Art & Technology @ (working title) is an experimental project initiated by the Chronus Art Center (CAC) in partnership with ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany.
A&T@ is inspired by the rich tradition of the interdisciplinary, experimental synergy of art, science and technology throughout the mid-twentieth century as seen in the Art & Tech program advocated by Maurice Tuchman, chief curator of LACMA (Los Angles County Museum of Art) in the late 1960s, and the E.A.T (Experiments in Art and Technology) movement championed by artist Robert Rauschenberg and Bell Lab engineer Billy Klüver on the East Coast. Both programs played defining roles in conceiving art anew and in profoundly shaping the future trajectory of art history at a threshold in which human perception was increasingly intruded upon, expanded and constructed by a growing technological reality.
The A&T@ program aims to update this valuable legacy to meet the challenges and opportunities brought about by the ever more rapid innovation and ubiquitous deployment of digital technologies that dominate contemporary experience, as manifested in every aspect of the social, economic and cultural constitution of a global society; and to bring to date constructive cooperation between artists and technologists through critical dialogue and creative engagement.
A&T@ supports mid-career and established Chinese artists working in traditional media to venture into otherwise inaccessible channels of advanced programming and production facilities by pairing them with technologists and related industry to develop works that are unique and different from their established artistic vocabulary and formal strategies, thus opening up new horizons, furthering the experimental potential for these artists and, in turn, contributing to the development of art making in the twenty-first century.
The commissioned works are of a research nature, which require methodical approaches, close ideation, iteration and prototyping among the collaborating parties. The research and production cycle is approximately one year. The result will be first exhibited at the CAFA Art Museum in a dual exhibition format with an invited international media artist co-present an existing work, or in conjunction with a select work in the collection of the international partner institution (museum collection). This paired exhibition format creates an exchange and dialogue between contrasting methodologies toward the use of technology and from different cultural and historical perspectives interpreting the nature of technology and its ramifications in shaping contemporary consciousness. The exhibition then travels to an international partner institution. The @ symbol indicates that the A&T program is an open platform which embraces future partner venues and collaboration with @ representing its diverse destinations. The entire process will be documented and archived for scholarly publication at a later date.
The first artist commissioned in this series is the internationally renowned painter LIU Xiaodong.
About the partner institutions of A&T@
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.
http://www.chronusartcenter.org/en/
ZKM | Center for Art and Media
As a cultural institution, the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe holds a unique position in the world. It responds to the rapid developments in information technology and today's changing social structures. Its work combines production and research, exhibitions and events, coordination and documentation. For the development of interdisciplinary projects and promotion of international collaborations, the Center for Art and Media has manifold resources at its disposal: the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Media Museum, the Institute for Visual Media, the Institute for Music and Acoustics and the Institute for Media, Education, and Economics.
Collaborating Galleries
Lisson Gallery
Lisson Gallery is one of the most influential and longest-running international contemporary art galleries in the world. Since being founded in 1967 by Nicholas Logsdail, it has championed the careers of artists who have transformed the way art was made and presented. These include many important Minimal and Conceptual artists, such as Sol LeWitt and Richard Long, as well as a whole generation of significant British sculptors from Anish Kapoor and Richard Deacon to Shirazeh Houshiary and Tony Cragg. It continues to support the future of its artists, the legacy of historical figures, the evolving practice of established artists and the wide-ranging potential of emerging and new talents.
LIU Xiaodong is represented by Lisson Gallery
Development and Founding Affliate
Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation
Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) is committed to bringing the appreciation and enjoyment of the arts to a greater number of people, by organizing extensive and dynamic philanthropic activities, creating a contemporary urban think tank that gathers creative ideas, and connecting art with a variety of other disciplines. The Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation has been officially registered with the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau since 2008, and is governed by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture. BCAF is the only publicly funded foundation dedicated to contemporary art and urban culture.
About the artist
LIU Xiaodong is a painter of modern life, whose large-scale works serve as a kind of history painting for the emerging world. LIU locates the human dimension to such global issues as population displacement, environmental crisis and economic upheaval, but through carefully orchestrated compositions, he walks the line between artifice and reality. A leading figure among the Chinese Neo-Realist painters to emerge in the 1990s, his adherence to figurative painting amounts to a conceptual stance within a contemporary art context where photographic media dominate. His undertaking ‘to see people as they really are’ was galvanized in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square uprising and, alert to the legacy of Chinese Socialist Realism, his compositions are painted with loose, casual brushstrokes and layered with meaning. While he works from life and often en plein air, he chooses sitters to supply ancillary narratives to landscapes or situations. This participatory dimension to his practice, where projects are also documented by diaries and films, reflects an urgent sense of interconnection: ‘Society and art’, he says, ‘should be like breathing – one breathes in and the other breathes out’ (2008).
Lui Xiaodong lives and works in Beijing but has undertaken projects in Tibet, Japan, Italy, the UK, Cuba and Austria, and closer to home, in Jincheng, in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, China, where he was born in 1963. He has a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988, 1995), where he now holds tenure as professor. He continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Complutense, Madrid (1998–99). Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012) and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010), while his work was been included in numerous group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the 47th Venice Biennale (1997).
