Kempinski, 2007. Video installation. Artist : Neil Beloufa
Common Task (Mali), 2008. Photographic documentation of an action by Wieslaw Niedzwiecki. Artist : Pawel Althamer
The spaceship Icarus13, view from the Chicala Island, Luanda, 2007. Digital Chromogenic Print on matt paper.
Astronomy Observatory, Namibe Desert, 2007. Digital Chromogenic Print on matt paper.
Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction surveys the recent tendency for artists and filmmakers to apply the forms and concerns of science fiction to narratives situated in the African continent. It considers the complex undercurrents for this occurrence in art today, and posits other and possible realities existing simultaneously, via careful re-orientations of tense; elevating the need for vigilance towards the present and future over a concern for the past.
Africa has had a rare yet distinct place in popular science-fiction, from the opening scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey, depicting the mysterious appearance of a black monolith in the cradle of civilization, to the recent success of Neill Blomkamp’s debut movie District 9, a multi-layered allegory on South Africa’s recent internal and external tensions. Imagining a new space-time to the typical “third worldist” representations of the African continent, caught in a perpetual state of crisis, the works in Superpower project an alternative landscape of possibilities.
Trailer For PUMZI a Short film Produced By Inspired Minority and Writer/Director: Wanuri Kahui and Producers: Simon Hansen, Hannah Slezacek and Amira Quinlan.
On February 10th, 2012, the President of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Serhiy Kvit banned “The Ukrainian Body”, an exhibition that explores the issues of corporality in contemporary Ukrainian society. The entrance to the gallery is now locked. Serhiy Kvit explained his decision in the following way: “It’s not an exhibition, it’s shit”.
After the act of censorship concerning the exhibition «Ukrainian Body», which drew a wide response in the Ukrainian and foreign media, the President of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Serhiy Kvit has initiated a number of bureaucratic restrictions against the VCRC as the organizers of the exhibition. On February 23rd the Academic Council’s decision stopped the activities of VCRC. The governing body of NaUKMA were exasperated by the public attention and the condemnation of censorship at the ‘most democratic’ university. As a result of the administration’s sanctions, the work of Visual Culture Research Center is no longer possible.
Do not zoom-in these images by Jakuchu. Go see the “Colorful Realm of Living Beings” exhibition in Washington, and slow down your metabolism as you closely experience these detailed vertical silk scrolls.
Schedule: National Gallery of Art, March 30–April 29, 2012
The Abramović Method was born from the artist’s reflections on three major performances from the last decade: The House With the Ocean View (2002), Seven Easy Pieces (2005) and The Artist is Present (2010). These performances left a deep imprint on Abramović’s perception of her work in relation to the public.
“In my experience, as developed in a career of over 40 years, I have arrived at the conclusion that the public plays a very important and indeed crucial role in performance,” she explains. “The performance has no meaning without the public because, as Duchamp said, it is the public that completes the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that public and performer are not only complementary but almost inseparable.”
The PAC in Milan is the venue chosen by Marina Abramović to host her eagerly awaited new body of work, entitled The Abramović Method. This is the first major museum exhibition premiering new works since her groundbreaking retrospective in 2010 at the MoMA, New York. The Abramović Method will be on view at the PAC from March 21 through June 10, 2012.
Propulsion Paintings is part of Evan Roth’s exhibition, Welcome to Detroit. This show will feature nearly all-new work, much of it made during his residency. The work follows his core conceptual framework of appropriating popular culture and combining it with a hacker’s philosophy to highlight how small shifts in visualization can allow us to see our environment with new eyes, whether online, at home, in the city or at the airport. His work acts as both a mirror and vault to contemporary society, creating work that reflects and withstands a world of rapid advancements in computing power, changing screen resolution and repainted city walls.
Last Days of the Arctic: a moving and insightful photographic portrait of a disappearing landscape and the Inuit people who inhabit it, by celebrated photojournalist Ragnar Axelsson.
Inspired by the fast – diminishing way of life of communities dependent on nature and the land around them for survival, Axelsson presents us with a breathtaking introduction to a life of Greenlandic hunters in one of the most remote regions of the world, and at once demonstrates its temporality.
As the world turns its gaze toward the Arctic; the landscape whose inhabitants have done the least to cause climate change is where the devastating effects are most visible. Their ancient culture is set to become extinct; the probability of these communities continuing to live traditionally is becoming increasingly unlikely. In his native Iceland, Ragnar looked at the fishermen and farmers of remote villages and thought if he did not photograph them, then no one would know they ever existed. It is this thought that has led to this unique body of work captured in Greenland, with unprecedented access to a community that rarely let outsiders in.
Presented by Proud Chelsea, Last Days of the Arctic is a unique photo-reportage exhibition including these exceptional photographs of a society in its twilight, the awe inspiring landscapes they live in and the unique hunting rituals which are part of their cultural identity.
Sternberg Press: 2011. A kulturnaut, a squid, a Shakespeare, a dog, an artist abstract, a chrononaut, a washerwoman, Tom Ripley and his bones all pass through New Dystopia. Their sped-up speculations lead to new models of deterritorialized life. Visionary and hallucinatory models. Through them, Mark von Schlegell “displays” some of the facets of the invisible catastrophe breaking up our world, which artists in particular are responding to.
Put together in the wings of the “Dystopia” exhibition at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, acting as a resonance chamber, this illustrated novel raises the issue of possible futures in the form of a critical fiction, and involves the outposts of the novel to come. About New Dystopia, the city in which the novel’s protagonists live, the narrator states: “As an American … one only came to New Dystopia City to become an artist. That only there was it a way of life.” According to von Schlegell, we are living in that new metropolis. He states, “Dystopia is today.”
After Venusia (2005) and Mercury Station (2009), both published by Semiotext(e), New Dystopia is Mark von Schlegell’s third novel.
Artists: Wallace Berman, Cosima von Bonin, Brian Calvin, Tony Carter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Peter Coffin, Simon Denny, Andreas Dobler, Roe Ethridge, Keith Farquhar, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Aurélien Froment, Cyprien Gaillard, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Sebastian Hammwöhner, Roger Hiorns, Ull Hohn, Des Hughes, Peter Hutchinson, Eugene Isabey, Sergej Jensen, On Kawara, Michael Krebber, Jesus Mari Lazkano, Rita McBride, John Miller, Pathetic Sympathy Seekers, Manfred Pernice, Stephen G. Rhodes, Glen Rubsamen, Sterling Ruby, Julia Scher, Frances Scholz, Michael Scott, Markus Selg, Reena Spaulings, Michael Stevenson, Tommy Støckel, Josef Strau, Blair Thurman, Mathieu Tonetti, Oscar Tuazon, Franz West, Jordan Wolfson
No Lone Zone is a technical term that applies to a restricted area in which at least two individuals must be within visual reach overseeing a critically sensitive procedure.
No Lone Zone, at the Tate Modern’s Level 2 Gallery, is an exhibition that brings together works by Teresa Margolles, Cinthia Marcelle, David Zink Yi and the collective Tercerunquinto to explore this concept in relation to the vulnerability of current social and economic structures. Comprising sculpture, video and installation, these works reflect on the sense of loss, danger and urgency that affect the realm of human actions and collective endeavors within this global scenario.
The No Lone Zone exhibition has been curated by Iria Candela and Taiyana Pimentel in association with Gasworks. However there is no trace of the show at the Level 2 Gallery. Perhaps another tactical act.
Image above: Screenshot of the Tate’s website
Image at top: “Score Settings 16″ by Teresa Margolles
Over eight consecutive nights, MoMA presents a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum’s Marron Atrium. Each evening consists of a live performance and 3-D visualization of one of Kraftwerk’s studio albums—Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003)—in the order of their release. Kraftwerk will follow each evening’s album performance with additional compositions from their catalog, all adapted specifically for this exhibition. This reinterpretation showcases Kraftwerk’s historical contributions to and contemporary influence on global sound and image culture.
A first glimpse at Pierre Laffargue’s musical documentary (currently in production) about Congotronics vs Rockers, which follows the entire process, from the initial encounters between the musicians (Konono N°1, Kasai Allstars, Deerhoof, Juana Molina, Wildbirds and Peacedrums, Matt Mehlan from Skeletons and Hoquets) to shows around Europe and the recording of the album.
Daria Martin’s first survey exhibition in a UK public gallery presents a selection of short 16mm films made over the last 10 years, including the premier of an ambitious new work, Sensorium Tests. Throughout this period, Martin has pursued a sustained enquiry into numerous pressing issues relating to film, art and culture, including enchantment, voyeurs and artificial intelligence.
The exhibition includes the following films: Closeup Gallery (2003), in which a magician and his assistant engage in a strange game where cards dance, as if equivalent with inner worlds; Soft Materials (2004) where intimate relationships between man and machine are nurtured in an artificial intelligence laboratory; Harpstrings and Lava (2007) a dark narrative that animates dream images through clashing textures and structures; and the new film Sensorium Tests (2012), which revolves around a recently recognized neurological condition called ‘mirror-touch synaesthesia’.
People affected with mirror touch synaesthesia experience a physical sense of touch on their own bodies when they see other people, or sometimes even objects, being touched. Using staged scenarios based on a real life experiment into this condition, the film explores how sensations might be created and shared between people and objects.
Encountering art has always produced varying degrees of engagement and interaction, whether triggering personal memories, associations or feelings, or more recently in literal, physical responses to immersive, participatory installations. In some ways, Martin’s work turns these distinctions on their head, using mirror-touch synaesthesia to render virtual or remote activities indistinguishable from literal actions.
Daria Martin: Sensorium Tests
20 January – 8 April 2012 MK Gallery
Reviewed by Amy Budd, MK Gallery. Continue reading the review of this show HERE
Images above from Daria Martin’s Soft Materials. 16mm film, 2004.
Who knew that a forkful of food could have such a far reaching effect? Science Gallery’s first foray into food, EDIBLE, tackles this vast topic from the perspective of the eater, probing how our actions as eaters shape what is sown, grown, harvested and consumed.
Thanks to Design Goat we are able to hear some food. They say:
For the preview party we were asked to do a multi sensory event using sound and jelly. We had three different jellys and three sounds. We asked guests to listen to all three sounds and pick the most appetizing one, essentially tasting with their ears. We told nobody what was in any of the jellies and we are putting it up here for people to find out. We have also posted the sounds below so they can listen again.
The Extreme Environment Love Hotel, by Ai Hasegawa, simulates impossible places to go such as an earth of three hundred million years ago, or the surface of Jupiter by manipulating invisible but ever-present environmental factors, for example atmospheric conditions and gravity. A love hotel is a place for discrete intimacy but also a place for intensive physical and mental exercise. How might our bodies change, struggle or even adapt with varying conditions around us? For example, during the Carboniferous period, ancestors of the dragonfly Meganeura grew up to seventy-five centimeters due to the huge concentration of oxygen in the air, a tremendous boon to the insect but high levels of oxygen would be toxic to our fragile bodies.
Recent figures speculate that around 10% of children are now conceived by In Vitro Fertilization. The world around us and our reproductive technologies have given rise to new ideas of what sex is or could be and where it stands between our biologically-programmed needs and inclinations and our human fetishes and desires. Perhaps the Extreme Environments Love Hotel might give rise to new evolutions and mutations of the human body and sex and give it a brand new role away from any of these historical precedents.
Ai Hasegawa studied computer graphic animation and interactive media art at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan. On graduating I created animations for educational TV programs in Tokyo. After moving to London I began working as an animator, character designer, illustrator and interaction designer.
The exhibition “Mengele’s Skull” is structured around a specially commissioned book of the same title co-authored by Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman. Artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl has been commissioned to respond to the proposition laid out in this book. Next to major new works by Hito Steyerl, this exhibition presents documentary and source materials.
The publication Mengele’s Skull discusses the forensic identification of the remains of infamous Nazi-doctor Joseph Mengele after his exhumation in 1985. The forensic investigation and identification of Mengele’s remains marks a transition. From now on, the “era of the witness”, centered around human testimony and trauma, gradually gives way to an “era of forensics”, in which things – such as bones – act as the witnesses of past events. How do bones act as witnesses? What role do technologies such as 3D scans and biomedical data play in the making of forensic evidence? And what is the role and politics of images?
NYFA speaks with 2009 Digital/Electronic Arts Fellow: Hi Leila and Cary, please tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you’re currently working on.
We are an eco-art/theory collaborative and former New Yorkers now based in Rochester, NY. Leila’s academic training is in literature and Cary has made new media and performance-based art for over twenty years. We bring together our separate disciplines, histories, and practices through a shared interest in nature and the environment. For us, the “environment” encompasses a wide variety of networked systems, including biological habitats, global exchanges, industrial grids, digital networks, and the democratic imagination. Our works merge primitive with emergent technologies and navigate the intertwined terrain between nature, built environments, mobility, and electronic spaces. We are particularly excited right now about a residency program we are creating in the central Maine mountains where new media practitioners will be invited to make art in networked treehouses in the remote woods.
The Emmy award-winning team at Brainstorm Digital has put together the before and after shots from season 2 of HBO’s hit series “Boardwalk Empire”. Boardwalk Empire is an American television series from cable network HBO, set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era.
THE GAMBIT OF THIS EXHIBITION about 9/11, which includes sixty-nine works by forty-two artists, is deceptively simple: to eschew any images of the attacks and any made in response to them. (As if to prove the rule, there is one exception, a 2003 proposal by Ellsworth Kelly to reconfigure Ground Zero as a giant trapezoidal park of bright green grass.) Instead, MoMA PS1 curator Peter Eleey writes in his brochure, “this exhibition considers the ways in which 9/11 has altered how we see and experience the world in its wake.” This is a strong thesis—one that asks to be taken seriously. As for the ban on images of 9/11, Eleey regards the attacks as an intervention in spectacle that was a spectacle in its own right: 9/11 “was made to be used,” he argues, with the Bush administration no less than Al Qaeda in mind. “Why would I want to repeat such transgression?” His catalog essay begins with an epigraph from Wittgenstein—“A picture held us captive”—and his purported aim is to release us from this captivity, to despectacularize 9/11, a little.
View of “September 11,” 2011. Foreground: Christo, Red Package, 1968. Background, from left: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1991; Willem de Rooij, Index: Riots, Protest, Mourning and Commemoration (as represented in newspapers, January 2000–July 2002), 2003. Photo: Matthew Septimus.
Sculptor Abdulrahman Katanani is one example of the fact that Arab artists are ‘already among us’ [Al Jazeera]
The function of art – one of the functions of art – consists in bringing spiritual [geistigen] peace to humanity. I believe one cannot characterise the state of consciousness in contemporary art any better than by saying: more and more people are becoming conscious that spiritual peace is not enough because it has never prevented, nor could it ever prevent, real strife, and that perhaps one of the functions of art today is also to contribute to real peace – a function that cannot be foisted upon art, but must lie in the essence of art itself.
- Herbert Marcuse, “Society as a Work of Art”
Doha, Qatar – Cai Guo-Quiang’s exhibit in Doha was exquisite. Incorporating techniques from Islamic artistic heritage such as miniature paintings, Saraab (“mirage”), the celebrated artist’s inaugural solo exhibition in the Arab world creatively synthesised the hitherto unexplored historical and cultural dynamics of the Arab Gulf and China.
For instance, through controlled gunpowder explosions, he produced a dazzling canvass of 99 horses that simultaneously highlighted the symbolic nature of the number 99 – a reference to the 99 names of God in the Islamic tradition, and a symbol for infinity in Chinese culture – and of the horse more generally, with the majestic steed featuring prominently in both cultural milieus.
One small problem, though: in my several hours of marvelling through the Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, I counted fewer than ten other patrons there to take advantage of Cai’s exhibit. Even more disappointing, every one of those vagrant visitors looked foreign, without a Qatari (or Arab, for that matter) in sight to savour the fruits of Cai’s labour.
Even the plethora of advertisements for the exhibit prominently plastered around the city, it seems, were insufficient to generate serious interest.
For an institute whose stated mission is to present “a unique Arab perspective on modern and contemporary art”, its reception was less than encouraging.
Myths of Rape , by Leslie Labowitz-Starus, Performed for Three Weeks in May, Suzanne Lacy, 1977.
The history of postwar art in Los Angeles is punctuated by dramatic examples of public artworks, large-scale spectacles, expansive performances, and small-scale interventions in the public sphere. The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival celebrates this history through a contemporary lens, with a series of adaptations, re-inventions, and commissions that are inspired by the installation and performance artists working in Los Angeles between 1945 and 1980.
Throughout the 11-day festival, a group of new public artworks will be on view throughout the city. In addition, new performances will premiere every day, including outdoor visual spectacles, experimental theater and sound art, social and political interventions, and media art. A nightly after-party, Black Box, will provide a space for socializing, and include surprise performances each evening.
The festival is presented as part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-80, an unprecedented collaboration of cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. As the festival moves throughout the city, visitors will also be surrounded by dozens of groundbreaking exhibitions about the history of art in Southern California. The festival calendar has been designed to allow time to attend both the performances and nearby exhibitions on each day.
A wide-range selection of about 60 pairs of shoe creations by Japanese shoe designer Kei Kagami form a 10-year retrospective exhibition of his work at The Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy in Amsterdam. The shoes display a unique personal and visual understanding of the experimental and individualistic artist and maker that is Kagami. The exhibition is opened in the presence of the artist.
Curated by Rachel Clarke, Claudia Hart and Michael Rees
University Galleries, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ
Monday October 24-Friday December 2, 2011
Reception: Thursday, November 3, 4:30 – 6:00
Panel Discussion: Thursday, 11/17, 12:30
Artists
Kari Altmann (Baltimore), Jose Carlos Casado (NY), Rachel Clarke (Sacramento), Claudia Hart (Chicago), Spencer Hutchinson (Chicago), Yael Kanarek (NY), Brian Khek (Chicago), Alex Lee (Seoul), Lenox-Lenox (Chicago), Alex McLeod (Tornonto), Jon Rafman (Montreal), Michael Rees (Montclair), Lou Regele (Chicago), Timur Si-Qin (Berlin), Yemenwed (NY), Katrina Zimmerman (Chicago), Zeitguised (Berlin)
The technical object cannot be dissociated from human history, but the relationship between Man and Technology remains complex. As a synonym of progress, in western eyes, the technical object is at once desired and suspect, arousing by turns hope, wonder, and disillusion. The exhibition Mondes inventés, Mondes habités (“Invented Worlds, Inhabited Worlds”) broaches the issue of technology transcended by artistic genius. It highlights the special relationship of creative people, those “technical poets” who, rather than restricting themselves to the utilitarian aspect, base their research on an understanding of existence and the beauty of machines. So through the works of some twenty artists of different generations and with different outlooks, the exhibition offers glimpses of the capacity for invention and wonder, daring and curiosity, hallmarking the human and artistic adventure.
David Altmejd
Chris Burden
Vija Celmins
Björn Dahlem
León Ferrari
Vincent Ganivet
Paul Granjon
Theo Jansen
Bodys Isek Kingelez
Paul Laffoley
Isa Melsheimer
Miguel Palma
Panamarenko
Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
Nancy Rubins
Conrad Shawcross
Roman Signer
Jan Švankmajer
Curators
Marie-Noëlle Farcy
Clément Minighetti HERE
A chemist gives the inside of a beaker a reflective coating during the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Photograph by Adam Hunger, Reuters
Brian Handwerk: A wasabi alarm, beer bottle-loving beetles, and doomsday math were among the scientific advances honored Thursday with 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes.
The unique annual awards go to real research “that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.” The scientific celebration, now in its 21st year, was hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research and several Harvard University student groups.
As usual, more than a half dozen genuine Nobel laureates were onstage at Harvard’s Sanders Theater to hand out the coveted prizes.
kabinetten, 10 September – 9 October, 2011, curator: Susan Hapgood and Cornelia Lauf
The Foundation for Visual Arts Middelburg (Stichting Beeldende Kunst Middelburg) presents the exhibition In Deed: Certificates of Authenticity in Art in De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Zusterstraat 7, Middelburg. It opens on saturday 10 september at 4 p.m. As part of the exhibition a publication will be presented.
At 5 p.m. there will be a symposium in De Vleeshal, with curators Susan Hapgood and Cornelia Lauf and with special guests Seth Siegelaub and Daniel McClean.
Free Admission
‘Certificates of authenticity are a critical aspect of art works today’
Certificates of authenticity are a critical aspect of art works today. They often even embody the artwork itself, while referring to it, serving as its deed, legal statement, and fiscal invoice. Certificates by artists validate the authorship and originality of the work and they allow the work of art to be positioned in the
marketplace as a branded product-no matter how immaterial or transient that product may be. Whereas the inherent importance of any given work of art should be self-evident to the connoisseur’s eye, certificates point the focus elsewhere, and
prove that material or aesthetic qualities in an object sometimes do not suffice in constituting the work of art. In our globalized, capitalist present, the certificate and its implications about artistic thinking have become an instrument of business nterprise, as well as a philosophical statement about the nature of an artwork.
Certificates have legal and ontological implications that make them fascinating documents of changing attitudes toward art and the role of artists. +++ HERE
Mairi Macleod: I couldn’t imagine how Richard Dawkins’s iconic book The Selfish Gene could be turned into an Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, billed as the world’s first “biomusical”. But you know what? Bex Productions has managed to pull it off.
Jonathan Salway has a background in theatre, not biology, but when he read Dawkins’s book, the clarity of writing, the fascinating subject matter and even the humour so inspired him that he felt compelled to transform it into musical comedy and set about dissecting the book to write script and songs with the help of fellow writer Dino Kazamia and music by Richard Macklin.
In the show a fusty Oxford professor, played by Salway, tries to lecture the audience on the fundamentals of evolutionary theory. Meanwhile, the Adamson family share the stage, going about their daily trials of life, unwittingly providing examples of the points he’s making. He frequently interrupts and explains to them why they’re feeling and behaving the way they are, and sporadically gets involved in their lives along the way. Continue HERE
‘Dirt’ reveals the fascinating world of filth that remains one of the very last taboos.
Our major new exhibition takes a closer look at something that surrounds us but that we are often reluctant to confront. ‘Dirt’ travels across centuries and continents to explore our ambivalent relationship with dirt.
Bringing together around 200 artefacts spanning visual art, documentary photography, cultural ephemera, scientific artefacts, film and literature, the exhibition uncovers a rich history of disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past, and points to the uncertain future of filth, which poses a significant risk to our health but is also vital to our existence.
Following anthropologist Mary Douglas’s observation that dirt is ‘matter out of place’, the exhibition introduces six very different places as a starting point for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in 17th-century Delft in Holland, a street in Victorian London, a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s, a museum in Dresden in the early 20th century, a community in present day New Delhi and a New York landfill site in 2030.
Highlights include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, the earliest sketches of bacteria, John Snow’s ‘ghost map’ of cholera, beautifully crafted delftware, Joseph Lister’s scientific paraphernalia and a wide range of contemporary art, from Igor Eskinja’s dust carpet, Susan Collis’s bejewelled broom and James Croak’s dirt window, to video pieces by Bruce Nauman and Mierle Ukeles and a specially commissioned work by Serena Korda.
The Cognitive Cities Conference (#CoCities) aims to bring the vibrant global conversation about the future of cities to Germany. We believe that collaboration and diversity lead to the best results. By inviting bright minds with different perspectives, it is our ambition to enable not only an in-depth exchange about the current state of affairs, but also to foster new projects and contribute to the ongoing global discussion. We see CoCities as a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration. We invite urban planners, designers, technology geeks, environmental experts, public officials, urban gardening enthusiasts and cultural influencers to be part of the conversation. We can only make our cities more livable if we work together to improve them. Cognitive Cities Conference
On the quest for another world, Carsten Höller follows in the Hamburger Bahnhof the origin of Soma, a mythical libation of the Indo-Germanic Vedas from the 2nd millennium BC. Soma brought the Vedas enlightenment and access to the divine sphere and was highly praised in their hymns. The herbal ingredient of this libation has not been passed on without a doubt, but from a botanic, ethnologic and etymologic view there is evidence that it could have been the fly agarics.
Based on these circumstances Carsten Höller develops a scenario between laboratory and vision, alleged objectivity and increased subjectivity.
Before the eyes of the observers unfolds an expansive “living picture”, a symmetrical experimental field, which is divided in two parts along its center line and which compares the ordinary world with the realm of Soma in a double-image experiment. This is an experiment, that find its completion in the imagination of the observer and whose evaluation is subject to your power of observation. On a mushroom like platform in midst of the arrangement resides a bed, where guests will have the opportunity to spend a night at the museum and to dive into the world of Soma.
Alter Nature: We Can shows the work of 20 international contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition focuses on the different ways in which people have displaced, manipulated or designed nature: from small gardens to private islands, from carrots and bonsai trees to acoustic plants and orange pheasants.
In Alter Nature: We Can, Z33 looks at the sub-aspect of fauna and flora in nature. Through the works of some twenty international artists we explore how humankind manipulates nature and how the concept of ‘nature’ constantly changes as a result of this.
The works are not about using nature to meet basic needs (such as health, food, protection, etc.). Interesting projects in this context are legion, but grouped together they almost inevitably lead to simplified contradictions. On the one hand, one has projects that look ‘positively’ upon transforming nature: they find out what technology can do or they show solutions. These projects are often criticised because they seem to subscribe seamlessly to the scientific belief in progress. On the other hand, some projects show the negative side; they look at interventions in nature that have gone wrong. These projects are criticesed to bethe autonomous art corner’s wagging finger. They criticise but do not offer any solutions.
Alter Nature: We Can wants to go beyond this simplified pro-contra positioning. The works on display are therefore devoid of strict utilitarianism and the emphasis is on the historic context of intervention, the multiplicity of manipulations and our fluctuating understanding of the concept of nature.
Alter Nature: We Can is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.
Curator:
Karen Verschooren (Z33)
Artists:
Makoto Azuma (JP)
BCL: Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
David Benqué (UK)
Julien Berthier (FR)
Merijn Bolink (NL)
Center for PostNatural History
Mark Dion (US)
Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
Daisy Ginsberg (UK)
Tue Greenfort (DK)
Natalie Jeremijenko (US)
Eduardo Kac (US)
James King (UK)
Allison Kudla (US)
Reinier Lagendijk (NL)
Antti Laitinen (FIN)
Hans Op de Beeck (B)
Michael Sailstorfer (D)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (B)
Adrian Woods (NL)
Adam Zaretsky (US)
Pumzi, 2010, Wanuri Kahiu 
Kempinski, 2007. Video installation. Artist : Neil Beloufa
Common Task (Mali), 2008. Photographic documentation of an action by Wieslaw Niedzwiecki. Artist : Pawel Althamer
The spaceship Icarus13, view from the Chicala Island, Luanda, 2007. Digital Chromogenic Print on matt paper.
Astronomy Observatory, Namibe Desert, 2007. Digital Chromogenic Print on matt paper.
Horns, Uummannaq, West Greenland, 1998
Dog on a Chain, Sermiliqaq, East Greenland, 1997
View of “September 11,” 2011. Foreground: Christo, Red Package, 1968. Background, from left: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1991; Willem de Rooij, Index: Riots, Protest, Mourning and Commemoration (as represented in newspapers, January 2000–July 2002), 2003. Photo: Matthew Septimus.
Sculptor Abdulrahman Katanani is one example of the fact that Arab artists are ‘already among us’ [Al Jazeera]
Myths of Rape , by Leslie Labowitz-Starus, Performed for Three Weeks in May, Suzanne Lacy, 1977.
Ed Bereal and members of The Bodacious Buggerrilla performing Miss America Piece, ca. 1969-70
Conrad Shawcross : The Nervous Systems (Inverted), 2011, Courtesy de l’artiste et galerie Victoria Miro, Londres, Commande et Production Mudam Luxembourg avec la collaboration de la galerie Victoria Miro, Londres © Photo : Andres Lejona
A chemist gives the inside of a beaker a reflective coating during the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Photograph by Adam Hunger, Reuters
Image: Owain Shaw
The Cognitive Cities Conference (#CoCities) aims to bring the vibrant global conversation about the future of cities to Germany. We believe that collaboration and diversity lead to the best results. By inviting bright minds with different perspectives, it is our ambition to enable not only an in-depth exchange about the current state of affairs, but also to foster new projects and contribute to the ongoing global discussion. We see CoCities as a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration. We invite urban planners, designers, technology geeks, environmental experts, public officials, urban gardening enthusiasts and cultural influencers to be part of the conversation. We can only make our cities more livable if we work together to improve them.
This carrot was created by 
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