Category: Programs

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Guests：
ZHANG Ga, YE Funa, LI Weiyi, Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne, Soh Yeong Roh
Moderated by
Danielle Siembieda
 
Date：
2020.04.07（Tuesday）
Time：
8:00 - 9:30 am
Language：
English
Organizer：
Leonardo / The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and  Technology (Leonardo / ISAST)
Co-organizers：
Chronus Art Center (CAC), MANA
 
Please scan the QR code to join the live stream

For overseas audiences, please follow @Leonardo.ISAST on Facebook or visit https://www.leonardo.info/civicrm/event/info%3Fid%3D490%26reset%3D1 to stay tuned for how to join the live stream.

Join Leonardo's Social Connecting with Coffee and Cocktails for an informal discussion around the online exhibition "We=Link Ten Easy Pieces" with special guest ZHANG Ga from the Chronus Art Center along with artists YE Funa, LI Weiyi, Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne and Soh Yeong Roh Director of Art Center Nabi. The panel will be moderated by Leonardo Managing Director Danielle Siembieda.

"Coffee and Cocktail" is a virtual connecting space held by Leonardo/ISAST. These twice-weekly online gatherings don’t have a theme, but this is an opportunity to connect with the greater Leonardo community. Join with a coffee or a cocktail / mocktail as appropriate to your time zone!

 

About We=Link 

We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces features new commissions by the artists Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne, JODI, LI Weiyi, Slime Engine, XU Wenkai (aaajiao)and YE Funa in conjunction with works by Evan Roth, Helmut Smits, Yangachi and Raphaël Bastide. The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Art Center Nabi (Seoul); Rhizome of the New Museum (New York); and the concerted efforts by 12 institutions around the world. The exhibition is available online starting on 30 March 2020.

Titled We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces, alluding to the American actor Jack Nicholson’s iconic movie Five Easy Pieces with a subtle twist on WeChat, the popular Chinese social media platform, the exhibition is being presented online in collaboration with a network of other hosting institutions. The works included in this exhibition are network native, exploring the potential of mobile technologies, particularly with a creative and critical appropriation of various social media platforms.

The title We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces denotes a community of solidarity as a network of empowerment. The reference to Five Easy Pieces prompts an evocation of an implicit existential anxiety, a sense of estrangement and soul finding: Ten Uneasy Pieces indeed. On the other hand, “We=Link" also elicits a silver lining — a streak of hope to carry on.

visit the Link Below into the Browser to Enter Exhibition http://we-link.chronusartcenter.org

 

About Panelists

ZHANG Ga, Artistic Director, Chronus Art Center; Distinguished Professor, Director of Center for Art & Technology, Central Academy of Fine Arts.

YE Funa, born in Kunming, China in 1986. Funa Ye`s practice is mainly concerned with the relationship between the realities of every day life, the perceived connection between authority and many areas of social life such as different power structure, ethnic groups, and the fictional space of propaganda for the concept of ‘perfection’ in an ideological system, and utopian landscape. Therefore, the work is politically charged, subtly engaged in pastiche as a satirizing style of propaganda. The work of Funa is rich in reference, parody and irony of the uniformity cultures.

LI Weiyi is an artist weiyi.li, designer weiyiandfriends.com, curator bigbadgallery.com, publisher re-publication.com and retailor currently-available.com who lives and works between these five URLs.

Tega Brain is an Australian born artist and environmental engineer whose work examines how technology shapes ecological relations. She has created wireless networks that respond to natural phenomena, systems for obfuscating fitness data and an online smell based dating service. Her work has been shown in the Vienna Biennale for Change, the Guangzhou Triennial and in venues like the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and the New Museum, NYC, among others.

Sam Lavigne is an artist and programmer whose work deals with data, surveillance, criminal justice, natural language processing, and automation. His work often takes the form of online interventions that surface the frequently opaque political and economic conditions that shape computational technologies. He has exhibited work at Lincoln Center, SFMOMA, Pioneer Works, DIS, Ars Electronica, the New Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and his work has been covered widely in the press.

Soh Yeong Roh, Director of Art Center NabiArt Center Nabi is one of the premier media art centers in South Korea and a central institution in the international digital arts and culture scene, since its founding in 2000. Art Center Nabi aims to act as an intermediary that transforms the cultural desires into vital activities. Art Center Nabi’s mission centers around three main areas; being a ‘critique’ of contemporary technology; nurturing ‘creativity’, thus opening new possibilities of creative expressions; building 'community' where new ideas are shared and developed into new social movements. Art Center Nabi hopes to be a space, where artistic sensibilities combined with technological possibilities bring out the power of positive change in man as well as in society.

 

About Leonardo / ISAST

Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is a nonprofit organization that serves the global network of distinguished scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through our programs, which focus on interdisciplinary work, creative output and innovation. From its beginnings, Leonardo has served as THE virtual community for networking, resource-sharing, disseminating best practices, supporting research and offering events in art/science/technology.

https://www.leonardo.info/

 

About CAC

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.

www.chronusartcenter.org

 

关于MANA

MANA is a platform for Professional media and resource docking Committed to establishing an ecosystem of collaborative innovation of art, design and technology. MANA is committed to building a comprehensive global "community of artists, designers and science and technology cross-border cooperation." Promote exchanges and mutual encouragement among artists, designers and science and technology personnel worldwide, spread and promote outstanding works more widely, and increase the influence of Chinese original art, design and science and technology innovation At the same time, MANA also builds a bridge between creators and enterprises to promote mutual cooperation and help excellent companies better connect with outstanding creators.

www.manamana.net

 

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2019 Leonardo Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series

The Terraforming

Speaker: Benjamin Bratton

Date: September 22, 2019 (Sunday)

Time: 1 - 3 pm

Language: English (with Chinese translation)

Venue: Open Hub @Chronus Art Center

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center, Strelka Institute of Architecture, Media and Design

In collaboration with Leonardo / ISAST

*Free Admission. Please click "here" for reservation.

 

About the Lecture 

On September 22, Benjamin H. Bratton will bring us a talk about his new project The Terraforming, a research program exploring urbanism at planetary scale from technical, philosophical and ecological perspectives. He will present the key ideas of his new book, The Terraforming from Strelka Press.

The Terraforming is the comprehensive project to fundamentally transform Earth cities, technologies, and ecosystems to ensure that the planet will be capable of supporting Earth-like life. Artificiality, automation, and astronomy form the basis of the alternative planetarity.

The Terraforming is planned as a three-year research cycle held at Strelka Institute in Moscow. It is now calling for applications for professionals with varied backgrounds and work experience in the fields of architecture, urbanism, filmmaking, digital media, interactive design, computer technologies, social studies, physical sciences and other fields. The program is tuition-free and researchers are paid a stipend. For more information, please visit website https://theterraforming.strelka.com/

Special thanks to Strelka Institute of Architecture, Media and Design for their support for the event.

 

 About the Speaker 

Benjamin Bratton's work spans Philosophy, Art, Design and Computer Science. He is Professor of Visual Arts of California, San Diego. He is also Visiting Professor at NYU Shanghai, and Program Director of The New Normal programme at Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. He is the author of The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Artists:

Arvid&Marie

Date:

August 22 - 30, 2019

Opening:

2019.08.24

5pm-7pm

Venue:

Open Hub @Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai)

 

We touch our technologies but how often do they touch us back? ‘Full Body Smart Automatic Manipulator’ unveils a stage for exploring the intimacy between technologies and their humans, using tactility as an uncharted medium for interaction and exchange with artificial intelligence.  

 

The experience begins at the moment of impact between a massage chair and its human visitor: a two-way discussion was unexpected behaviour punctuates every marked interaction. As the narrative develops, more is revealed about the motives of the machine and the constructed reality it is situated in. Or is the AI’s reward system deviating the machine from its intended functionality?

 

Navigating through the disembodied networks of decision trees, each interaction follows a unique path interwoven with narratives exposing the friction between control, automated labour, commercialised AI and intimacy. 

 

The fleshy body and augmented voice of the machine, enveloping its human counterpart, occupies an undefined intersect between organism and apparatus. Cognitively and corporeally it labours as every rotation of the massagers push against our assumptions of what it means to be artificially intelligent. 

 

The medium truly is the massage.

 

Courtesy the artists

 

Open Studio Agenda 17:00    Event Starts17:30 - 18:00   Artist Talk

18:30 - 19:00

Sonic Performance OMNINAUT

 

Created by Arvid&Marie, OMNINAUT  is a blend of algorithmic spoken word in unison with playful, bare, minimalist synth sequences.

 

About the Artists 

 

Arvid&Marie is a duo of artists, experience designers and technological adventurers always aiming to discover new ways to stretch our world. Together Arvid Jense (NL, MSc at TU/e) and Marie Caye (FR, BA Design Academy Eindhoven) collaborate on their shared passion for art and technology. Through the use of interactive objects and performative storytelling, Arvid&Marie use their collaborative effort to explore post-human theories, focusing their creative attention on practical cybernetics and autonomous machines. They believe that researching how humans express themselves, philosophically and technologically, can lead to long-lasting, positive change.

 

http://arvidandmarie.com/

 

Powered by <CAC_Lab> 

<CAC_LAB> is a space dedicated to the inquiry of present-day matters regarding art, design, science, technology and their impact on global contemporary culture and society. Through artistic practice, technological tools and research methodology, we enable creative processes that result in works of art of high production and academic value. <CAC_LAB> is a space of flux which encourages artistic practice as a generator of new knowledge, a territory where art and science converge into a contemporary and experimental field of academic research; free from mainstream cultural thought, technological stress and economical diversions.

 

lab.chronusartcenter.org

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Artist: Mileece

Date: December 14 - 17, 2018

Opening: December 14, 2018   5pm-7pm

Venue: Chronus Art Center (No.18, No.50 Mo Gan Shan Rd, Shanghai)

 

As the awardee of CAC fifth Research/Creation Fellowship, Mileece will present her project I Oracle: Dreaming in the Future Ancient to examine nature-driven AI architectures as a matter of addressing concerns and anticipated deficiencies in accordant behavior between artificial intelligence and natural systems, demonstrating a system of behavior constructed under the ethical framework of ancient I Ching.

Translating bio-electrical responses of organisms into basic binary data sets to create an autodidactic system may offer a strategic framework to consider in the development of AI systems outside of the usual methodologies.

Extensive research and analysis will be crystalized in the first edition of an installation echoing multiple aspects of a various ancient and modern scholars, not limited to Leibnitz’s work and particularity his idea of "entelecheia" which, although in modernity is known as kinetic energy, was noted by the polymath in essence, as the ability for the energy in one thing to transfer to another.

This installation applies the ancient epistemology I Ching to form a cleromantic feedback system through which each participant's questions on the future of the biosphere, humans, computers and AI will be divined. By touching 6 times on two Chinese ancient coins attached to a human/bonsai interactive interface produces bio-energetic signals which are analysed for a predominantly negative or positive value, and assigned to a binary value as 0 or 1, equating to either Ying or Yang respectively, determining a resulting hexagram (six line symbol). Each line is represented by one of 6 illuminating bamboo rods (the I Ching script was originally written on bamboo) presented in the form of a suspended hexagon. As the two trigrams (3 line symbols) of the hexagram are created, their associated natural elements such as wind, thunder, rain, etc., will be physically expressed towards the bonsai, whose bioelectrical response will be measured and determined as Ying or Yang (0/1). The combined response forms 8 bits, or a single byte which is used to direct a hybrid biological/artificial intelligence (BI/AI) that incorporates the original I Ching hexagram's meaning and the participant's question to form a unique response.

Courtesy the artist

 

 

About the Artist 

 

Mileece is a sonic and installation artist, composer, environmental designer and clean-energy ambassador.

Her debut album of algorithmic music ‘Formations’ (2003), heralded by the BBC as an “outstanding release, real musical science”, marked the beginning of her work as a pioneer in ‘organic electronic music’. In 2006, after creating a hardware bio-data processor and coded ‘aesthetic sonification’ system ‘PiP’ at her residency at the LSE, Mileece began touring her interactive immersive micro-ecology installations and performances at museums (MoMA, NYC, NHM, LA), festivals (Decibel Festival, Seattle, BHIF Festival, Bhutan), and venues (Kew Gardens, London, Sonos Studios, LA).

Combing interactive sculptures, original products, materials and instruments, her projects 'promote ecology through technology and the arts’ have featured on prime time television broadcasts including the NY Times advertising of the year campaign (2013) and VICE Motherboard (2014) reaching over 100 million viewers.

Mileece frequently delivers presentations (TEDx, Microfest, Hong Kong) and workshops (PS1, NYC, LACMA, LA) on ‘biophilic technologies’ whilst she sits on the board of Cygnus Atratus Fuel Cell group and develops her zero-impact energy, network-based urban wilderness sanctuaries inside technologically augmented biodomes, helping to balance our modern lives with the needs and benefits of the biosphere.

About Mileece's project proposal for the Research/Creation Fellowship

 

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Speaker:
Marcella Lista

Date:
04.11.2018 (Sunday)

Time:
15:00 – 17:00

Language:
English (with consecutive Chinese translation)

Venue:
EXTRART Base ( B2-003 Sunny Walk, No. 230 Ruiping Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai)

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center, CAFA Center for Art and Technology, CAFA Art Museum

In collaboration with Leonardo / ISAST

 

 

About the Lecture

This lecture will examine recent productions in contemporary art which employ various new media in order to reshape the sense of time and a sedimentation of history which no longer creates material remains but rather unfolds in an extended virtual space. While realizing what was at stake in the development of the internet in his essay from 1995, Archival Fever, Jacques Derrida raised the thoughtful question: “Where does the outside begin? That is the only question of the archive.” From seminal artists of Media Art, such as Chris Marker, to those who address today the interlacing of media and memory, we see experimental gestures go beyond the documentary use of the archive to question the cognitive experience of a multilayered past and the possibility to anticipate the future.

 

 

About the Speaker

Marcella Lista is an art historian and, since 2016, Chief Curator for the New Media Collection at the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou, Paris. She has taught at the universities of Limoges, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris X Nanterre. Her academic work has notably addressed the history of the visual culture of sound, leading to various exhibitions: “Sons et Lumières: une histoire du son dans l’art du XXe siècle” (with Sophie Duplaix, Centre Pompidou, 2004), “Pierre Boulez. Œuvre: Fragment” (Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2008), “Paul Klee: Polyphonies” (Musée de la Musique, Paris, 2011), “Esma / Listen” (Beirut Art Center, Beirut, 2016). More broadly, her research and curatorial work deals with artistic practices involving film, video, installation, dance and performance. Among her most recent projects: A Different Way to Move: Minimalismes, New York, 1960-1980 (Carré d’Art, Nîmes, 2017); Anarchéologie (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2017); Eric Baudelaire. Après (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2017). She is currently working on projects with Ryoji Ikeda and Hito Steyerl.

 

 

 

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Topic:
Climate Engineering: Between Science and Fiction

Date:
19.08.2018 Sunday

Time: 
14:00-15:30

Language: 
Chinese/English

Venue:
Chronus Art Center (BLDG. 18, NO.50 Moganshan RD., Putuo District, Shanghai)

Reading Material Cost:
15 RMB/person

 

Field Remediation Reading Group is a series of educational and participatory events derived from the art project Field Remediations: Carbon by the artist Karolina Sobecka, one of the participating artists of the CAC summer exhibition Machines Are Not Alone. The Reading Group will take place occasionally during the exhibition (21.07.2018 - 21.10) and discussions will develop in relation to its context. Materials related to the Reading Group will be archived and become part of the Field Remediation Library.

“The idea that humanity makes its own history and does so against the backdrop of the Earth’s slow unconscious evolution is deeply implicated in modernity. We are accustomed to thinking of humans, having emerged from the primordial darkness, as independent entities living and acting on a separate physical world, a world we plough up, mine, build on and move over but which nevertheless has an independent existence and destiny. This understanding of the autonomy of humans from nature runs deep in modern thinking; we believe we are rational creatures, arisen from nature, but independent of its great unfolding processes.”  

——  Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering

 

 About the Topic

Anthropogenic climate change today affects not just the atmosphere but the chemical composition of the oceans (acidification), the biosphere (species extinctions and shifting habitats), the cryosphere (melting ice masses) and the lithosphere itself. In the face of the unprecedented global crisis brought about by climate change, will mankind be able to shift our perspective and throw into question the anthropocentric worldview that has dominated western, modernist thinking: the idea that man as an autonomous subject, while being separate from nature, enjoys unlimited power to conquer, modify nature at will and eventually transcend everything in the universe? In the international community, what makes possible the co-existence of the denial of climate change and the support of climate engineering? What is climate engineering, both its overall strategies and their scientific and technological basis? Are we able to predict the consequences these methods may incur? How does carbon emission reduction as a method to mitigate global warming become trapped in the prisoner’s dilemma? We will examine these questions during our reading group’s first meeting on Sunday, August 19th. Some selected art projects created by artists in collaboration with scientists and engineers will also provide us with different and critical perspectives to look at climate issues.

 

How to Join 

Please reply "Booking+Name+Tel+Email" on the CAC WeChat Channel

* If you have successfully registered for the event, you will receive a list of materials, including a selection of recommended to prepare prior to the event.

* If you need to cancel your reservation, please reply on the CAC WeChat channel at least 24 hours before the event.

To download the reading group's introductory text, please click on "Read More" at the bottom of this article.

 

Call for Suggested Topics 

Anyone may suggest a topic for CAC's Reading Group!
Please send your proposal to info@chronusartcenter.org with

- the email subject line: Field Remediations Reading Group Proposal

- a proposal in PDF format including the Topic+Time+Abstract (around 500 words in Chinese/English), your name, occupation and contact information.

Proposals will be selected based on their relevance to the concept of “Machines Are Not Alone”. Selected topics will be scheduled for the future meetings, and the proposal's author may participate in that meeting's planning and organization.

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Artist: Mattia Casalegno

Date: 7 April 2018

Time: 15:00 - 16:30

Location: Chronus Art Center, Building 18, No.50 Moganshan Rd

Language: English (with Chinese interpretation)

*Free admission

CAC's resident artist Mattia Casalegno will present an artist talk on 7th of April as a prelude to give audiences more clues of the upcoming VR event devised by Casalegno in the following week. By revealing the process of Casalegno's creation, the artist talk will delineate an overview of his residency project The Aerobanquets RMX, supported by the Research/Creation Fellowship.

As an open discourse orienting to artists, curators, designers and professionals in all disciplines engaged to media art, the topics do not only focus on the technical challenges the artist encountered during the project, but also shed light on the idea-ignited book The Futurist Cookbook by Filippo Marinetti. Casalegno will discuss how the Futurist cuisine inspires him to take on the experiment of blending culinary experiences with VR/AR technologies, and how the Futurists’ visionary approach to creativity intersect with today’s contemporary art practices.

 

Artist's Bio

Mattia Casalegno is an interdisciplinary artist, live-media performer and installation artist working in a broad range of media. His multidisciplinary work is influenced by both post-conceptualism and digital art and has been defined relational, immersive, and participatory. His practice explores the effects new media have on our societies, investigating the relationships between technology, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these relations unfold into each other.

He exhibited internationally in various festivals and museums, such as Mutek Festival in Canada, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, MADRE and MACRO in Italy, Rome Fashion Week 2010, Cimatics festival and Nuit Blanche in Belgium, Optronica in UK, Le Cube - Contemporary Art Museum in France, OFFF in Spain, AVIT in Germany, Wright Gallery, AxS Festival, YAA Museum and LACMA in US.

His work is featured internationally in publications and catalogues such as “A Touch of Code”, Gestalten Books; “New Media Design”, Sometti; and “Deleuze and Audiovisual Art”, Manchester Metropolitan University, and on media outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Art Tribune, the Creators Projects, Creative Applications, Hyperallergic, Digicult, Art F City, We Make Money not Art, e-artnow.

Nominated to the New Technological Art Awards in 2014 and artist residency at Eyebeam in 2015. He received various grants and fellowships from, among others the CCI - Center for Cultural Innovation, GAI - Young Italian Artists Network, NASCA/NYFA and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. He is adjunct faculty at the Department of Digital Arts, Pratt Institute, and the Computation, Technology and Culture department at the Rhode Island School of Design.

http://www.mattiacasalegno.net/

 

Author Published on

Details
6 time slots available in each day
Each performance is open to 3 participants
Duration: 30 minutes

Date
10 April 2018 - 14 April 2018

Time
5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Location
Chronus Art Center
Building 18, No.50 Moganshan Rd

Ticket        300RMB/person
Student      150RMB
CAC VIP    180RMB
Join CAC membership today to enjoy the event with 40% off !
* Only 18 seats available in each day, R.S.V.P

Book Ticket

As the awardee of CAC fourth Research/Creation Fellowship, Mattia Casalegno will present his project The Aerobanquets RMX, a futuristic sensory performance, in collaboration with the Amsterdam-based chef Flavio Ghignoni Carestia at CAC. Supported by extensive research and techonological experiments, Casalegno aims to blur the reductive binary of technology and sensory experiences, unfolding a deeper narrative focused around the act of sharing a meal that is participatory and relational, and to explore how embodiment and memory can influence the way to experience food.

 

Mattia Casalegno: The Aerobanquets RMX. 2018. Demonstration of the virtual reality.

 

We are pleased to invite you to join the experimental feast.
11 courses in bite-size will be served in a special way to three participants in 30 minutes.
All delicate and original recipes designed by Flavio Ghignoni Carestia.
Each participant will enjoy an augmented culinary experience within immersive spectacle.

 

 

About the Project

 

The Aerobanquets RMX is an art project consisting of multi-sensorial tasting events inspired by the fictional ‘banquets’ described in the 1932’s Futurist Cookbook by Italian artist Filippo Marinetti.

Food is vital and it has been a part of daily rituals since the beginning of time. Throughout the history, participatory nature of eating allowed communities and cultures to thrive. Around dinner tables and banquets, stories are shared, special moments are celebrated and personal relations are forged. Every society and era has a distinctive way of preparing and consuming food, and the Futurist were among the first visionaries to envision novel ways to approach food based on the technological transformations of modernity. The Aerobanquets RMX aims to investigate how contemporary technologies might revolutionize food consumption in the near future.

At the current stage of its development, virtual/mixed reality is mainly used for introspective and solitary experiences, while we aim to develop deeper narratives focused around the act of eating and to explore how embodiment and memory can influence how one experiences food.

 

Artist's Bio

 

Mattia Casalegno is an interdisciplinary artist, live-media performer and installation artist working in a broad range of media. His multidisciplinary work is influenced by both post-conceptualism and digital art and has been defined relational, immersive, and participatory. His practice explores the effects new media have on our societies, investigating the relationships between technology, the objects we create, our subjectivities, and the modes in which these relations unfold into each other.

He exhibited internationally in various festivals and museums, such as Mutek Festival in Canada, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, MADRE and MACRO in Italy, Rome Fashion Week 2010, Cimatics festival and Nuit Blanche in Belgium, Optronica in UK, Le Cube - Contemporay Art Museum in France, OFFF in Spain, AVIT in Germany, Wright Gallery, AxS Festival, YAA Museum and LACMA in US.

His work is featured internationally in publications and catalogues such as “A Touch of Code”, Gestalten Books; “New Media Design”, Sometti; and “Deleuze and Audiovisual Art”, Manchester Metropolitan University, and on media outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Art Tribune, the Creators Projects, Creative Applications, Hyperallergic, Digicult, Art F City, We Make Money not Art, e-artnow.

Nominated to the New Technological Art Awards in 2014 and artist residence at Eyebeam in 2015. He received various grants and fellowships from, among others the CCI - Center for Cultural Innovation, GAI - Young Italian Artists Network, NASCA/NYFA and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. He is adjunct faculty at the department of Digital Arts, Pratt Institute, and the Computation, Technology and Culture department at the Rhode Island School of Design.

http://www.mattiacasalegno.net/

 

Special Thanks to

Urban Hideout

Author Published on

Artist Talk | Empty Frames
Film Program | Staging Mimicry

 

Guest Artists: Marlies Pöschl, Katharina Swoboda (Golden Pixel Cooperative)
Time：07.12.2017  19:00-21:00
Language: English (with Chinese interpreting)
Venue: EXTRA TIME (No. 888 Changde Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai)
Organizer: Chronus Art Center
Co-organized by Golden Pixel Cooperative
Supported by the Austrian Consulate-General Shanghai

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here.

 

This event consists of a lecture by the artist Katharina Swoboda and a film program co-curated by Marlies Pöschl and Katharina Swoboda, part of Golden Pixel Cooperative, a nomadic platform, situated on the intersection between art and moving image.

 

Empty Frames
Lecture by Katharina Swoboda

The zoological garden and the cinema are both invention of modernity, which work with “living images”. The talk focuses on architecture in zoos and its representation in film. Architecture in the zoological garden, in my opinion, structure the view on animals and therefore establish cultural ideas about them. Comparable to cinematic procedures like shot sizes and montage, which are used to construct an image and therefore a significant view about the animal, the architecture in zoological garden directs the gaze of the visitors and therefore creates certain ideas of species. Artworks to be discussed include contemporary video artist Anri Sala’s work about an empty zoo in his home town Tirana, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy ́s film about the modern architecture from the “Tecton Group” from 1934.

Penguin Pool, London Zoo © Joy Sleeman

 

Staging Mimicry
Film program + Q&A with Marlies Pöschl (Golden Pixel Cooperative)

Contrary to popular believe, Roger Caillois (1931-78) shows in his work on mimicry, that an insect’s ability to camouflage itself does not have any survival value. Moreover, it is “excessive” to survival; it is a surplus of life. Through mimicking itself, the insect also creates a second identity of itself.  “The mimicking insect lives its camouflaged existence as not quite itself, [but] as another,” writes cultural theorist Eliszabeth Grosz, “the capacity to imitate one’s habitat or surroundings, far from performing an adaptive function, witnesses the captivation of a creature by its representations of and as space, its displacement from the center, from a ‘consciousness’ of its place (in its body, located in space) to the perspective of another.” Following Caillois, there is a rupture in the identity of the subjectivity of the insect - the mimicking insect feels as if what is happening inside its body actually comes from outside.

Extending the term mimicry to the field of architecture and art, in this program we will explore the artistic surplus of mimicry. Which aesthetic realms do artists create through strategies of mimicry, camouflage and mimesis?

List of artworks included in the program:

 

#1
Bernd Oppl: Sick Building
2013, 7min

 

#2
Lukas Marxt/Marcel Odenbach: Fishing is not done on Tuesdays
2017, 15min

 

#3
Sena Basöz: Be the Doctor, Practise Nursing
2016, 7Min

 

#4
Marlies Pöschl: Untitled (Lost Horizon)
2014, 7min

 

#5
Bernhard Staudinger: Sichuan
2014, 9min

 

#6
Katharina Swoboda: Reconstructing Z
2014, 2min

 

#7
Dorit Margreiter: Broken Sequence
2013, 8min

 

#8
Katharina Swoboda: Penguin Pool
2015, 3:20min

 

#9
Simona Obholzer: -5°C 40%rF
2016, 7min

 

About the Guest Artists

Marlies Pöschl, born in 1982 in Salzburg, is a filmmaker and visual artist, currently based in Vienna. She completed her studies in Fine Arts (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, media department) as well as in Art and Communication and German Philology in Vienna and Utrecht, NL. She participated in numerous international festivals and exhibitions. In 2013 she founded Golden Pixel Cooperative, a Vienna based platform for moving image.

www.marliespoeschl.net

 

Katharina Swoboda, born 1984 in Graz, Austria. Diploma Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and University of Applied Arts of Vienna. Recent exhibitions include: 2017 Media Art Biennale Wro, Wroclaw, PL; 2017 The Frame that blinds us, APA Gallery Budapest, HU; 2017 BJCEM Young Artist Biennale. Tirana, AL; 2017 (Im)Personal, Manhatten Bridge, NYC; 2017 Black Quarry, Corner College Zürich, CH; 2017 Motel Trogir, Vladimir Nazor Gallery, Zagreb, HR.

katharinaswoboda.net

 

About Golden Pixel Cooperative

Golden Pixel Cooperative is a nomadic platformoriginating from Vienna. Situated on the intersection between art and movingimage, its focus lies on the research of documentary configurations. Thecooperative develops formats and visions for presentation, debate, education,research and publication. Its activities aim at fostering exchange and mutualsupport between young artists, encouraging encounters between different publicspheres as well as the developing sustainable structures of distribution andmediation.

 

*Special thanks to EXTRA TIME for providing venue support for this event. Optional snack set available during the event (more info on the reservation page).

Author Published on

Panel | unREAL as the New Real

Guests: Ralf Baecker, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Daniel Canty, ZHANG Ga

Time: 12.11.2017, 14:00-16:00

Language: English/Chinese

Venue: Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

Address: Cross Tower 101, No. 318 Fuzhou Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

Co-organized by Chronus Art Center and Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

 

Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here

 

In contemporary art of the last fifty years, the concept of real has often been characterized as an embodied engagement of social transformation and an imagined utopia against a pictorial formalism. With the advent of mass consumption of the internet and the ubiquitous deployment of digital devices, a technologically constructed time-space has largely reshaped our concept of temporality and spatiality, work and play, politics and economics. Reality thus takes on a new level of complication that resists any easy categorization and signification. Along with this new reality where the politics of the real no longer lies only in the sphere of the social, here we are confronted with this fundamental question: who has the ownership of this new reality that is constructed by the materiality of bits and bytes and the algorithmic power of the digital?

As part of the public program associated with the CAC exhibition unREAL.the Algorithmic Present, on Sunday November the 12th, the artists Ralf Baecker and Kerstin Ergenzinger, together with Daniel Canty - Ergenzinger’s collaborator for her work Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry, will be joined by ZHANG Ga, co-curator of the exhibition and artistic director of Chronus Art Center, for a panel discussion entitled “unREAL as the New Real” at the Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General.

Ralf Baecker: Interface I, 2016

Kerstin Ergenzinger: Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry, 2017

 

Biographies 

Ralf Baecker, German artist born in Düsseldorf in 1977, works at the intersection of art, technology and science. In his installations and built machines, Baecker explores the fundamental mechanisms of the action and effect of media technologies. In his representations and spatial depictions of microscopic processes he attempts to put our perception to the test.

http://www.rlfbckr.org

Kerstin Ergenzinger, born in 1975, lives in Berlin. In her works she explores the sensory and conceptual relationships between the individual and its physical environment. By focusing on processes of perception, on technologies and strategies applied in the production of knowledge and more specifically in spatial and mental navigation, she examines the limits of human perception and our ability to understand and interpret our environment.

http://www.nodegree.de

Daniel Canty is a writer and director hailing from Montréal, Québec. His work circulates between literature, cinema, the visual arts, theatre and design and has been shown in various international contexts. He provides words and dramaturgy for the scriptural automata of Wanderer – Spacetime Poetry.

www.danielcanty.com

ZHANG Ga is artistic director of Chronus Art Center and an internationally recognized media art curator. He is Distinguished Professor at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Senior Fellow at University of California Santa Barbara. Previously, he was a Professor at the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, and Associate Professor of Media Art at Parsons School of Design, and has held visiting positions at the MIT Media Lab, Stanford University, The Graduate Center, CUNY and Swiss Federal Institute of technology Lausanne (EPFL).  In his capacity as Consulting Curator of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China from 2007–2014, he curated the widely acclaimed international media art triennial series including Synthetic Times (2008); Translife (2011), and thingworld (2014), among others. These large-scale exhibitions critically investigated and examined global media art trends, and generated intellectual discourses about art, technology and culture. He served on the juries for Prix Ars Electronica, VIDA, and Franklinfurnace’s Future of the Present Award, to name a few. He has spoken widely on media art and culture around the world and has edited several books and authored essays that were published by the MIT Press, October, Liverpool University Press and Tsinghua University Press. He currently serves on the editorial board of Leonardo Books, published by the MIT Press.

 

About Department for Culture and Education of the German Consulate General Shanghai

The Goethe-Institut is the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany with a global reach. The Institute promotes knowledge of the German language abroad and fosters international cultural cooperation. It conveys a comprehensive image of Germany by providing information about cultural, social and political life in the nation. Cultural and educational programmes encourage intercultural dialogue and enable cultural involvement.

In Shanghai the Department for Culture and Education of the Consulate General of Germany (Abteilung Kultur und Bildung) performs the tasks of the Goethe-Institut.