“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Thursday, May 1, 2014

thignworld

Graham and I have written things for this:

thingworld: International Triennial of New Media Art 2014
Opening: June 10 2014
On View: June 11 - July 7 2014
Galleries: 3, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21
Address: National Art Museum of China  (NAMOC)
No. 1 Wusi Street Dongcheng District
Beijing 100010 P. R. China

“thingworld: International Triennial of New Media Art 2014” is the third edition following the internationally acclaimed Olympic Cultural Project “Synthetic Times: Media Art China 2008” and “transLife: International Triennial of New Media Art” which was officially instituted as a triennial of new media art at the National Art Museum of China in 2011. The previous exhibitions have received extensive media attention and publicity with coverage from major news outlets such as China Central Television (CCTV), China Daily, Radio China, People’s Daily, Wenhuibao, Guangming Daily, China News Agency, Beijing Daily, Southern Daily, China Youth Daily, Vision, Esquire, Domus, Vogue, New Weekly, The Art Newspaper, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Art Asia Pacific, Artforum, and Skymedia.
These triennials have investigated the most current intellectual trends in the discourse of media art and culture, providing a prominent platform for a global presentation and theorization of cutting edge media artwork. The 2014 edition will present 58 works by 65 artists and artistic collectives from 22 countries. Most of the works in the exhibition will be shown in China for the first time.
From metal balls ascending in an uncanny anti-gravitational movement to a Victorian sofa standing precariously à l’attitude; from miniature instruments which require a magnifying glass to peek at their elegance to monumental inflatables that entwine and elongate to permeate 5,000 square feet of gallery space; from murmuring tweets from the virtual void to billions of algorithmically generated configurations of a mere 24 cards depicting an 18th century genre painting; from the umwelt of artifacts shuffling through a galaxy to a new ecosystem that emerges from the chemical sludges and trash vortex of the Pacific Ocean, the exhibition unfolds its three themes: Monologue: Ding An Sich; Dialogue: Ding to Thing; and Ensemble: Parliament of Things in a reciprocal interrelation. By aligning Physical Being, Technical Being and Psychic Being (to borrow a concept of being from Gilbert Simondon) as the new vista of equality, Technology (as the reciprocal transduction of humanity and technicity) with its initiating motility may be the surprise candidate to turn anthropocentrism on its head: physical beings via technical beings achieve their own vivid presences, their own agency and autopoiesis, their own generativity, thereby evoking a conative penetration for the human being. They act and interact, dialogue and monologue, or chorus in the assemblage of the thingworld. In celebration of thingworld, there emerges an opportunity to reinvigorate the impasse of cultural production that is contingent solely on the premise of a human subject through a much-expanded field of operation; there will be a newfound world of discussions, concerns giving rise to new forms of artistic experimentation and new vocabularies of aesthetic manifestation that resonate with a vision of equity molded by a renewed political ecology, that is the “Equality of All Things.”
The catalogue accompanying the exhibition is co-published by The National Art Museum of China and The Liverpool University Press. Essay contributors include Graham Harman, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Mark B.N. Hanson, Sean Cubitt, Timothy Morton, WANG Hui and ZHANG Ga.

Participating Artists
Aaajiao | CN, Keith Armstrong | AU, & Lawrence English | AU, Cécile Babiole | FR, Ralf Baecker | DE, Christopher Baker | US, Rosa Barba | DE, Catherine Béchard | CA, Julius von Bismarck | DE & Benjamin Maus | DE, Rejane Cantoni & Leonardo Crescenti | BR, Chen Shaoxiong | CN, U-Ram Choe | KR, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen | UK, Jessica Deboer | NL, Noa Dolberg | IL, Zoro Feigl | NL, Ken Feingold | US, Benjamin Gaulon | FR, & Tom Verbruggen | NL, & Gijs Gieskes | NL, Jean-Pierre Gauthier | CA, Petra Gemeinboeck | AT/AU, & Rob Saunders | UK/AU, Michael Joaquin Grey | US, Gustav Hellberg | SE, Hu Jieming | CN, Sabin Hudon | CA, Yunchul Kim | KR, Pe Lang | CH, Margareta Lekic | HR, Marcos Lutyens | UK/US, Chico MacMurtrie | US, Lawrence Malstaf | NO/BE, Wade Marynowsky | AU, Jennifer & Kevin McCoy | US, Ronald van der Meijs | NL, Martin Messier | CA, Erwin Redl | AT/US, Carl-Johan Rosén | SE, Adriana Salazar | CO, Björn Schülke | DE, Karolina Sobecka | US/PL, Saša Spacal | SL, & Mirjan Švagelj | SL & Anil Podgornik | SL, Wolfgang Staehle | DE/US & Jan Gerber | DE, Thomson & Craighead | UK, Jacob Tonski | US, Jonathan Villeneuve | CA, Silvio Vujicic | HR, Wang Chung-Kun | CN/TW, Wang Yuyang | CN, Gail Wight | US, Wu Juehui | CN, Yang Jian  | CN, Yang Zhenzhong | CN, Pina Yoldas | TR/DE, Zhang Peili | CN, Zimoun | CH

Visual identity and catalogue design:
Pentagram: Natasha Jen, Pei Y Ni

ORGANIZED BY

The National Art Museum of China

EXHIBITION COMMITTEE
Chair

FAN Di’An  (Director, NAMOC)
 
Artistic Director / Curator

ZHANG Ga 

Advisory Board

Alex Adriaansens, (Director, V2)
Carolyn Christov - Bakargiev (Artistic Director, Documenta 13)

Bjorn Norberg (Bonniers Konsthall)

Andree Duchaine (Director, Groupe Molior)
Kristoffer Gansing (Director, Transmediale)

Graham Harman (Professor, American University in Cairo)

LU Xiaobo (Dean, Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University)
Kim Machan (Director, MAAP)

Olga Majcen (Director, Kontenjner)
Joel Slayton (Director, ZERO1)
Mike Stubbs (Director, FACT)

WANG Hui  (Professor, Tsinghua University)

Peter Weibel (President, ZKM)
 
With special thanks to
Peter Anders, Monica Bello, Sabine Himmerlsbach, Caroline A. Jones, and Benjamin Weil
 
IN COLLABORATION WITH

Le Groupe Molior (CA)

MAAP, Media Art Asia Pacific (AU)

V2_Institute for the Unstable Media (NL)

Kontejner  (HR)
ZERO1, The Art and Technology Network (US)

Goethe Institut (China) (CN)

Transmediale (DE)
Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University (CN)

TASML | Tsinghua University Art and Science Research Center Media Lab (CN)

FACT | The Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (UK)
 
Produced by
The National Art Museum of China
 
Implemented by
Exhibition Dept. NAMOC
 
Transportation

Logistics Dept. NAMOC
 
Public Education

Education Dept. NAMOC
 
Public Relations and Promotions

PR Dept. NAMOC


CATALOGUE

Co-Published by

The National Art Museum of China and the Liverpool University Press
Edited by 
FAN Di’An, ZHANG Ga
 
Essays By
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Graham Harman, Mark B.N. Hanson, Sean Cubitt, Timothy Morton, WANG Hui, ZHANG Ga
 
Design By
Pentagram: Natasha Jen , Pei Y Ni 

1 comment:

cgerrish said...

I like the way the title is out of phase...