Year: Thursday December 10th, 2015

Author Published on

格式工厂格式工厂42

CAC Fellowship Launch Presentation

Fellow: Daniel Franke
Time: 2015.12.13 17:00
Translator:Rachel Huang
Language: English with Chinese translation
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address:Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

 

How can we perceive History? Starting from this question Daniel Franke will explore some core ideas of his "time-sculpture" that he will map during the fellowship at Chronus Art Center. With the concept of a dynamical archive he wants to challenge human time-perception and history, and takes as an approach to transfer history's artificial time-frame to a scale perceivable by humans.
The talk will focus on two dimensions of the work: first, an archaeological analysis of media artifacts important for Chinese and Western culture following notions of "deep time", and second, geological aspects and the processes behind stratification that can be summed up as “the wisdom of the rocks”.

Author Published on

34

Chronus Art Center and Maraya Art Centre
jointly present ‘Secret Cinema’ film screening for
‘أنا [ana] please keep your eyes closed for a moment’
Korean Contemporary Art Exhibition at Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE
21 October, 2015 – 2 January, 2016

Chronus Art Center
Bldg18，NO.50 Moganshan Rd，Shanghai, China
14:00-16:00, Saturday, 19 December, 2015
Masrah Al Qasba Theatre (located across Maraya Art Centre)
Block (B), Second Floor, Al Qasba, Sharjah, UAE
17:00-19:00, Saturday, 19 December, 2015

38

Hyun Mi Yoo, Bleeding blue-A man, 2009, Single channel video,16:26 mins

Chronus Art Center and Maraya Art Centre present “Secret Cinema” screening programme on the 19th December, 2015 at the Chronus Art Center in Shangahi, China. .

‘Secret Cinema’ is a film screening programme part of the first Korean contemporary art exhibition presented by a public art institution in the MENA region,” أنا [ana] please keep your eyes closed for a moment” curated by JW Stella for Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE.

The screening programme invites the audience to the stories of ana, told by ana, and encourages them to emotionally connect with the protagonists in the stories.

The Arabic term, أنا, pronounced as [ana], means ‘I or oneself’ in English, whereas it is written as ‘나’ and pronounced as [na] in Korean. The three words, ‘أنا’, ‘나’ and ‘I’, signify the same meaning within semiotics. The signification of the characters, however, can vary in accordance with the different ideologies, paradigms and value systems of the diverse cultures and societies from which they are derived. In pursuit of questioning the notion of identity and the condition of the individual being, the exhibition acts as an artistic forum, from within which the artworks facilitate a broarder debate on the varying cultural conditions across different geographical boundaries; and, more specifically, of cross-cultural societies, which have adapted and evolved into hybrids.

The exhibition actively has engaged with wider audiences through its ‘Secret Cinema’ programme, which has been being shown at Masrah Al Qasba Theatre in Sharjah on every Saturdays and will continue until the exhibition ends (2 January, 2016). It also has travelled to ‘Abu Dhabi Art’, ‘A4’ in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. As it’s final destination, ‘Secret Cinema’ is travelling to Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, on the 19th of December to meet more audiences in China.

The selected short films allow us a glimpse into the diverse lives of individuals told by individuals, and encourage us to emotionally connect with the protagonists in the stories.The films, shown for the first time in the region, are directed by Ayoung Kim, Sojung Jun, Hyun Mi Yoo and the artist collective Red Carpet Sprit, lead by Ingeun Kim.

This exhibition is hosted by Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, sponsored by Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq), Art Council Korea, Cheyul, noblesse/ artnow (Korea, China) and supported by Korea-Arab Society, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Chronus Art Center, China, A4 (Alserkal Avenue) and King’s Cultural Institute, UK

About Curator
JW Stella is the founding director of JW STELLA Arts Collectives, a London based non-profit curatorial research lab. She also works as the International Associate Curator with Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, China. Her curatorial focus is socio-cultural anthropology that examines cultural relativism through contemporary art practices.

Her curatorial practice includes أنا [ana] please keep your eyes closed for a moment  (Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE, 2015-2016), ‘TIME CAPSULE: Allegories of Shanghai’ (Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, China, 2015), '우리[WOO:RI]: the poetic intervention’, a site-specific contemporary art project in the national & UNESCO cultural heritages in Czech Republic (TINA B. Prague Contemporary Art Festival 2012 & Centre for Theology and Arts, Prague, 2012-2013). ‘NABATT: a sense of being’, the Saudi Arabian contemporary art exhibition for 2010 Shanghai World Expo (Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, China, 2010), ‘SU:MBISORI’- the inaugural contemporary art exhibition for Jeju Museum of Modern Art (Jeju Special Self –governing province, Korea, 2009)

About Maraya Art Centre
Established in 2006, Maraya Art Centre is a three-storey non-profit creative space located in Sharjah, UAE. Since its inception, Maraya has offered the public an innovative exhibitions programme, showcasing the work of leading Middle Eastern and international artists. The centre also boasts multi-media facilities, a video archive, an art library and a regular public programme of workshops and events designed by its in-house team and guest curators. Outside of the main building, Maraya also has several public park art sites within its local vicinity that feature interactive projects and sculptures.

About Chronus Art Center
Established in 2013, Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives, creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences. CAC brings to the public awareness of the impending post-human reality and the resulting social and political implications by accentuating the dynamic synergy of art and science as a response to the challenges and opportunities that contemporary media society has given rise to.

For further information about the exhibition please visit www.maraya.ae  www.jwstella.com , www.chronusartcenter.org

Contact:
Yusur Wissam (Maraya Art Centre)
Mobile: 050-2933896
Email: y.aldabbagh@maraya.ae

Bruce Ding (Chronus Art Center)
Email: bruce@chronusartcenter.org, bruceonart@gmail.com

 

Author Published on

格式工厂32

Leonardo Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series 2015 丨Towards Participation in Art
Lecturer: Rudolf  Frieling
Time: 2015.12.13 15:00-17:00
Venue: Chronus Art Center (Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai)
Language: English with Chinese translation
translator:Rachel Huang
Organizer: Chronus Art Center, CAFA, CAFA School of Experimental Art, Leonardo/ISAST

Please click "link"to apply.

About the Lecture
Looking back at an already impressive history of participation in art, one encounters conceptual, performative, and political approaches that range from happenings, shared experiences, and performances to activists’ interventions, social practice, and technological communication events. Participation in art constitutes at least a direct dialogue between the artist and the public, in its most complex form it involves crowd-sourced processes that are only initiated by artists. This is not a discourse limited to media art but the field has advanced the discourse significantly.

Participatory art is nothing but a set of unused tools when no one participates. While one viewer might simply prefer to observe and contemplate others being active, the artistic experience is intrinsically linked to be personally involved and engaged in the very act of participation. After all, being seated in the theater's audience is radically different from being on stage. But why should we be on stage in the first place?

Acts of participation and situations of dialogical encounters are to be found in many contemporary museums today, and yet they do not possess intrinsic values. Who is talking to whom about what and in what way? What is being co-produced? To speak about the promise and poetics of participation in art today means thus to be aware and critical of its specific conditions, limitations, or hidden agendas. This talk will address these questions and concerns by discussing the experience of a range of participatory works in the Media Art collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

About the Lecturer
Rudolf Frieling received an M.A. from the Free University of Berlin and a Ph.D. from the University of Hildesheim, Germany and was appointed Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2006. His curatorial projects include, among others, the online archive Media Art Net and major survey shows such as In Collaboration: Early Works from the Media Arts Collection (2008), The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now (2008) on the history of contemporary participatory practice and Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media(2012) on the crossover between visual and performing arts. Frieling is also an Adjunct Professor at the California College of Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute. Prior to his tenure at SFMOMA, Frieling worked at ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, as a curator and researcher. He lives and works in San Francisco.

About THE LEONARDO ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LECTURE SERIES
Co-organized by CAC and Leonardo/ISAST in collaboration with CAFA School of Experimental Artl, each installment of the series will feature renowned guest speakers from around the world on topics within the ever-expanding scope of Art/Science. CAC and its partner institutions will provide the venues for the events.

About Leonardo
Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) serves the global network of thinkers and practitioners working in the realms where art, science and the humanities connect. Since its beginnings nearly 50 years ago, Leonardo has fostered and supported the work of artists, scientists and scholars dedicated to breaking down the barriers that often separate fields of endeavor. Today, Leonardo/ISAST continues its leadership in cross-disciplinary creativity through the publication of content on evolving platforms (in collaboration with the MIT Press); the presentation of events, residencies and art/science projects; and other programs designed to address the interests of the art/science/humanities community.

About Chronus Art Center
Established in 2013, Chronus Art Center (CAC) is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives, creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences. CAC brings to the public awareness of the impending post-human reality and the resulting social and political implications by accentuating the dynamic synergy of art and science as a response to the challenges and opportunities that contemporary media society has given rise to.

Author Published on

格式工厂31

Time: 2015.12.06,14:00 - 15:45
Speaker: SHEN Xin
Language: Chinese
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address:Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

Chronus Art Center is pleased to present a talk brought by SHEN Xin, recipient of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist 2015, titled Against Guest/Host Dispositions. SHEN will talk about her work produced during her residency at CCVA Birmingham School of Arts with the support of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist, and she will then launch into hosting screenings and discussions about seven selected works by peer arists.

About Against Guest/Host Dispositions
The navigation of the socio-political timely tilts itself over various dispositions of the protagonist who, when being a guest to a nation state and its economic system, is also a host towards refreshing and creative analysis, conceptualisation, revelation and concealment. A guest is never really a guest but manifest themselves as host through aesthetics’ disguises of ethics, gender stereotypes, sensitivities, political (in)correctness and unwanted desires. Power is not the only thing that shifts between the roles of the protagonists, who enter into the scene with heavy categorisations only to realise what is breakable is at the same time highly inevitable.

How could we possibly navigate these waters of structural vulnerabilities that are fluid? One parasite to another, forcing each other into power and distributing responsibilities through pulling closer the works that have been made, are ways towards the end of perceptual guests/hosts, and the welcoming of materialisation of these fluid dispositions, for the exchangeability at a rate that is not ignorant to emotional tides and mistakes.

Against Guest/Host Dispositions are initiations made by hosting parties in specific contexts, to introduce works by peer artists through display, introduction and conversation. In the 1/N of this initiation, SHEN is invited by CAC to give a talk about her work made during her residency at CCVA Birmingham School of Arts with the support of CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist, and she will then launch into hosting screenings, displyings and discussions about the selected works mostly by her peers including Lucy Beech, Jenna Bliss, Patrick Goddard, Marianna Simnett, May Heek, MU Xue, and a work made by an anonymous agent in the name of Liu Na’ou. The event will be conducted in Chinese, all films are in English, and will be translated and subtitled by Shen Xin.

For Discussion
Artists & Artworks
SCREENING
Lucy Beech – Results that Move You         10:22
Jenna Bliss – Coming into Detox             13:57
Patrick Goddard – Free Radicals             05:55
Marianna Simnett – Blood                 26:15

ON DISPLAY
May Heek – Disambiguation
Xue Mu – Autonomous structure, #1. The Cross

SPECIAL
Liu Na’ou – Live Presentation

About the Artists
SHEN Xin lives and works in London. Foregrounded by moving image work, Shen’s practice concerns the social position of the artist, and engages recently with re/instrumentalising technique, judgment, power and morality. Recent and upcoming shows include OCAT (Shanghai), Global Committee (New York), CAC (Shanghai), W139 (Amsterdam), Kirishima Open Air Museum (Kagoshima), IMT Gallery (London), The National Art Centre (Tokyo), ICA (London), World Museum (Liverpool) and Chisenhale Gallery (London) among other places. Shen was selected for the touring exhibitions of Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2014 upon graduating from Slade School of Fine Art (2014). She is the recipient of CAC (Chronus Art Centre in Shanghai) Fellowship for Chinese Artist at CCVA Birmingham School of Art (2015).

Lucy BEECH (born 1985) lives and works in London. Her video and performance works explore ideas around emotional capitalism; certain economies that place a premium on interpersonal interaction, flexibility and adaptability with specific focus on female group dynamics, social choreography and disrupted narrative structures. Recent and forthcoming presentations of her work include: Site, Gallery, Sheffield, Frieze Live, Frieze, (both in collaboration with Edward Thomasson) London; James Fuentes, New York; Lisson Gallery, London, Tetley, Leeds and the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (all 2015). Her work has been included in group exhibitions and screenings at Tate Britain, London, the ICA, London; Chisenhale Gallery, London; GAK, Bremen and V22, London (2013-14). Beech is part of the screening program ‘Selected V’ presented by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network and Videoclub, touring throughout 2015 to venues including the CCA, Glasgow; CIRCA, Newcastle; Fabrica, Brighton; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Nottingham Contemporary.

Jenna BLISS (born 1984 Yonkers, NY) is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. ‘Coming Into Detox’ is the first in a series concerned with how “being-on-drugs” affects and informs social relations and radical political movements.  This video gives a small dose of history from 1970 in the South Bronx preempting the establishment of Lincoln Detox.  Recent projects include: Into This Recovery Center, co-commissioned by South London Gallery and PSY and shown at Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis Minnesota, at South London Gallery, and for the visual art festival Acting Out at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK. Other projects include Farm-To-Table, Farm Tour and Holiday Café, New York. She holds a MA from Slade School of Fine Art (2013).

Patrick GODDARD (b.1984/UK) is an artist working in East London. Completing an MFA at Goldsmiths University in 2011, he is currently studying for a doctorate at Ruskin College, Oxford University, in Fine Art practice. Creating video, publication, performance and installation; his politically loaded and narrative based works undermine themselves with a self-defeating black comedy. Inverting the position of the aloof cultural critical, Patrick’s work attempts to flip criticism back on the artist’s own ideology, presumptions and pretentions as it wrestles with the complexities of political commitment. Recent solo shows include: ‘Gone To Croatan’ (Outpost Gallery, Norwich, May 2015), ‘Revolver II’ (Matt’s Gallery, London, November-December 2014). Recent group shows include, ‘Fig2 with the White Review’ (ICA, London, April 2015), ‘Objective Considerations of Contemporary Phenomena’ (M.O.T. International Projects, London, December-February 2015); ‘IV Moscow International Biennale of Young Art’ (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, June-August 2014). Recent performances have taken place at Matt’s Gallery, June 2014; Wysing Arts Centre, June 2014; French Riviera January 2015; Grand Union, March 2015. His debut graphic novel, Operation Paperclip, was launched at Matt’s Gallery in June 2014 and he completed a residency at Wysing Art Centre over the summer of 2014.

Marianna SIMNETT completed her BA at Nottingham Trent University in 2007 and her MA at the Slade School of Art in 2013. Simnett works with video, performance and drawing. Her recent body of work explores themes of sexuality, innocence, corruption and martyrdom. Her videos involve collaborative processes with non-actors playing the part of themselves in heightened, suspended realities. In 2013 she won the Adrian Carruthers Award and William Coldstream Prize, and in 2015 she was a recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Award. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Comar, Isle of Mull and Park Nights at the Serpentine Pavilion.

May HEEK (born 1984, NL) lives and works in London. Her video and photography based installations explore the luminous qualities of screens and how we look at image sources. Both the gesture of movement and still images are exploring: surface qualities, sensory experiences, materiality and indirect ways of perceiving images through reflectiveness. The work provides possibilities to reconnect to the interior space of perception and how we deal with specific absence of existing knowledge. May Heek completed her MFA Fine Art Media at Slade School of Fine Art, London (2015). She participated in the one-year residency program Photo Global at SVA in New York (2008). Exhibitions and projects include: Imagine (London), Aspen (London), Gemeente Museum (The Hague), ING, Site (Stockholm), Unfair NDSM (Amsterdam), Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Arnhem), Colour and Transition Samples AFK (Amsterdam). Awards include: Amsterdam Fund, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Hendrik Muller Fonds and the Fundatie van Renswoude.

MU Xue (b. 1979 Nanjing, CN) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She received BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, MFA from DAI (Dutch Art Institute), and art in residency at de Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in 2011 and 2012. Like many people, Xue Mu experiences the ideological confusion and identity struggle in the present time of globalization. She questions and reflects on the inevitable loss of current belief systems, and concentrates on doubt, curiosity and awareness regarding new value orientations and future potential. Mu has been commissioned for art projects in public space, such as A Floating Highway for IAMAI in 2009, Mr. Ray for the Breukelen railway station in 2010, Strange Light for Houten Castellum in 2012 and Panorama for Proviciehuis Friesland in Leeuwarden in 2012. The most recent practice of Xue Mu incorporates: large drawing series, installation environments, photographs and performances. Her works have been presented both in the Netherlands, and in Asia.

LIU Na’ou (born 1905 in Taiwan; died 1940 in Shanghai) was a Shanghai-based cultural translator, writer and filmmaker. Being assassinated by the Kuomintang secret agent, his exploration on time travel in the form of writing and image making has been temporarily halts for many years. He is the Chinese author of The Man with Movie Camera (1933) and has written anthologized short fictions in Neo-Sensualism approach, among them “Two who weren’t in Tune with Time” (1930).

About “CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist”
The “CAC Fellowship for Chinese Artist” has been established by Chronus Art Center in conjunction with the School of Art, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD), Birmingham City University. The Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity for an artist at the commencement of or at a critical point in their professional career, to further develop his or her practice particularly in relation to Chinese art and culture. The Fellowship is based in the School of Art with a duration of 6 calendar months commencing in April 2015. The successful applicant is expected to become a full and active member of the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) and research community within the School.

About Chronus Art Center (CAC)
Chronus Art Center (CAC), established in 2013, is China’s first nonprofit art organization dedicated to the presentation, research / creation and scholarship of media art. CAC with its exhibitions, residency-oriented fellowships, lectures and workshop programs and through its archiving and publishing initiatives creates a multifaceted and vibrant platform for the discourse, production and dissemination of media art in a global context. CAC is positioned to advance artistic innovation and cultural awareness by critically engaging with media technologies that are transforming and reshaping contemporary experiences.

About Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA)
Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) is hosted by the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University, UK. It aims to foster new understandings and perspectives of Chinese contemporary arts, design, media and culture through transdisciplinary creative practices and theoretical studies. With extensive regional and international partnerships, CCVA brings together artists, designers, curators and researchers who are working with, or are interested in, contemporary contexts of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to share expertise, understand, critique, innovate and create. Using its unique position in the UK, CCVA continues its on-going transcultural dialogue by questioning existing histories of Chinese contemporary arts, design media and culture whilst fostering new ways of thinking and modes of knowledge in relation to today’s global-Chinese situation.

Author Published on

格式工厂28

Flow My Tears, the Artist Said 丨Opening Performance

Time: 2015.11.21, 15:00
Artists：MHP，What's Media Lab
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address:Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

About the Performance

Chronus Art Center(CAC) has invited the Shanghai-based electronic music artist Ma Haiping(MHP) and What’s Media Lab to collaborate on the opening performance of AL and AL: Interstellar Stella, the last exhibition in a series of screen-based works organized by Chronus Art Center. The performance will bring the viewrs into the fantasy scenes of the film through the interaction and combination of live images and music during the event.

About Interstella Stella

Interstellar Stella features a 12’17’’ cinematic work that combines live action performance with computer-generated environments to create fantasy worlds and dream landscapes in which a child model embarks on a journey of discovery inside a labyrinth formed by her own advertising pictures. Ostensibly laden with science fiction metaphors of transfiguration and rebirth, myths and symbols, and further embedded with car crash spectacles, faceless men in uniforms, billboard stars and moving shadows, the film stages a parallax narcissus and links the origins of paparazzi with observations on the extreme results of mediated desire.

Whilst composited in stunning computer-generated imagery, Interstellar Stella renders the harsh reality of synthetic times and a digital world in flux.  It thus acts as a mirror of technology itself, reminding us of both the promises and perils of technological seduction. Through its dizzying perspectives and the use of dense exotic imagery, signs and symbols, the film recalls Guy Debord’s thesis on spectacle and the image-saturated, mediated world in his Society of the Spectacle, and Baudrillard’s notion of the "precession of simulacra" as such.

About MHP

格式工厂29

Born in 1981 of Shanghai, Ma haiping (aka MHP), a senior musician. During the past 14 years, his music covers the avant-garde music, experimental, electronic dance music, soundtrack for visual arts and contemporary dance,etc. No matter from the music genre or the production technic ,he is a epitome of the development of Chinese electronic music scene. MHP is called “The son of Shanghai techno” for his music revealed a unique sense of screen and science fiction imagery. In recent years, he actively promoting the avant-garde music culture of China, organizing international exchange performances and academic lectures.

About What’s Media Lab

格式工厂30

What's Media Lab is the team which is focus on the new media art experimentmaking and exhibition.The team is consists of the most famous new media arts among the country.

The lab has taken the study of new media art for a long time.They are absorbed in the exploration and practice of the software and hardware in new media project.It aims at creating a brand-new art, design and commerce interactive integrated mode.

Lab is focus on the virtual reality、interactive divices, new media narrative projects' creation design and the fusion achievement of commerce.

Author Published on

76e0e6e3-49e0-497d-b16c-735d6a2ca738

WINNER OF THE PRIX NET ART: CONSTANT DULLAART
AWARD OF DISTINCTION: WEISE 7

PRIX NET ART IS CO-ORGANIZED BY CHRONUS ART CENTER, RHIZOME AND TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY ART AND SCIENCE MEDIA LAB (TASML).

In November 2015, after extensive deliberation, the Prix Net Art jury — comprising Josephine Bosma, Chrissie Iles, and Domenico Quaranta — announced that the 2nd $10,000 Prix Net Art would be awarded to artist Constant Dullaart, with a $5,000 Award of Distinction granted to the collective Weise7.

JURY STATEMENT
This year the jury looked at the specific role of net art within a larger art context. The main issue here was to emphasize the relevance of a separate prize for works and practices made in the context of the internet, and to highlight critical issues and developments in this field.

Net art has clearly moved beyond the media art ghetto. Artists and art institutions of various disciplines and plumage are starting to explore the possibilities of the internet. Cultural development without the internet is almost unthinkable at this point in time. This transformation of the art field is often described in terms of a post-media, post-digital, postinternet cultural production. While recognizing the value of these developments, the jury thinks that the Prix Net Art should support artists who critically engage with core issues surrounding art and the internet, and with the internet as a medium, a platform, and a network. Special consideration goes to artists that use or reflect upon practices originating in the basic cultures of the internet: the developers, makers, and hackers without whom internet cultures would not exist, or without whom these cultures would be very bland.

The fluidity of boundaries between artist and tech communities and questions of authorship, virtuosity, and the performativity of art in a mediated environment are an important aspect of the work of the winner of the 2015 Prix Net Art, Constant Dullaart. Dullaart’s work stays firmly yet defiantly within the realm of contemporary art, but from a position profoundly informed by the conditions of new media networks--technical as well as cultural, social, economical, and political networks. Dullaart strives for an honest, respectful, yet unembellished approach to the materials and conditions of the network. At the same time his work is full of humor, wit, and critical commentary.

The scope of Dullaart's work is impressive and reaches from rather formalistic yet always interesting works to extremely layered conceptual pieces. From his early work, in which he plays with elements and performance of software, to his recent projects, in which he reveals a fascination with the history, economy, and context of contemporary artist tools, the network has been Dullaart's environment both physically and culturally. His recently launched DullTechMedia Player is an in-depth investigation of the underlying processes of hardware production. Dullaart created a startup company that produces a video player that is both a useful tool, challenging the copyright barriers between commercial players and video formats, and a Trojan horse to get the artist's work, a screensaver, into collections and museums. The work highlights the dependence of present day cultural production on a chain of workers and processes that makes cultural production a lot less liberating than it is often presented to be.

In awarding the second distinction prize to the art collective Weise7 (Julian Oliver, Gordan Savicic, Bengt Sjolen and Danja Vasiliev), the jury wants to point to the growing number of hacker and maker labs internationally and the role these play in the context of net art. Weise7 is a strong representative of the return of the practical criticism of the early hacker labs of the late eighties and early nineties. Next to their individual and collaborative works, the artists of Weise7 give workshops about network basics to other artists. In their “Critical Engineering Manifesto” they stress the importance of self-empowerment and disobedience in the present day media landscape. In a time when networks, from the internet to telephone networks, are increasingly unsafe and under surveillance, the sharing of knowledge about basics of technology and networks is a highly critical and sensitive act. Weise7 are aware of the importance of a deep understanding of technology in a world where both the production of and access to art and culture increasingly evolve in the technological domain. The work of Weise7 can be seen as a continuation of media critical practices in art, which developed from the sixties onwards. The jury sees this type of work as not only valuable in terms of critical practice, but crucial for the circulation of knowledge of tools and materials in the increasingly mediated field of art. Furthermore, giving the special distinction prize to a collective is to foreground the profound way that networks have changed the role of the artist and of the work of art itself. Weise7 represents the fluid boundaries and links between artist collectives, tech communities, and audiences online.

Prix Net Art is Co-Organized by

ec1921d1-c430-4452-b6d5-ab48438d379e23dd7280-4131-4b15-ae35-c12f135ec3dd01e14672-3176-4709-9ed2-ae599852ed50

Additional support for Prix Net Art and Rhizome is generously provided by

7f024c74-3743-4feb-a189-bf54e5b4d778

Author Published on

格式工厂24

Lecturer: Egill Sæbjörnsson
Time: 2015.11.12 19:00
Venue: Chronus Art Center (Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai)

There is a beast performing behind the curtains of all art works. I am making and showing one piece after the other without ever being able to reveal the beast. The beast may be the audience performing in their own process of looking and interacting while thinking about the piece. The beast may be in the technique of the piece or the content. It may be in the surface, in how the works look, or it might be in the depth, in the things the piece refers to. The beast may be so many things…

About the Lecturer
Born 1973 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Lives in Berlin, DE. Egill Sæbjörnsson graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts (now the Icelandic Academy of the Arts) in 1997 and studied at the University of Paris, St.Denis, from 1995 to 1996.
Sæbjörnsson is interested in the connection between the mental reality and the physical reality; in the mere connection between what we think and what is happening in the world around us. One can say that, in his work, this is indicated by the projected videos onto objects. The videos can be perceived as the thoughts or the mental reality and the objects as the physical reality or vice versa. We constantly project our thoughts onto the world, just like we record the world through our senses. Humor and perhaps a sense of magic or other elements, such as music, which acquire openness to interpretation on different levels is somewhat how Sæbjörnsson approaches his work.
With an educational background in drawing and painting, his approach is somehow a technological continuation of painting. For Sæbjörnsson, all artworks have always been alive and have co-created us as much as we created them. In other words; “art is an independent species evolving together with humans”. Art is like the dog that evolved from wolves when wolves started to walk with humans. We are not in control of art, art has simultaneously shaped us. Using a playful approach, Sæbjörnsson celebrates this playful creative force, the relationship between humans and the environment.
The interrelation between all these components leads to an experimental manner in which Sæbjörnsson’s arrangements cannot be described as mere “installations”. They are at once performance sets, sculptural accumulations, and three-dimensional drawings. He uses all these methods to create a distinct visual language often laced with plays on perception. As a matter of fact, there must be a creative power in front of art, in front of science, and even religion.

Author Published on

On view: 2015.11.22-12.31
Opening reception: 2015.11.21, 4pm
Venue: Chronus Art Center
Address: BLDG.18, No.50 Moganshan RD., Shanghai

Chronus Art Center (CAC) is pleased to present Interstellar Stella, an exhibition by the British artist duo AL and AL.

Interstellar Stella features a 12’17’’ cinematic work that combines live action performance with computer-generated environments to create fantasy worlds and dream landscapes in which a child model embarks on a journey of discovery inside a labyrinth formed by her own advertising pictures. Ostensibly laden with science fiction metaphors of transfiguration and rebirth, myths and symbols, and further embedded with car crash spectacles, faceless men in uniforms, billboard stars and moving shadows, the film stages a parallax narcissus and links the origins of paparazzi with observations on the extreme results of mediated desire.

Whilst composited in stunning computer-generated imagery, Interstellar Stella renders the harsh reality of synthetic times and a digital world in flux.  It thus acts as a mirror of technology itself, reminding us of both the promises and perils of technological seduction. Through its dizzying perspectives and the use of dense exotic imagery, signs and symbols, the film recalls Guy Debord’s thesis on spectacle and the image-saturated, mediated world in his Society of the Spectacle, and Baudrillard’s notion of the "precession of simulacra" as such.

Alongside its diagnosis in the structure of contemporary screen dreams and illusions, the work extensively evokes ancient myths. The elusive narrative is formed in a way that could be read as a modern technological extension of the “method of loci”, an imaginal technique invented by the Greeks who sought to memorise through impressing images and places on memory. Yet unlike the Greeks for whom the manipulation of images in memory involves the psyche as a whole, does human today, with her increasing accessibility to technology, tend to be more easily manipulated by images instead?

Interstellar Stella

Interstellar Stella | 2006 | HD video | 1920x1080 digital video file format. Stereo sound.

格式工厂Interstellar-Stella_AL-and-AL_11

Interstellar Stella focuses on the redemptive child, a saviour trailing clouds of glory to heal adult wounds and purify our corruption. AL and AL, inspired by their 8 year old niece’s career as a child model create a fable in which she does not only convey the desire of others (commercial, aspirational) but acts in her own right. Repossessing herself in the dream space of the film involves the child exercising authority over her own images – a squad of image breakers dressed like special agents serve her in the film. Interstellar Stella explodes the love of images and submission to their powers. It is a film in the iconoclastic tradition, demanding that the viewer grasp that the pictures it makes are an illusion on the screen to show up the facticity, unreliability, and false promises of our society of the spectacle.

About the Artist

AL and AL investigate the shaping forces of fantasy and reality: they both create dream worlds and stand back in their art to draw attention to their power over us, plunging the spectator into a virtual world of dizzy dimensions. Since 2001 the British duo have combined video performance and computer generated images to create mythic films, exhibiting internationally in galleries, site-specific installations, live concert hall performances, television and film festivals.

AL and AL are currently working on a sci-fi trilogy, collaborating with the physicist Brian Greene and composer Philip Glass on the black hole space opera, ‘Icarus at the edge of Time’ which will premiere at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. The duo are also in pre-production on their debut feature film, ‘The Creator’; a sci-fi myth about Thinking Machines from the future who travel back in time to meet their creator Alan Turing. In 2016 AL and AL present a new commission, the world premiere of their DNA myth ‘The Demiurge’, in collaboration with nanobiophyisicist Bart Hoogenboom, at HOME Gallery Manchester, in an expansive solo exhibition of their work.

About the Series

Interstellar Stella is the seventh exhibition in a series of screen-based works organized by the Chronus Art Center. Conceived by ZHANG Ga, this exhibition series examines, through seven international artists’ projection works, each presented in a month-long solo exhibition, dynamically generated audiovisual systems that artists have custom-made, real-time transmitted images which demand protocols other than those readily available, idiosyncratic animation techniques for which given rules will be rewritten, and subject matters estranged from the populist safe haven. The artists presented in this series often exploit an algorithmic logic distinct from the predominant language that speaks the parlance of video art—software presets and editing routines for visual manipulation and content authoring—thereby disrupting and sabotaging the economy and the ideology of image production implicit in the very tools and means that produce narrative and construct meaning. In doing so, they have developed a new aesthetic sensibility beyond the received notion of video art as such, extending the rich tradition of media art seen in the pioneering experiments of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov of the 1920s; by the canonical works of Michael Snow, the Vasulkas and Nam June Paik, to name just a few, of the mid-century; to the digital contemporary, and opened new potentials for tending individuated perceptual spaces that can acculturate the spectacles of cosmic magnitude and the facticity of the everyday, imagined or otherwise.

Series Artists

Michael Joaquin Grey

Wolfgang Staehle

George Legrady

Marina Zurkow

Casey Reas

Jim Campbell

AL and AL

Author Published on

Chronus Art Center (CAC) warmly welcomes Professor Stephanie DeBoer asthe first Scholar-in-Residence at CAC to conduct her research starting from October 2015 to January 2016. Professor DeBoer is pursuing a research project concerned with, as its title indicates, Locating Media Art, Screen, and Architectural Complexes in Urban China. In this project she is examining screen media and video arts, their public projection/exhibition, and the production of competing urban locations and experiences.

About the Scholar-in-Residence

Professor Stephanie DeBoer is Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University. She is the author of Coproducing Asia: Locating Japanese-Chinese Film and Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), and her articles have appeared in journals such as Screen and Theory, Culture & Critique. Her research areas include screen media arts and video arts; cinema and media’s intersection with space/place/location; transnational cinema and media; Chinese, Japanese, and inter-Asian cinema and media; cinema and media theory and criticism.

Author Published on

640Chronus Art Center is pleased to announce the completion of the Jeffrey Shaw Compenduim 1966-2015 which includes works and writings produced over almost half a century by the internationally renowned media artist Jeffrey Shaw. This monograph was delivered upon Jeffrey Shaw’s reception of the Prix Ars Electronica 2015. The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria).

Jeffrey Shaw was featured in the Jeffrey Shaw and Hu Jieming Twofold Exhibition held in 2014 at Chronus Art Center. He has been a leading figure in New Media Art since its earliest public-participation and expanded cinema paradigms in the late 60’s. His critically acclaimed art works have been exhibited at major museum and festivals throughout the world where he has pioneered and set benchmarks for the creative use of Interactive digital media technologies in the fields of expanded cinema, virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization environments, navigable cinematic systems and interactive narrative.

As the Founding Director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media and the UNSW iCinema Research Centre, and as Dean of the CityU School of Creative Media, Shaw has had a profound impact on the practices of new media in contemporary art.