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

Online Symposium on Sculpture in the (Post) Digital Age

THE SCULPTURAL IN THE (POST) DIGITAL AGE

May 26 and 27, 2021 (Full Program here)

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Digital technologies have profoundly impacted the arts by expanding the field of sculpture. A number of theoretical approaches discuss the implications of the so-called 'Aesthetics of the Digital', referring, above all, to screen-based phenomena. Art history, however, continues to pay little attention to sculptural works that are conceived and ‚materialized‘ using digital technologies. This is surprising given that computers became an artistic medium in the 1950s, CNC technology was used as early as the 1960s, and 3D scanning and printing processes came to prominence in the 1980s. The symposium aims to discuss current research perspectives on historical and contemporary sculptural phenomena, in particular, how digital technologies re-configure the understanding of sculpture and the sculptural.

The following questions serve as guides for the topics that will be discussed:

How are concepts of monumentality and site-specificity altered, when sculptures easily circulate as files online and can be 3D printed at any time? If artists now model their sculptures with software, how can we make sense of their spatiality, plasticity and materiality? When an object can no longer be grasped in a tactile sense, which modes of perception are addressed? How can we think of an object that arises from an algorithm and appears as pixels on a screen without sharing the same spatial conditions as the viewer? How do we experience objects that only become visible through an app? What ontological status do such computer-aided works possess that can be experienced both physically (for example 3D printing) and virtually (on screen)? How can we interpret concepts of authorship in times of digital coproduction and artificial intelligence? Which forms of participation or interaction does the respective interface address? How does this experience affect the "aesthetic border”?

Through systematic, interdisciplinary and historical examination, the symposium will contribute to discussions on the sculptural in the (post-) digital age with the goal of advancing reflections on the artistic medium for our technological present.

Conception
Ursula Ströbele (Study Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Central Institute for Art History, Munich) and Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Institute for Art History and Philosophy, Leuphana University, Lüneburg).

Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by Mara-Johanna Koelmel

Online-Exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters curated by peer to space Associate Director & Curator Mara-Johanna Koelmel for Akademie Schloss Solitude.

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With Nora Al-Badri, Johanna Bruckner, Rasheedah Phillips (Black Quantum Futurism), Jan Nikolai Nelles, Miriam Simun, Natasha Tontey

On view: Technische Sammlungen Dresden and Online

The physical opening at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden will be set according to the Saxon Corona Protection Ordinance. Currently, the Technische Sammlungen Dresden are closed.

Online-Opening March 4th at 7 PM. More information here.

The online exhibition Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters brings together the works of six artists and former Akademie Schloss Solitude fellows. Their contributions question and critically engage with heteronormative worldviews around consciousness research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self-experience.

Like a networked mind, the show unfolds amid several nodes of access by expanding from its own online space to the show Mind Over Matter at the Technische Sammlungen Dresden. As such, the works explore the concerns of the exhibition curated by Netzwerk Medien Kunst Dresden from a speculative, feminist, and decolonial point of view.

In dialogue with Mind over Matter, the artistic interventions speak about mechanisms of power, exclusion, and oppression encoded into the very concepts underpinning digital technologies. Yet they equally mobilize the digital medium to propose alternative visions for shared futures that are not exclusively white or Western.

The artists of Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters probe the power of a collective intelligence that reaches from the enhanced to the monstrous, the ancestral to the futurist, the molecular to the planetary, and from the human to the non-human. With creativity and visionary fuel, they unlock the digital realm as a space that comes with response-ability – the ability to respond to its architectures of power and to think with, to care for those it chooses to forget, erase, and leave behind.

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Online Space by parmon

Design by Stephan Thiel and Anne Lippert
Exhibition architecture by Atelier Adhoc Arhitectura (George Marinescu & Maria Daria Oancea)

The hybrid exhibition project Molecular Minds // Monstrous Matters is part of the exhibition Mind over Matter of the Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden and takes place in cooperation with Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Supported by: The Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and the Ministry of Research, Science and the Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg.
Cooperation partner: Netzwerk | Medien | Kunst Dresden of friendsofDresdenContemporaryArt e.V. (DCA) in cooperation with the  Digital Solitude program of Akademie Schloss Solitude

Mara Johanna-Kolmel's and Tina Sauerlaender's show for Kara Agora

Bunch of Kunst in Quarantine // Paradox Paradise

Artists: Uli Ap (UK), Katharina Arndt (DE), Lara Verena Bellenghi (AT), Hannah Bohnen (DE), Marta de la Figuera (ESP), Ornella Fieres (DE), Bettina Funke (DE), Sabine Funke & Karlheinz Bux (DE), Fabian Hesse (DE) & Mitra Wakil (AFG), Helena Hunter (UK), Dorien Lantin (DE) & Robert Hecht (DE), Marie-Eve Levasseur (CAN/DE), Martina Menegon (IT/AT), Filippo Minelli (IT), Chiara Passa (IT), Agnese Sanvito (IT), Susan Supercharged (US/UK), Thomas Teurlai (FR), Miloš Trakilovic (BIH/NL)

Curated by Mara-Johanna Kolmel and Tina Sauerlaender 

Opening: October 8, 2020, 7 to 9.30 pm CET

Bunch of Kunst in Quarantine // Paradox Paradise is a virtual exhibition curated by Mara-Johanna Kolmel and Tina Sauerlaender. It turns its lens on artistic production in times of Corona and poses the question of how visual art - in the context of social distancing, national demarcation, domestic retreat, economic downturn, rising nationalism and encompassing surveillance - can open up alternative paths for reflection, transformation and solidarity. As such, Paradox Paradise symbolizes the state of living between the extremes unfolding between physical and the digital worlds. The exhibition at Kara Agora on Mozilla Hubs is a new iteration of Mara-Johanna Kolmel’s open call Instagram exhibition Bunch of Kunst in Quarantine // Reflections On The Viral Vacuum. This edition presents selected European artists from the first edition who have remodeled their artworks especially for the virtual exhibition space.

Further Information