I’m delighted to announce the successful launch of Constellations, an exhibition co-curated by myself and Karen Gaskill, at Cornerhouse in Manchester, UK.

Constellations presents four international artists working with sculpture and installation. Minimalist in their approach, all present ideas on remoteness, fragility, disintegration, melancholy, and transience, together creating a profound and almost palatable sadness.

Adopting its title from the patterns of celestial bodies, the exhibition considers the relationship between ideas and the formation of concept. Drawing on the historic usage of constellations as maps or event atlases of the celestial sphere, this exhibition presents a collection of ideas on ephemerality, impermanence and flux in contemporary art. At its very core is an organic grouping of works that when in relation to one another form new ideas and notions, new constellations, each as fluid and volatile as the other.

The works selected are concerned with the fragility and breakdown of content. This instability not only manifests as a dissolution or reduction, but also as a loss of content, a shift in form, or the temporality of an objects’ existence. Each metaphorically deals with the passage of time, creating its own duration, but ultimately brings the attention back to the present moment. The result is an exhibition that in structure and content is all at once timeless, durational and unstable.

The shift from one form to another is most apparent in the ice lamps of Kitty Kraus (pictured above), household lightbulbs are encased in ice infused with ink, resembling small frosty black cubes, which when plugged in cause the ice to melt haphazardly across the floor. The initial sculpture draws murky trails with inky stained water, leaving the often broken lightbulb and its cable trailing, a testament to its ultimate demise.

Surrounded by the slow dissolution of Kraus’s lonely systems, the delicate landscapes of Takahiro Iwasaki (pictured below) respond in their fragile yet resilient form. The mimicry of permanent geographies such as mountain ranges, using delicate and unstable materials such as cloth and pencil lead, create a contrasting, yet equally delicate infrastructure, reminding us quietly about the fleetingness of time and earth’s instability.

The reduction of form is mirrored in the takeaway poster stacks of Felix Gonzalez-Torres (pictured below). Durational in nature, the work slowly diminishes, shifting in form as the audience remove the posters and the tangible aspect of the work disappears. The work is evocative of what once was, of death and passing, and the image of the sea on the posters also invokes a sense of timelessness and strength to contrast the melancholy of the diminishing pile.

Katie Paterson’s two works both deal with space and the universe, and our position as humans in the cosmos is revealed by the works. 100 Billion Suns is a daily colourful explosion of confetti, happening in different parts of the Cornerhouse building each day. Each piece of confetti bears the colour signature of the brightest explosions in the universe. She has shrunk massive events to human scale, and presented them in bursts that will land and be tracked throughout the gallery in unpredictable ways. Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) on the other hand, is a work that transforms Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata using radio waves (pictured below). By bouncing Morse code of the score off of the moon’s surface, errors are created that are reproduced in the version played by the piano in the gallery. The lost information in the score is as a result of some celestial interference, a chance intervention that is not unlike the chance vagaries of the room temperature and floor surface that will impact the final form of Kitty Kraus’ ice lamp works.

The works in this exhibition each work in different ways with form, material, and change. Katie Paterson’s confetti canons are an addition to the environment, while viewers slowly subtract Gonzalez-Torres’ work from the gallery. Kraus’ ice lamps physically transform from 3D to 2D, while Iwasaki’s work plays with scale and form by transforming the idea of a mountain into household materials. The radio waves that Paterson used to send the Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back echo the ocean waves represented on the Gonzalez-Torres poster. Natural materials such as ice, water, soil, and air are present in all the works in either representation or in physical form. The pieces here may be minimal in aesthetic, but they are not abstract, they represent real things, and changes in the real world.

When devising constellations in the sky, people created stories to help understand our natural world, to make sense of it. But these celestial drawings are ultimately arbitrary, fragile, and could be replaced by new mappings or new understandings at any time. The mutability of the works in this exhibition are like the fragile understanding enabled by a constellations’ path. We are drawing edges around materials that we wish to know and to contain, even if ultimately, we cannot. The works in this exhibition provide us with a new poetic template to think about our understanding of time and material.

More info on the show:
Cornerhouse
Sat 25 Jun 2011 – Sun 11 Sep 2011
Mon – Closed, Tue – Sat 12:00 – 20:00, Sun 12:00 – 18:00

 

Meme Topology by sosolimited

I’m gutted that I’ll be missing FutureEverything in Manchester next week (11-14 May). For the lucky ones going, I thought I’d highlight the things I’d be bee-lining to if I was there.

OK well hang on, for those of you who have just tuned in, let me back up and say what FutureEverything is: an annual four day extravaganza of live music, art premieres, inspiring talks, club nights and events. In short, Fun with a capital F, but you can also sell it to your bosses as professional development and get them to send you.

On to this year’s programme! I wouldn’t miss talks by Sally Fort, Keri Facer, Chris Speed, Ela Kagel, Juha van ‘t Zelfde, and Kars Alfrink. (More info on the conference here). I’d be sure to check out the Steve Reich and Warpaint gigs, and would also be spotted at the ultra-intriguing Handmade event, a day devoted to contemporary craft, digital hacking, and DIY culture. In fact digital craft and maker communities seem to play a big role in the programming this year, which I think is great.

Anyway. Sigh — I can’t go. Hope you’ll be blogging and tweeting madly so I can have a taste of the experience.

 

2011 is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Canadian media and communications visionary Marshall McLuhan. McLuhanites all over the world will be marking the anniversary in one way or another, and here in Europe transmediale festival and the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Canadian Embassy in Berlin are producing a year-long programme of activity. The cultural network project McLuhan in Europe 2011 will explore, critique and celebrate McLuhan’s impact on European art and culture through a series of manifestations to occur in various locations, contexts and timeframes across Europe. While embracing and celebrating the relatively unwritten history of McLuhan in Europe, the events will also look at the development of contemporary media, tactile and mobile cultures, the politics of media culture in the context of the divided Europe and other themes that emerged out of McLuhan’s primary period of intellectual production.

The McLuhan in Europe 2011 project is seeking partnership proposals from organisations across Europe that wish to host and organise activities — download the Call for Partnership Proposals here.

The project has already produced the inaugural lecture, by Darren Wershler, Assistant Professor at Concordia University, and presented by FutureEverything in cooperation with transmediale. Many of McLuhan’s most powerful insights came from his deep engagement with the artistic and literary avant-gardes of the early 20th century. The inaugural McLuhan in Europe 2011 lecture illuminated McLuhan’s creative influences and described the fascinating connections between McLuhan’s predictions and declarations, and contemporary poetry, artwork, and thought. Watch it below:

 

I find myself in the same situation time and again when I arrive at a major international festival: too many events happening at once! Spoilt for choice! Unable to decide if I should go to one talk or another, which are of course happening at the very same time in different locations!

The programme for this year’s FutureEverything festival is so overflowing with juicy content, that perhaps you too will suffer this dilemma. In the face of such a cornucopia of content, there is something for everyone, but maybe you want to peek over my shoulder and see what I’ve circled in red on my FutureEverything diary? (Oh and hey, I wouldn’t mind you sharing your picks with me too!)

Music:
Ryoji Ikeda – test pattern [live set] / Mika Vainio [live]: “complex audio-visual terrain” … “analogue warmth and metallic harshness”
Konono No.1 [live] / Bass Clef [live] / Jon K: “a thundering sonic attack of 21st Century African music that sounds like nothing ever heard before”
Moldover [live] / Atau & Adam [live]: “a performer who combines the charisma of a rock star with the mad genius of a basement inventor”

Conference:
GloNet: “an experimental format happening simultaneously in five cities around the globe: Manchester, Sendai, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver”
Shaping the City panel discussion: how are cities shaped by climate, culture, and citizen participation?
Keynote: Ben Cerveny: “taking us from 1960s Situationist ideas to current collaborative interaction in public spaces”
Keynote: Keri Facer: “Learning to live in uncertain times”
New Creativity panel discussion: “How do we play, collaborate, and create in a way that makes a real impact on the world?”
McLuhan in Europe 2011 – inaugural lecture with Darren Wershler: “describing the fascinating connections between McLuhan’s predictions and declarations”

Art:
The Feast of Trimalchio: Stunningly beautiful, UK premiere
Eyewriter: a pair of low-cost glasses & custom software that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes
Cu Exhibition: “diverse and experimental contemporary art from both national and international artists”

Get tickets!

 

12-15 May 2010, Manchester, England. Obtain your festival passes now here: http://futureeverything.org/tickets

The FutureEverything conference will take you on a journey through the most cutting-edge developments in a range of exciting fields. Join us to hear about why governments should open up the data that they hold, and what we can do with this information to change our lives. Listen to leading artists and scientists discuss what we can dream and do with unlimited bandwidth. Visionary speakers will illuminate the science of the web, the ways the networked city is being rewired, how poetry can be encoded into DNA, ways we can play the city like an instrument, and how relationships between generations are going to change over the next hundred years.

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GloNet
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GloNet – Globally Networked Event
Contact Theatre: 13/05/10, 10:00 – 19:00
We are delighted to premiere GloNet, a new type of Globally Networked Event, shifting from a single city festival to one taking place simultaneously at cities around the globe using experimental formats. FutureEverything is inter-connecting Manchester and four cities around the globe: Sendai, (Japan), Istanbul (Turkey), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Vancouver (Canada). Deeply connected to our The City Experiment theme, each host city will dynamically describe their views on the core issues facing cities today, from the question of growth to the possibilities of open data, to the impact of the creative industries and urban fragility. Featuring: Adam Greenfield, John Worthington, Nigel Shadbolt, and many more from all over the world. Tune in to the new reality of global connection.

http://futureeverything.org/festival2010/GloNet

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ImagineEverything
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Contact Theatre: 13/05/10 – 14/05/10
Our most daring and wide-ranging conference strand, bringing you insights into the science of the web, the future of inter-generational communication, open source design, crowdsourced activism, and the future of music. Taking all of our wildest dreams for the future and imagining what would happen if they really came true is at the heart of this strand. Featuring: Dame Wendy Hall, Keri Facer, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, and more.

http://futureeverything.org/conference

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The City Experiment
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Contact Theatre: 13/05/10 – 14/05/10
The City Experiment conference strand explores urban transformation, in all its forms, especially how we work, play, create and relate with one another. Our urban spaces are massive laboratories, where we all are simultaneously discovering new possibilities for social connection and expression. At a time when Manchester is home to the biggest experiment in Europe in creating a future city, we are bringing you the most visionary thinkers who will tell us how cities are evolving and being rewired. Featuring: Ben Cerveny, Maarten Hajer, Francis McKee, Shawn Micallef, and more.

http://futureeverything.org/conference

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Open Data
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Contact Theatre: 13/05/10
In 2009 FutureEverything embarked on an ambitious programme to open up the City of Manchester’s publicly held datasets for the benefit of the residents, businesses and institutions of Manchester. The panels in our Open Data conference strand will deeply reflect on the phenomenal potential impact of opening up data held by our public institutions in a usable form. Featuring: Nigel Shadbolt, Will Perrin, Emer Coleman, and more.

http://futureeverything.org/conference

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Unlimited Connectivity
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Contact Theatre: 13/05/10
Millions of internet users are accustomed to the always-on connection to the internet that broadband allows. The growing spread of fast connectivity empowers more and more people to create and express in ways previously unimagined. What does our future of unlimited bandwidth look like, and what will be the Wikipedias and YouTubes of this brave new future? Featuring: Ken Eason, Clem Herman, Brian Condon, and more.

http://futureeverything.org/conference

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FutureEverything 2010 – Tickets and Info
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Part of the Lever Prize winning FutureEverything: astonishing talks, visionary people in a global conversation on bringing the future into the present.

The Festival Pass is the gateway to the FutureEverything festival and conference. Available at the pre-booking Rate rate of £135 till 11 May.

 

Image of Nuage Vert by HeHe, taken by Niklas Sjöblom

This year’s Futuresonic festival has some very tasty highlights, ranging from a Philip Glass concert, to a bubble-blowing contest, to the world premiere of Beuys’ Acorns by Ackroyd and Harvey. The festival kicked off last night, the conference is running today, and you can find me as one of the invited special guests who will be giving my take on the Environment 2.0 Art Exhibition with my own tours, MK-style! The exhibition is mainly based at CUBE and “…includes artworks that make visible and tangible the outcomes of our actions at a local level, artworks conceived as social interventions, and artworks which arise out of a sustained engagement and dialogue between artists and scientists.” See you there!

 

The omnipresence of public displays such as LED, LCD, plasma screens, large scale projections and media facades demands a critical reflection of their impact on cities and on our perceptions of them. At the same time, they offer new and exciting possibilities for artistic and non-commercial use as well as for community development and play. Urban Screens Manchester looks specifically at the creation of content, commissioning / funding issues, curatorship and the architectural possibilities of urban screens in the 21st century.

The schedule is packed and looks as though it will present the possibilities of urban screens from as many angles as possible, with a range of speakers from academia, industry, and arts. I’m speaking with Dooeun Choi and Sylvia Kouvali on a panel moderated by Mike Stubbs. The panel takes place on Friday Oct 12 at 17.00 and is entitled: “Curating Screen Art for an Urban and Architectural Context”. The panel is described the programme notes thusly:

Until now it is rare that a curator or other new media expert is consulted on the conception of media facades and other urban screens. Consequently, lots of existing urban screens lack the comprehensive sophistication that would explore spatial, architectural or medial potentials. Which curatorial criteria should be applied to the creation and curation of urban screens? How important is site-specifity and the local context? Which economic and content-related restrains do curators have to face? Do urban screens suit a presentation of elaborate artistic content or will entertainment win over art?

I’m also pleased to announce that both of the recent video programmes that I’ve curated for urban screens will also be presented as part of the art programme: Otherworldly and Best of Transmedia. The complete listings (including times and locations) for the art events is on the Manchester Urban Screens website. This is the world premiere for Best of Transmedia and only the second run (the premiere took place in Melbourne, Australia) of Otherworldly. I can’t wait to see both programmes on the screens, both permanent and temporary, throughout Manchester’s city centre!

I’m very excited to be in Manchester this week chatting with experts in this growing field and hope to see many old friends and colleagues there – do get in touch if you will be attending!