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

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. 

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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.

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

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.

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

SIGHT + SOUND International Digital Art Festival curated by Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender

Eastern Bloc presents its 11th edition of SIGHT + SOUND FESTIVAL virtually this summer.

Some Universe : Internet Spaces in a Postdigital World

June 29 to August 31st, 2021

Sight and Sound.jpg

At the forefront of the experimental digital art scene in Quebec since 2007, Eastern Bloc presents the 11th edition of the SIGHT + SOUND International Digital Art Festival this summer. Titled Some Universe : Internet Spaces in a Postdigital World, this year’s festival will be held completely online between June 29th and August 31st. Running for two months, the audience will have the opportunity to participate in Eastern Bloc’s main annual event and join the reflections of 16 artists from Canada and abroad. 

The online exhibition will take place on the purpose build website [www.sightandsound.online] and access will be free, however the audience will be encouraged to make a suggested donation to support Eastern Bloc’s mandate of promoting emerging artists - with all proceeds going towards funding the artist fee’s of the next edition of SIGHT + SOUND Festival, in 2022. 

The 2021 edition of SIGHT + SOUND Festival takes advantage of the immobility we have all been forced into to propose a reflection about the aesthetics and politics of space and representation. Curated by Erandy Vergara and Tina Sauerlaender, the artworks help us imagine and speculate on what “space” really means in a post-internet and post-pandemic world. The exhibition invites online users to delve into the worlds produced by contemporary artists, provoking us to think about what kind of spaces we want to inhabit in the years to come. The curators selected net art, videos, and videogames exploring spaces beyond perspective and cartesian referentes. The artists move away from realism, or engage with it critically. They ask questions, not attempting to provide linear solutions. Most of all, they virtually hold the visitors’ hands during immersive, multidimensional experiences to reconfigure the “fourth wall” to which we are mostly submitted to during our day to day lives facing flat screens. 

The title of the 11th edition of SIGHT + SOUND Festival paraphrases Olia Lialina’s Some Universe (2002), a link-free site inspired by the popular star backgrounds on the early web. Like many of Lialina’s works, this net art piece functions as an archive of the aesthetics and vernacular roots of the internet. I like the vagueness and unpretentiousness implied in the title of Lialina’s piece. But I admire it even more for its archival impulse: to create it the artist extracted as many outer space backgrounds she could find on the web in 2002. The evocation of the infinite universe and the stars, which often stand for the future also resonates with this curatorship.

Participating Artists: AAA Collective (AU; AR; РФ/; DE; US; FR); Banz & Bowinkel (DE); Ronnie Clarke (CA); Mara Eagle (US/CA); Anna Eyler – Nicolas Lapointe (CA); Philippe Pasquier and Miles Thorogood (CA), Jiwon Ham (KR/ US); JakyuNG Lee (KR/ US); Olia Lialina (РФ/DE); Frances Adair McKenzie and Alisha Piercy (CA); Fallon Simard – Amery Sandford (CA); Timothy Thomasson

More information: sightandsound.online

Tina Sauerlaender at AAMC panel on Reimagining Art in Virtual Realms

Reimagining art in Virtual Realms

A discussion on digital advancement and ways virtual realms can be used to reimagine exhibitions and social experiences.

> Watch panel here

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As art organizations work towards becoming more digitally advanced many are turning to virtual, augmented, and extended reality to leverage technology engaging audiences. This webinar brings both international curators and artists into dialogue to discuss ways virtual realms can be used to reimagine exhibitions and social experiences, as well as reconsider the role of the spectator. Panelists will also address issues of collecting, conserving, and DEAI within the context of VR, AR, and XR.

Speakers:

Michael Kam Barngrover, XR Researcher / Developer, Koç University KARMA Lab

Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Creative Director / Artist, Digital Museum of Digital Art (DiMoDA)

Tina Sauerlaender, Director & Head Curator, peer to space

Tamiko Thiel, artist

Julie Walsh, Independent Curator of Digital Art, Walsh Projects; Moderator

Watch panel here

New Online Screening Series PARS PRO TOTO by peer to space

Ora Ruven, Home Of, 2020, (video still), (c) the artist

Ora Ruven, Home Of, 2020, (video still), (c) the artist

Pars Pro Toto is peer to space’s online series showcasing video art works which focus on very personal stories narrated by the artist or by the protagonist. The works are embedded in a thematic context of cultural, social, political, or environmental issues. A new iteration focusing on a further topic will be released bimonthly. 

Pars Pro Toto creates a digital space for users to be silent observers and to simultaneously witness the social complexity of the world. By discovering artworks based on individual experiences yet presented in a broader context, the series demonstrates how the personal symbolizes a part of the whole, a pars pro toto. The personal story seen as an extract of an overall reality becomes visible and fits into the mosaic of the collective experience. Exploring larger issues through the individual lens activates awareness within the viewers. This leads to a deeper and more empathetic understanding of today’s global social conditions. The series promotes the importance of freedom of expression and the necessity of providing a voice for everyone as a basis for a caring and participatory society. 

The first iteration of Pars Pro Toto, THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL, curated by Gloria Aino Grzywatz and Tina Sauerlaender deals with the political and social conditions impacting individual lives. The stories told by artists Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Lizza May David & Claudia Liebelt, JR and Ora Ruven consider the influence of the power of the state authorities, of war, exclusion, of discrimination of minorities. They reveal arbitrary political decisions and who is seen and who is not. Their stories take place in different places at different times, yet they show how the reciprocity of personal conditions and an individuals’ values inherited through the system in which they were born affect their path in  life. The rallying cry “The Personal Is Political” echoes in their works as well as the overall motto of the screening series, Pars Pro Toto. It was used as a slogan during the student movement and second wave feminism in the 1960s, which is why this screening especially highlights stories of women. THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL is online from May 1 until June 30, 2020

Visit the first iteration of PARS PRO TOTO - THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL - here.