UNLEASHED UTOPIAS - Exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin

UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse

Marlene Bart, Theatrum Radix, 2022

Rebecca Merlic, Glitchbodies, 2022-ongoing

Mohsen Hazrati, FÃL PROJECT [NONE-AI], 2023

Lauren Moffatt, Local Binaries, 2022/23

Anan Fries, Posthuman Wombs, 2022

Opening: September 8, 2023, 7 pm

Award Ceremony: September 15, 2023, 7 pm

At: Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin

Artists: Marlene Bart, Anan Fries, Mohsen Hazrati, Rebecca Merlic, Lauren Moffatt

Curator: Dr. Tina Sauerlaender

The notion of a better world is closely tied to utopia as a theme. The term literally describes a wonderful place that does not exist. It means that the design for an ideal society is a criticism of the current situation. Utopias are based on questions such as: What happens if we change a couple of rules? How can we live well together? Thus, utopias also inherently have great potential for societal change and visions for a better future.

In this exhibition, the grant winners of the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin show how we might be able to deploy new technologies for a more just, multifaceted, and personal coexistence. They are alert to the changes in values and norms currently going on in society and link their speculations to topical debates. With the help of virtual reality and site-specific installations, the artists create accessible, immersive, experiential utopias. They critically speculate upon artificial intelligence, 3D scanning, animation techniques, research in scientific fields, or the metaverse.

Marlene Bart works with digitized natural history artifacts, bringing them to life in virtual worlds and producing a new perspective of our concept of nature. Anan Fries renounces the division between nature and technology to overcome the boundaries between biological genders, creating a world in which all bodies could be pregnant. Rebecca Merlic celebrates the liberation of binary identities, physical transformation, and the diversity of human individuality. Mohsen Hazrati combines figures from Iranian myths and soothsaying traditions with forms of artificial intelligence, altered by the artist to provide us with cryptic advice for our futures. Lauren Moffatt looks at the interior human, gathering data from it via artificial intelligence and combining it with painting to create a multilayered, intimate landscape.

The artists’ unleashed utopias rattle not only societal norms but also the purely profit-oriented use of new technologies. With their radical speculations, they open up new perspectives of our lives, our coexistence. Through their visions, they reinforce the values such as openness, diversity, and tolerance that should characterize our society now and in the future. And it is precisely in that where utopia lies.

The exhibition UNLEASHED UTOPIAS. Artistic Speculations about Today and Tomorrow in the Metaverse, produced by the VR ART PRIZE of the DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin, will be on display from September 9 through November 5, 2023, at the Haus am Lützowplatz. 

More information

ECHOES FROM THE FUTURE - Virtual Exhibition

Echoes From The Future

Speculative Creatures & Post-Human Botanicals

Sabrina Ratté, Floralia, 2021

Virtual Exhibition

MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada)

Duration: June 29 – September 27, 2023

Virtual Opening: June 29, 2023, 8 pm CEST

At: echoesfromthefuture.show

Finissage: Sept. 27, noon-2 pm Saska (Lunchtime-Closing), 8 -10 pm CEST (Afterwork-Closing)

Artists: Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes (CRI/CAN), Aviv Benn (ISR/UK), Laura Colmenares Guerra (COL/BE), Reiner Maria Matysik (DE), Sarah Oh-Mock (DE), Sabrina Ratté (CAN), Tamiko Thiel and /p (US/DE)

Curator: Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

Pre-recorded Artist Talks will be published throughout the exhibition period.

Disruptive human activity continues to threaten the Earth's ecological balances, eradicating biodiversity, and our planet’s shared resources. This digital exhibition highlights artists working across diverse media to preserve nature, reveal environmental devastation, and speculate on future life forms. Curator Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space) presents artists Aviv Benn (ISR/UK), Laura Colmenares Guerra (COL/BE), Reiner Maria Matysik (DE), Sarah Oh-Mock (DE), Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes (CAN), Sabrina Ratté (CAN), Tamiko Thiel (US/DE) in an immersive online exhibition. Echoes from the Future renders current environmental issues visible in virtual reality, inviting audiences into an immersive alternative future for hybrid lifeforms.

More information

EVOLVING KINETICS at Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen

Nicolas Sassoon, Prophets - Tanaga, 2023

EVOLVING KINETICS. Transformations of Kinetic Art in the Post-Digital Age

With works by: Kim Asendorf (DE), Banz & Bowinkel (DE), Armin Keplinger (DE), Rosa Menkmann (NL), Nicolas Sassoon (FR), Studio Above&Below (Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden) (UK), Robert Seidel (DE)

Curated by: Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Opening: March 10, 2023, 7 pm

Duration: March 10 – May 21, 2023

At: Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen

With digital media such as smartphones, tablets, or VR glasses, new possibilities of artistic practice and art experience arise. The digital work is subject to its own technical rules – independent of physical laws such as gravity. This leads to a new frame for art.

The artists in the exhibition investigate, expand, and change the (traditional) form of kinetic art by incorporating the digital. The works float freely in space, create an immersive environment, and break the rigid structures of the physical site. The focus is on the moment of movement. In the interrelation between work and technology, new dimensions of dynamics open up and are developed in a new way. Kim Asendorf, Rosa Menkman and Armin Keplinger create immersive spaces, which they digitally extend and are related to Op-Art. Their installations overcome the spatial limitations of the museum and thereby create a new form of reality. Banz & Bowinkel, on the other hand, present minimalist sculptures that, as virtual augmentations, make it possible to experience an immediate interrelationship between the digital and analog worlds. In a similar vein, Robert Seidel and Studio Above&Below place their immaterial works in the physical space, allowing a new perspective on kinetic sculpture. In contrast, Nicolas Sassoons's works dynamize the solid form of various volcanic blocks. He juxtaposes the organic material with the technological matter, creating an abstract moment of movement.

What unites all the works in the exhibition is the elemental role of the viewer in the process of the work’s emergence. Without the visitor, the kinetic moment – and thus the work itself – cannot unfold. Thus, the visitors are invited and called upon to put on the VR glasses, take the tablets in their hands, and actively enter the individual rooms in order to discover the different digital worlds.  EVOLVING KINETICS creates an experiential space of contemporary, digital art that enters into a dialogue with the collection of Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen.

Full exhibition text and more information about each artwork you will find here.

Accompanying Program:

Curator’s tour: April 14, 2023

Further events of the accompanying program will be announced on the website of Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen.

Valentina Peri curates DATA DATING DESIRE at Mo.Ca Brescia

DATA DATING DESIRE
Opening on September 23, 6 pm
September 23 - December 4, 2022
Mo.Ca, Brescia, Italy

Artists: !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Adam Basanta, Jonas Blume, Marco Cadioli, Elisa Giardina Papa, Tom Galle, John Yuyi & Moises Sanabria, Dani Ploeger, Molly Soda.

Curator: Valentina Peri

First time in Italy!
After Paris, London, Tel Aviv, Brussels and Geneva, a new iteration of my exhibition goes to Brescia, in the historical setting of Palazzo Martinengo Colleoni, a baroque building in the heart of the city.

DATA DATING DESIRE attempts to explore new directions in contemporary romance and map the unprecedented connections between desire, emotion, technology and economy in the post-pandemic world.

PROGRAM
Opening - September 23 from 6 to 9:30 pm
Sound Performance by Adam Basanta - September 23 at 7 pm
Talk "Love, Desire, Technology" - September 28 at 5 pm
Curator tour - October 1st at 5 pm

Produced and Promoted by Mo.Ca
Co-promoted by Fondazione Brescia Musei and Comune di Brescia
In collaboration with Avisco

More info about the exhibition and the program

SEED SYSTEMS - Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

SEED SYSTEMS

Speculative Ecologies in XR Art Today

Initiated by STYLY

Curated by Miriam Arbus (Sky Fine Foods) and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Artists: Alison Bennett (AUS) | Nicholas Delap (UK) | Matthew D. Gantt (US) | Mohsen Hazrati (IRN/DE) | Nadine Kolodziey (DE) | Lauren Moffatt (AUS/DE)

In cooperation with SOMA Berlin and Radiance

At: SOMA 300 Berlin, Eylauer Strasse 9, 10965 Berlin (DE) and online via STYLY

Duration: September 10 - 30, 2022

Opening: September 9, 2022, 6 - 10 pm

Closing event: September 30, 2022, 12-6 pm

Accompanying Event Schedule tba on Instagram >>> Follow @stylyglobal @peertospace @skyfinefoods @radiance_vr

In the age of the extractivist Anthropocene, nature is dominated by human impact. We built capitalistic structures by extracting and selling natural resources for our own benefit. The dramatic increase in CO2 emissions since the Industrial Revolution and the devastating effects of human activities on the global environment have profoundly changed the Earth system. Escalating climate disasters like wildfires, floodings or frost call for a change in overall behavior. The resulting environmental precarity underlines the need for new, innovative visions for the future. 

Following the idea of neo-ecologies, virtual technologies provoke new states of being, illustrating concepts for our future. Reformulating approaches to environmental questions, interactive Expanded Realities (XR) immerse us into speculative ecosystems. Divergent futures emerge as a digital garden, where growth is as inevitable as decay. The tensions of human impact are deeply rooted within the exploration of possibilities. In this discourse, humans’ inevitable depletion of resources is the critical object of consideration. 

Grappling with these topics, the XR art exhibition Seed Systems emerges as a collaborative cultivation emerges as. Six international artists use augmented and virtual realities to explore speculative approaches to future human-nature relationships, forming a spatial and sonic occurrence of growth and foliage. They unite their expertise in virtual world-building and plant knowledge, shaping alternative ecologies and biologies. The artworks create networks and systems of seeds as future concepts for environments. Activated in XR through computer-generated images (CGI), animation, point clouds and interactions, the digital biosphere – nourished by visions – grows as a space for meeting and reflection. In this speculative approach, new possibilities for action, care-taking, and reciprocity flourish, visualizing a necessary change in perspective.

 Alison Bennett considers Australian native flowers as celestial encounters by exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through today’s possibilities of expanded photography. Nicholas Delap examines histories of folklore and the nettle plant – a mysterious and overlooked plant whose medicinal qualities make it one of the most potent and widely available healing tools. Matthew D. Gantt interconnects responsive sound elements with the visual, engaging with Brian Eno’s notion of generative electronic music as bottom-up gardening – emergent structures flourish with no predicated finale. Mohsen Hazrati creates a virtual bioluminescence with a metaphorical approach to understanding wine as an alternative source of energy, which he considers in the context of Irianian culture. Nadine Kolodziey explores how to plant something digital and intangible in a physical space, while playfully questioning future interactions within our technologized environment. Lauren Moffatt establishes cycles of flourishing and decay in nature, examining how different virtual and physical ecosystems become linked by human movement and behavior.

Inspired by gardens that carefully construct spaces of experience and interaction, the exhibition considers how new media can be used to reimagine ecological systems and facilitate mindful, inclusive futures. Planting seeds of reflection and growth raises the question of what we can do at a small scale to initiate patterns for the greater system. Should this practice be considered rebellious, productive or promising? Can this artistic activism really contribute to a positive development of our planet’s ecology? How can the influence of humankind change for the better? 

Mohsen Hazrati - PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES

Mohsen Hazrati

PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES

Curated by Tina Sauerlaender

VIRTUAL OPENING
PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY
Thursday July 14, 2022, 6 - 8 pm CEST
With Live NFT Drop on the Tezos blockchain 
And introduction and artist talk at 7 pm CEST

LINK to the exhibition space: https://hubs.mozilla.com/RSeqeP8/PRISKA-PASQUER-VIRTUAL-GALLERY-MOHSEN-HAZRATI

Mohsen Hazrati’s work fuses new technologies with old traditions. The Iranian artist is interested in how literary forms come into existence, and the ways in which writing transmits meaning and value over centuries. Significance highly depends on the individual reader’s background, their cultural conditions, and the circumstances of their time. Words have an ever-changing connotation depending on the unique experience of every new person reading them. The meaning of words constantly transforms. Like the Phoenix, the legendary bird who rises anew from its own ashes, myths and narrations continue to exist and to transform in an eternal cycle.

In the exhibition, Mohsen Hazrati involves the visitors in the process of creating words and meanings. Along the way to the virtual gallery, visitors choose their avatars in the shape of letters from the Latin alphabet on a sheet of paper. In this way, each visitor embodies a letter and represents its meaning. In a mirror at the PRISKA PASQUER Virtual Gallery, they encounter themselves and other avatars and they jointly create new words. Though it appears as a mirror, it is actually a stream being recorded by the budgerigar bird sitting beside it. In Iranian culture, the budgerigar bird, perched on the hand of its owner, picks a written note out of a stack of cards containing quotes from the famous Shirazi poet Hafiz. For its reader, the text functions as a divination. This method of telling the future or finding answers through randomly chosen text passages is called bibliomancy. It posits that there is a mystic connection between the individual and the text in that moment of selection, since the individual will interpret the text according to their needs and wishes. Instead of picking paper notes, the budgerigar bird in Hazrati’s installation draws its inspiration from a huge PDF document, thus symbolizing today’s digital books and their corresponding knowledge.

The artist liberates the gallery from its grounded existence and turns it into a free-floating place in the sky. A majestic bird hovers above the gallery. The winged giant not only evokes the Phoenix, but also the Persian Simurgh, the king of the birds, which serves as a symbol for the self-knowledge that can only be reached when adhering to virtues like kindness or benevolence. The bird’s appearance reflects the colors of its surroundings and therefore metaphorically encompasses the whole space. Circling back to the idea of our avatars creating words from letters, the mystic bird symbolizes that not a single letter or person is of too much significance. Together, we create, shape, and constantly transform our own narratives.

The giant bird ("TayAR") is commissioned by Grafikens Hus as part of the app Protoworld.

DIGITAL FUTURES Panel Talk

July 7th, 2022

The Digital Futures panelists will discuss and highlight the issues related to the intersection of digital and performance art.

Speakers:

Dr. Christiane Paul, New York, Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art | Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School

Dr. Julie Nagam, Winnipeg, Director Nuit Blanche Toronto | Glam Collective

Tina Sauerlaender, Berlin, Artistic Director VR ART PRIZE | Co-Founder peer to space | Founder SALOON Berlin

Peggy Schoenegge, Berlin Senior Curator | peer to space

Dr. Francesca Albrezzi, L.A, University of California Los Angeles

Rah Eleh, Toronto, Moderator and Artist

We would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for their support. In addition, we would like to thank our partners at the European Cultural Centre Performance, European Cultural Centre Italy and the Aabijijiwan New Media Lab.

July 7, 2022 from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM CEST

https://zoom.us/j/96776275337?pwd=MHpIa2JOQ1ZLdVg3K3JSN21tK2k0dz09

Passcode: 573857

DEEP TALK N.1: PARCOUR – Work the Engine with Peggy Schoenegge

Monday, May 30, 2022, 8 pm at Favorit Bar, Munich

 DEEP TALK N.1: PARCOUR – Work the Engine

Peggy Schoenegge moderates the artist talk with Barbara Herold and Kim Twiddle as part of the solo show and premier of the VR experience PARCOUR at Rosa Stern Space in Munich, running from May 25 to June 22, 2022.

In her work, Barbara Herold explores playful systems in the threshold space of the physical and the digital. In collaboration with e-composer Kim Twiddle, Barbara Herold developed the colour-form-music composer PARCOUR, a VR experiment on Neues Sehen (according to W. Benjamin). Through optical abstraction, stereoscopic overlays and interactive sound modulation, retro video game landscapes become an aesthetic sensual and new consciousness experience. 

Find further information here.

SKIN DEEP - Solo Show of Jonas Blume, curated by Tina Sauerlaender

SKIN DEEP

Solo Exhibition of Jonas Blume

Jonas Blume, Yes. (Double David), 2022, installation, two Dibond color prints behind acrylic glass, 80 x 180 cm

Curated by Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

At SCOPE BLN, Lübecker Str. 43, 10559 Berlin

April 29 – May 27, 2022

Friday, April 29, 6 – 22 pm: Opening

Skin defines the boundaries of our physical bodies and constitutes the interface for interaction with the world. Artist Jonas Blume uses his skin as medium to reflect on the relationship between reality and image worlds. In his works, skin appears in a liminal state oscillating between flat surface texture and three-dimensional volume, as a membrane between physical state and mediated hyperreality. Based on photographs, Jonas Blume transfers his skin to a variety of mediums and materials to create an enhanced human physicality. In his images, videos, sculptures, and installations he distorts, extends, rearranges, and liquifies his appearance. Blume’s works herald the new age of body consciousness transforming bodies into consumable images. Skin becomes a political canvas because it constitutes the inalienable individual capital that everyone may maximally exploit to generate visibility within the attention economy.

Accompanying Program: 

Thursday, May 5, 17:30 - 19:30h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present

Afterwards 20 - 22h: LIGHT YEAR 85 screening >> Urban Algorithms - videos by Dennis Rudolph, Daniel Molnar, Jung Soo Cho, Vasilena Gankovska and Anne Glassner, curated by Boris Kostadinov

Monday, May 9, 6 pm CEST (online, in English): Artist Talk of Jonas Blume with Dr. Stephan Schwingeler, professor for Media Studies at HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts, author of the book Kunstwerk Computerspiel – Digitale Spiele als künstlerisches Material (transcript, 2014) - (Registration by email via tina@peertospace.eu)

Sunday, May 15, 14 - 16h: Opening Hours - Artist and curator are present

Friday May 20, 18h: Curator’s Tour and Artist Talk with Jonas Blume and Tina Sauerlaender 

Friday, May, 27, 16 – 20 h: Finissage

YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW IN THE METAVERSE - Panel Discussion

The University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute presents
YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW IN THE METAVERSE
Thursday, February 17, 1-2:30pm EST / 19-20:30h CET
Via Zoom (< Link)

This panel convenes a group of leading international artists and curators working in online spaces in a variety of modalities, including net art, video/animation, game development, VR, XR and the NFT-adjacent art community. The speakers will briefly introduce their own practice and participate in a roundtable discussion that reflects critically on the present concept of the "metaverse," from creative, art historical, and socio-politically-informed perspectives. The conversation will seek to chip away at some of the hype and corporately co-opted buzzwords clouding the present discourse in order to underscore some important legacies and trace a path for the trajectory of the most compelling work in the metaverse.

Panelists:
LaTurbo Avedon, Artist/Avatar
Yvette Granata, Artist, Digital Studies Institute faculty, Assistant Professor, Dept of Film, TV & Media, University of Michigan
Auriea Harvey, Artist, Professor of Games, Kunsthochschule Kassel
Tina Sauerlaender, Director & Head Curator, Peer to Space
Moderator: Marisa Olson, Artist, Executive Director, Digital Studies Institute

Gloria Aino Grzywatz curates HORIZONS

Horizons

Exhibition of the Eastern European Network Program @ Akademie Schloss Solitude
Curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz

Works by the artists: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefán, András Blazsek, Krasimira Butseva, Barbara Gryka, Jasmina Hanf & Karolina Kaltschnee, Luana Lojić

Digital opening event on Thursday, December 9, 2021, 7:30 – 8:15 pm CET (via Zoom)

Please register with: register@akademie-solitude.de

»Horizons« is an open-format exhibition series which gives revealing insights into the artistic productions of fellowship holders of the Akademie Schloss Solitude. The first part of this new exhibition series is dedicated to Akademie Schloss Solitude’s Eastern European network, which focuses on an exchange with independent art scenes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland and Hungary.The open format is intended to make artistic creative processes visible and give both fellowship holders and visitors the opportunity to exchange ideas. All visitors are warmly invited to familiarize themselves with new artistic perspectives and broaden their horizons.

Mara-Johanna Kölmel curates The End Begins At The Leaf

The End Begins at the Leaf brings Antonio Tarsis' and Anderson Borba's work into artistic dialogue. Curated by peer to space associate director Mara-Johanna Kölmel, the show invites visitors to dive into an immersive environment that begins and ends at a leaf.

Image © João Atala

Systematic deforestation alongside illicit mining operations in the Amazon pose a major threat to Brazil’s complex ecosystems. With the current administration supporting deforestation and mining in areas formally protected by law, land has been stripped of vegetation, waterways have been polluted, and the protection of human rights and the environment have been undermined. The works in the exhibition approach this devastating constellation through a poetic reflection on materials and processes that relate to these disputed territories.

The leaf serves as an aesthetic departure point and thinking device through which contested issues are teased out. The End Begins at the Leaf thereby explores larger interrelations that range from the exploitation of land and people to the transformation of natural resources into commodities and their circulation in a global market economy. Is this how the end begins?

Presented by Akademie Schloss Solitude, Mauro Mattei & BeAdvisors

Venue: 9 French Place, Shoreditch, London, E1 6JB

Exhibition Info: 09 December, 2021 - 15 January, 2022

Private View: 09 December, 5-9pm

Opening hours: Tues. to Frid. 2pm-6pm and Sat./Sun. 12pm-6pm / Closed:  23 - 26 Dec & 31 Dec - 2 Jan.

Public Programme: Sunday, December 12, 2021

3pm: Artists and curator-led exhibition tour of The End Begins at the Leaf
4pm: Panel discussion: Choreographies of Transformation - The rainforest and beyond 

Please register here

RISE OF GIANTS - Banz and Bowinkel - PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

RISE OF GIANTS

Artists: Banz & Bowinkel

Curator: Tina Sauerlaender (peer to space)

Opening: Thursday, November 25, 2021, 6 - 8 pm CET

Here at PRISKA PASQUER VIRTUAL GALLERY

Accompanying Program:
InstaLive Artist Talk: Dec 2, 2021, 6 pm CET
Virtual Happy Hour Drop Party, Jan 20, 2022, 6-8 pm CET
Soft Opening in Cologne at PRISKA PASQUER Gallery, Saturday, January 29, 12 - 6 pm

The invisible bots and algorithms which govern our online behavior and collect our data every day, adopt visual forms in the series Bots by the artist duo Banz & Bowinkel. They occupy the virtual world of the PRISKA PASQUER gallery as giant cyborgs. The island, transformed into an all-encompassing coordinate system, becomes a symbol for the Internet. As visitors, we find ourselves in the middle of an experimental field of algorithms.

The Internet is a training ground for artificial intelligence to study, evaluate, and learn to anticipate human behavior. In doing so, they make our lives easier as we use map apps, talk to Alexa, or when Siri sets our alarm clock. Their knowledge helps drive our connection to technology and keeps it running as frictionless as possible. In the 1990s, we deliberately dialed into the Internet using routers and now we are connected to the internet automatically. We still push buttons and give voice commands today, but tomorrow we will control our actions with eye movements, hand movements, or even brain waves. The blurring of the boundary between humans and technology results in our gradual transformation into a technological giant. The visitors as cyborgs in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery also attain formidable sizes. The gallery lies at their feet like Lilliput, the fictional island in Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels.

Banz and Bowinkel's series Primitives also addresses the issue of scale in virtual reality. Primitives are simple basic graphical forms that are used as a foundation for the creation of more complex structures. Triangles, polygons or point clouds are important primitive forms for digital 3D objects. These shapes have no size and are arbitrarily scalable without loss of quality, since their existence is defined by the relationship of the individual parts to each other. Size is relative here as well, just like in the PRISKA PASQUER virtual gallery. Banz and Bowinkel's Primitives play with the various proportions of size that exist in the gallery space. 

With a virtual reality headset, we have the opportunity to experience what is denied to us on the computer screen. We dive into the dimensions of virtual space and experience a new perspective. With ease, we fly over the miniature version of the virtual gallery and explore the gigantic bots and primitives. The exact size of our own avatars is unclear. However, thanks to an increasingly frictionless connection with technology, we too grow into cyborg giants with extraordinary powers.

SWIPE RIGHT! Data Dating Desire curated by Valentina Peri

SWIPE RIGHT! Data Dating Desire

Curated by: Valentina Peri

Venue: iMAL Brussels

Running until: Oct 22, 2021 - Jan 9, 2022

With works by !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Adam Basanta, Crosslucid, Dries Depoorter, Elisa Giardina Papa, Tom Galle, John Yuyi & Moises Sanabria, Noemi Iglesias, Lancel/Maat, Joana Moll, Ingo Niermann & The Army Of Love, Eva Ostrowska, Dani Ploeger, Addie Wagenknecht & Pablo Garcia

What does it mean to love in the digital age? How are digital interfaces reshaping our personal relationships? What do new technologies imply for the future of the romantic sphere? How do screens affect our sexual intimacy and our desire for connection?

In terms of romance and intimacy, Internet and smartphones have generated new complexities that we are still trying to figure out. All these phenomena became hot-button in March 2020, when a global pandemic placed millions of people under total lockdown, enforcing to reconfigure most of social activities online and in a technology-mediated form. From online working to online partying, humans all over the planet tried to play with the discontents of social distancing, and to live the no-contact reality as the new normal.

This forced self-isolation and touch-less condition proved to be a significant driver for many people to move their romantic lives into the digital realm, inspiring new ways of courting, dating and catching, for both confirmed and novice users.

By bringing together the work of several international artists, the exhibition SWIPE RIGHT! Data, Dating, Desire attempts to explore new directions in contemporary romance and map the unprecedented connections between desire, emotion, technology, and economy in the post-pandemic world.

Further Information

Installationshots, 2021 by Isabelle Arthuis

Peggy Schoenegge participates in the XRcon

NextReality Hamburg connects virtual and real worlds, shares knowledge about XR and meet professionals as well as enthusiasts! In November 2021 they present the very first nextReality.Conference, the XRcon.

Talk by Peggy Schoenegge: November 12, 2021, 1:45 pm CET

Experience insightful talks, key sessions and panel discussions. XRcon covers the topics of virtual and augmented reality from the academic and tech world to the business world with relevant use cases. peer to space’s senior curator and project manager Peggy Schoenegge will give a talk on virtual art exhibitions.

The XRcon will take place completely online on the platform Bizzlogic.

More information

peer to space launches Virtual Art Space with inaugural show (Im)Material Matter

With its Virtual Art Space, peer to space further develops the concept of their previous online exhibitions. In the virtual exhibition space on the open source platform Mozilla Hubs. With the Virtual Art Space, peer to space establishes a new presentation format beyond the white cube to fully embrace the potential of the virtual realm independent from physical limitations. The open and dynamic structure of the floating islands allows to explore and engage with new forms of digital curating.

Spatial Design by Mohsen Hazrati

(IM)MATERIAL MATTER

Curated by Peggy Schoenegge

With works by Banz & Bowinkel, Entangled Others (Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick), Mohsen Hazrati, Armin Keplinger, Nadine Kolodziey, Lauren Moffatt, Chiara Passa, Sabrina Ratté, Dagmar Schürrer

 Opening & Launch: Oct 28, 2021, 7 pm (CET)

Link: hubs.mozilla.com/owtpwaD/im-material-matter

(Im)Material Matter is dedicated to digital sculptures, their material and matter. The works highlight the potential of sculptural artworks in the virtual realm. Beyond the restrictions of physicality, sculptures take on new shapes and forms. The sculptural works float in the exhibition space. They do not need a bottom or plinth to stand on. This positioning makes them perceptible and accessible from every conceivable viewpoint, even from below and above. Their size can be freely determined. The 3D shapes of the sculptures are not static, but dynamic. Some consist of several parts moving freely in space. How the works are installed in the virtual art space would not be possible in the physical and creates a new approach to sculptures. As a result, they shift the parameters of the traditional definition of sculpture by deconstructing its solid matter. The constitution of the space, the textures of the void as well as the shape of the sculptures simulate materiality. Their surfaces are reminiscent of physical material like metal, plastic, or clay. They hyper realistically allude to tangible materials. In the exhibition, the sculptures become permeable. Visitors can pass through and enter the inner sphere of the artwork. The dissolution of physical boundaries once again reveals the distinctive conditions of the virtual. The works oscillate between the material and immaterial, defining a matter of virtual materiality.

With kind support by Stiftung Kunstfonds | NEUSTART KULTUR

Exhibition Catalog of RESONANT REALITIES is out !

The exhibition RESONANT REALITIES- Exhibition of the VR ART PRIZE by DKB in Cooperation with CAA Berlin took place from April 16 to July 4, 2021 at Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin and showed the VR works and installations of the grant winners of the VR ART PRIZE, Banz & Bowinkel, Evelyn Bencicova, Patricia Detmering, Armin Keplinger and Lauren Moffatt, and was curated by Tina Sauerlaender Artistic Director of the VR ART PRIZE.

>> Learn more about the exhibition here <<

>> Learn more about the VR ART PRIZE here <<

>> Download the catalog here <<

Peggy Schoenegge participates at Female Filmmakers Festival Berlin (FFFB)

IRL at The Factory and online

Fri, October 8, 2021, 6 - 7 pm

The Female Filmmakers Festival Berlin (FFFB) was created to support up and coming female talents from different ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, who have a unique story to tell. The annual five-day film event features screenings of international short & feature films of all genres as well as a hand-picked selection of music videos, panels, networking sessions and more. Peggy Schoenegge is part of the AR/VR panel: The Future of Filmmaking & Mixed Media together with Gerda Leopold (Amilux Filmporduktion), Kathrin Brunner (Myndstorm Productions Berlin) and Maria Courtial (Faber Courtial). The panel is moderated by Jewell Sparks (Female Filmmakers Festival Berlin / BITHOUSE GROUP) 

Full program and more information

PARADOXICAL OBJECTS - Video Sculpture Art From 1968 To Today

Curated by Sue Bachmeier and Peggy Schoenegge (peer to space)

Web design by Camilla Murgia

Release date: September 24, 2021, 9 am CET

With works by Matej Al-Ali & Tomáš Moravec, William Anastasi, Emmanuel van der Auwera, Benton C Bainbridge, Frank Balve, Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, Kelsey S Brewer, Amy Cannestra, Yvon Chabrowski, James H. Connolly, Kevin Cooley, D’arcy Darilmaz, Manja Ebert, Daniel Everett, Exonemo, Stefano Fake, Ornella Fieres, Carla Gannis, James Alec Hardy, Claudia Hart, Faith Holland, Annebarbe Kau, Philipp Madörin, Marck, Alex May, Martina Menegon, Sali Muller, Juan Obando, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Monica Panzarino, Taezoo Park, Björn Perborg, René Radomsky, Allison Maria Rodriguez, Ulrike Rosenbach, Nicolas Sassoon, Ira Schneider, Sid and Geri, Ivonne Thein, Joan Truckenbrod, Maria Vedder, Andy Vible, Wolf Vostell, Peter Welz, Xuan Ye

PARADOXICAL OBJECTS - Video Sculpture Art From 1968 To Today

Peer to space’s exhibition PARADOXICAL OBJECTS is dedicated to this special construct that combines video and sculpture, embracing the temporality and dynamic of video and the static nature of the screen. Fourty-six time-based works by international artists from 1969 to today highlights the technological development and variety of artistic uses of video sculptures over the last decades. Whether closed-circuit, single or multi-channel, screens create a physical entity to display of moving images. The exhibition’s artists explore the possibilities and conditions of this disparate unity.

Full exhibition text and exhibition at: paradoxical-objects.net

AUGMENTED SPECIES - Invasive Sculptures in Hybrid Ecologies

#augmentedspecies
Opening: Sept. 10, 2021, 3 pm local time
MoMA Sculpture Garden, New York

Works by Sofia Crespo & Feileacan McCormick, Carla Gannis, Joanna Hoffmann, Tamiko Thiel
Curated by Tina Sauerlaender and Ursula Ströbele
Organized and developed by MoMAR (Damjanski, David Lobser, Monique Baltzer, Vicky Leung)

AUGMENTED SPECIES
Invasive Sculptures in Hybrid Ecologies

Exhibition App
>> Click here for the iOS version <<
>> Click here for the Android version <<
Please download and Install the app before you visit the exhibition.

An unauthorized international Touring Exhibition of AR sculptures in Museums and Sculptural Gardens worldwide.
The relationship between the arts and what has been called ‘nature‘ as a historic, cultural and scientific concept, has undergone some major shifts. Various theories of post-(human)nature and eco-fiction have become more and more influential during the last decades as is well-known. The term ‘nature‘ itself has been called into question. Ecological theorists, such as Timothy Morton think that we actually live in a post-natural age, proclaiming ecology without nature. Donna Haraway describes entangled multispecies histories, using the term natureculture. These theories include new ways of thinking about established hierarchies, agency and power, as well as difference and ontology. Leaving behind established dualisms, the exhibition Augmented Species. Invasive Sculptures in Hybrid Ecologies aims to present four contemporary artistic positions working in the field of sculpture, cyber ecology, and eco fiction: Sofia Crespo & Feileacan McCormick, Carla Gannis, Joanna Hoffmann, and Tamiko Thiel. They all deal with new technologies and forms of display, thus developing a site-specific sculptural aesthetics of the living, along with expanded possibilities of the sculptural in the digital age. The concept of MoMAR, an unauthorized non-profit gallery, is to democratize physical exhibition spaces, museums, and the curation of art within them. The exhibition occupies prestigious museum spaces around the world to connect the concept of eco-fictional shifts to said spaces. This process reestablishes what is called the canon of (art) history while invading physical locations with today’s technological possibilities, questioning institutions and their hierarchies, structures and programmes. Read the full text here

Openings
Further Venues
Each from 4 pm local time
September 17: Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany // Kunstareal, Munich, Germany // Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
September 24: Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, Hammer Museum, LA, USA // Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK // FRAC, Marseille, France
October 1: Centrum Rzeźby Polskiej w Orońsku (Center of Polish Sculpture), Poland // Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia
October 8: Kröller Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands // Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium
October 15: Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa // Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
October 22: Louisana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark // Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
October 29: Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido, Japan // National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, Mexico
November 5 to November 30: Open 24/7 globally! End of all exhibitions: November 30, 2021

More information: momar.gallery

Press kit

Image credits (l to r): Sofia Crespo & Feileacan McCormick, Tamiko Thiel, Carla Gannis, Joanna Hoffmann