" - What is the meaning of life?
- I dont know. The computers are down."

The project is realized by Puerto Rican artist Michel D. Linares, together with Manuel Köchli, Dario Zeo, Leonardo Bürgi, Cyril Hübscher, Linus Baumeler, Mario Kull, Linda Wunderlin, Jérémy Gigandet, Veronique Haug, Andrea Wenger (all students of our Bachelor degree).

The Exhibited Classroom is a series of exhibitions that result from student workshops with guest artists and teachers. It is crucial for der TANK to be a space of a different nature, to invite audiences to uncertain occasions, where it is unclear whether or not it really is an exhibition. This uncertainty offers the artists and the audience the chance to share in the process of a particular artistic research.

During the workshop «—What is the meaning of life? —I don’t know. The computers are down.» Puerto Rican artist Michael D. Linares, together with students, will approach four main topics as starting points for research: religion (magic and cosmology), food, social relations, and art. The idea is to learn by going back to very original, even primitive, materials— both as objects and notions. From the domestication of fire to the creation of symbols and religion to the finding and naming of food, the workshop leads towards the concept of nature versus nurture. “—What is the meaning of life? —I don’t know. The computers are down.” will be an empirical outcome of an intensive brainstorm on what can be considered «life» and what «life” is about. The presentation will focus on how we as modern humans constantly interpret and construct meanings to "make sense» after being civilized and disconnected from the universe.

Michael D. Linares is a guest teacher at the Art Institute in Basel and resident at Atelier Mondial (Oct.–Dec. 2016). Linares’s residency is the result of a very fruitful ongoing collaboration between the Art Institute and the Davidoff Art Initiative. The goal is to bring together Basel-based artists and practitioners of the Caribbean region. Michael D. Linares lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He holds a BFA in sculpture from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico, and is pursuing his MA in archeology at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y El Caribe. Linares is the founder of La Sonora (2010–ongoing), a free online «audiotheque» that contains translations of texts relevant to contemporary art discourse and culture, most of which did not previously exist in Spanish. He has been featured in many international exhibitions, including a major installation of his «stick» project for the current edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, on view till the December 11. In 2017, Linares will take part in the group exhibition «A Universal History of Infamy» at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).