiren Shen10 Magazine · August 2025
- In Conversation with Artist Tan Mu — Franka MagonNuméro Berlin · September 2025
The thread continues.
New projects will be developed under this thread and read against those before them.
Proposals are read with interest, particularly in literature, theater, and dance; the thread favors work already underway that a production platform can bring to full form.