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Schickeria is a exhibition space based in Berlin Mitte. Since 2003 Olivia Berckermeyer has been showing the work of artists friends in her studio, collecting around 70 contributions under a given theme under each exhibithion, and hanging the works in a mosaic-like format to create an overall picture.
Rather than prescribing the scene, fax prescribes the medium and presents 70 unframed black & white Din A4 Faxes, hung in 8 irregular rows on a single one white wall, on which the works hang in a format typical of the 18th century french Salons. None of which, at first sight, seam to claim precedence. There is an apparent democracy through this hanging, lining all of the works up for inspection together, regardless of how well established the artists are, or how much or how little experience and notoriety they have already gained. But unlike the later Salons, there is no strict selection process - it is more or less the same broad ranging group of artists invited to show in each of Schickeria Exibithion - creating an ongoing narrative, and allowing one to follow the artists responses to each different themed exhibition here. Regardless of wheter the artist has considered or intented it, the medium asserts control over the aesthetic of all the works in the show, creating instantly a relationship between them. Almost exclusively, the size of the paper is also regimented. Interestingly, the curator, with her choice of paper, also has in some way had another element of control over all these works, since the type of paper will determine to some extent how the works looks. If mistrust in the possibilities of this medium is included from the beginning, and if one's own work will be substituted after the data transfer by copy, what is it that remains?

Afterall, the work the artists sent is, absurdly, not the original work. The finished work is the facsimile produced by the machine in Olivias Studio. This fact is remarkable, in so far it implies that the work is created only through the concession of the participants, to the loss of control even over the end result of their own work, brought about by the data transfer. The other element of trust is in the hands of the curator