ECOLOGY WITHOUT NATURE: 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

http://mediartchina.org

“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 18^thcentury 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

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

ECOLOGY WITHOUT NATURE

Pages

Thursday, May 1, 2014

thignworld

1 comment: