On the sidewalk outside of the KW museum in Berlin, my friend Justin and I walked past two girls that looked familiar. “I think those were the girls we saw on the train,” he said. One day earlier, during a long ride, a similar duo had been standing near us, one of them wearing a striking green jacket. I had made occasional, embarrassed eye contact with her, but they got off before we did. No words were ever shared between us.

“No way,” I said. “No way those were the same girls.” I looked behind me, but the contemporary pair had already turned the corner. Could they be the same two? In my memory, the two duos, the four faces, had already begun bleeding together; I could no longer tell which similarities were real or imagined. My mind was already twisting into loops as we walked through the breezy courtyard and into one of the most knotty but fantastic experiences of art my brain has ever endured.

I had been warned by a friend of Justin’s that the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art was not like other museums (whatever that meant). From the sunny front desk, Justin and I opened a door into a dim room. Black walls, dance pole, a stuffed pigeon perched on a stick. There were several video projections, the most memorable of which was a selfie recorded by a woman (Amalia Ulman, the room’s artist) holding the stuffed pigeon (named Bob) and lip-syncing to the hip hop hit Trap Queen. I read that the video was pulled straight from the artist’s Instagram feed. Is this what art has come to? I wondered, Instagram videos?

 

A video posted by Amalia’s Instagram (@amaliaulman) on Feb 4, 2016 at 12:27am PST

 

I felt a little disappointed—this was exactly the sort of Contemporary that Claire Bishop disavows in her book Radical Museology, where “the ‘contemporary’ refers less to style or period than to an assertion of the present.” Moreover, Claire Bishop would criticize the KW for its refusal to build a permanent collection; instead, the institution follows the “kunsthalle” model in which fresh works are constantly shuffled through its exhibition spaces, allowing for “a high degree of flexibility in creating its programs and addressing its audience” (according to the KW’s English website). By focusing only on temporary exhibitions, Bishop argues, these new museums refuse to engage with history—an engagement that she feels is the only way to unlock the real Contemporary.

The day we visited, the KW was participating in the 9th Berlin Biennale, a city-wide display of international contemporary art. This year, the Biennale had been curated by a New York art collective, DIS, and the theme was “The Present in Drag.” Though feeling rather disillusioned after witnessing Amelia Ulman’s Instagram art, I was unprepared for the radical installation that was waiting on the other side of that first room’s door.

Justin and I walked across a balcony and were greeted by a museum docent at the top of a staircase. “Watch your step,” she said. “And don’t touch the water.” The entire floor, of what was a cavernous space, had been flooded into a deep pool. At the bottom of the stairs, stretching out to the center of the room, was a platform lined with bean bag chairs. On the far wall, there was an expansive video projection and its colorful animations were reflected in the black pool beneath—What the Heart Wants, a forty-minute animated film by Cécile B. Evans about a dystopian cyberpunk future. There were digital ghosts, an army of floating ears, and I was enthralled.

 

 

Though Bishop might argue that the KW’s brand of “Contemporary” is too occupied with witnessing the present moment, I would disagree. In What the Heart Wants, a possible future of digital disembodiment is made sensorial, made sensible, by the out-of-body experience of watching Cécile B. Evans’ film surrounded by reflective water. The work is present in its medium, but prophetic in its content. That day, the KW featured mostly video projections like this, but installed in similarly unique and surprising ways.

In a nearby room, we found Josh Kline’s Crying Games, a video of face-swapped conservative leaders like George W. Bush crying digital tears and apologizing. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. The floor was covered by what looked at first like sand but was actually cat litter—this element of the installation had its own name: Mission Accomplished.

 

 

“This is wild,” I said to Justin. He laughed in agreement. It was like the fever dream of an angry millennial; war mongers apologizing for their crimes against humanity, acknowledging that their war on terror was not a sandy success, but cat shit.

In this way, Josh Kline’s Crying Games engaged with the past and present through its presentation of turn-of-the-century conservatives, digitally skewed by using face-swap software for their portrayal. Claire Bishop advocates for engagement with the non-chronological narrative of history, not the simple present. In the KW that day, curators did not seek to expose the bare present, but to present “The Present in Drag.” It was a warped, politicized view of the Contemporary, looking towards the future and in deep engagement with recent history. Yet, our adventure was not over; as Justin and I wandered upstairs, the KW’s real puzzle was gradually unboxed.

In the stairwell was a Purell dispenser, perfectly identical to the building’s many other Purell dispensers, except that this one had a plaque. Apparently, this functional “antibacterial foam dispenser” was a work of art called Untitled (Purell) from 2012 by the artist Puppies Puppies. By way of explanation, the plaque said: “Woof woof Puppies Puppies woof woof woof, woof woof woof woof woof. Woof woof woof woof woof woof. Woof, woof woof woof woof woof woof woof, woof woof, woof woof woof woof.”

 

 

What? Is this a joke? We laughed, but I wondered to myself if the joke was on me.

Just off the stairwell, there was a door with a sign projected onto it that said HOWDY. When Justin tried to open the door, it was locked.

“Is that it?” I asked. “We can’t get through?”

“Howdy!” said Justin. We discovered that this was an iteration of Howdy #6 [Series 2] by Adrian Piper—these signs were scattered in buildings throughout the Biennale, inviting contemplation but denying access.

 

 

Up the stairs, a door led into a bathroom with a TV screen playing another video. There were bean bag chairs against one wall, so we sat and watched the screen—the video was an infomercial for the Berlin Biennial, identical to the ones playing downstairs in the lobby and in the cafe. “Wait a sec,” I said, “Is this just a bathroom?” There was toilet paper and a sink; Justin tried flushing the toilet, and it worked.

“Yeah,” he said, “this might just be a bathroom.” I went back outside and read the wall-text, discovering that this was in fact a work of art called #3 by Shawn Maximo. Or was this just another joke like Untitled (Purell)?

And then I realized; the video was not the artwork; the bean bag chairs that normally signified a video-installation were only decoys; the real artwork was the architecture and design of the room itself, blending public and private spaces into one intentionally confusing hybrid zone. I looked with a newly appreciative eye at the electronic wallpaper: a glowing forest.

 

( Password: woof )

 

By placing the infomercial videos inside of the bathroom, Maximo’s work could be understood as a satirical representation of the ways technoculture invades our privacy. I turned back at the screen—a strange video was playing that, according to the plaque, had been directed by our friend Puppies Puppies.

This is how the KW is not like other museums; it tries to trick you. Though Claire Bishop might disagree, I have never experienced a contemporary art museum more “radical” than the KW. Instead of crafting convivial social spaces like the MCA—parties and kids days with Jeff Koons balloons—the KW presents challenging spaces. Instead of giving clear directions on how to experience the art, and easily-digestible explanations of what the art actually is, the museum forces audiences to grapple with those questions themselves.

If Modernism was an absolutist exploration of one Truth, and Postmodernism was typified by a relativist understanding of pluralities of truths, then the Contemporary could be seen as a politicized perception of those endless possibilities—an absolutist perspective on a polysemic world. Bishop argues for this radical brand of Contemporary, one that takes a singular stand (politically, historically) in the face of our messy, divided society. This, if anything, is what the KW accomplishes; the artistic riddles scrawled into its walls point to new methods of engaging with the world. You enter wide-eyed and leave on the defensive—more critical than ever before of the countless likes, tweets, and algorithms that define our contemporary moment.

“Wait up, I’m so thirsty,” said Justin. “Let’s get some maté.”

The drinks came in glasses with ice, wonderful, refreshing in that sunny courtyard after a long and challenging museum experience. But, as could be expected at a museum café, they were not cheap (in capitalism, everything comes at a price). We never saw those two girls from the train or their doppelgängers or those two girls from the train or their doppelgängers again.