Empathy Songs For The Modern Heart

Johannes
Gees

With Empathy — Songs For The Modern Heart, the artist Johannes Gees returns to his origins. Before he became known for interactive laser projections, conceptual internet art, and blockchain experiments, he was a musician — and it is as a musician that he now resurfaces, with 14 songs on limited vinyl.

Gees has worked in digital and physical spaces since 1999, often combining one with the other. His early installations raised questions about who owns public space: in 2001, hellomrpresident invited people worldwide to project laser messages onto the snow-covered slopes of Davos during the World Economic Forum, earning headlines around the world and an Award of Distinction at Transmediale 2002, Berlin.

In 2004, the Hello World Project placed laser projectors at iconic locations — the UN headquarters in New York, Morro Dois Irmãos in Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai Beach, Geneva — allowing anyone to send messages into public space. In 2007 he was summoned to court for "disturbing religious peace" following his public installation Salat.

In 2012 he co-founded wemakeit.com, the crowdfunding platform that became market leader in Switzerland and Austria. In 2019 he produced kleee02, one of the earliest NFT collections of its kind, certified on the Ethereum blockchain on April 10, 2019.

Empathy is not a side project. It is a work — one that fits squarely into a practice defined by conceptual ambition, public provocation, and the hybrid crossing of disciplines. Limited to 200 copies, with paintings by Andreas Dobler.

Get in
touch

For press, booking, and exhibition enquiries.