GAMESCENES

EVENT: ART IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE (MARCH 10-12 2023, AMSTERDAM & ONLINE)

Artwork: Kévin Bray. Graphic Design: Clara Lezla.

AGE IN THE AGE OF METAVERSE

International Conference
10 – 12 March 2023
De Balie, Amsterdam & online

Hartwig Art Foundation
Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
Memory Gems

A new technological universe has created new artistic landscapes. During this conference, artists, curators, activists and industry professionals who work at the intersection of contemporary art and digital technologies, will take us deep into the metaverse, a shared space at the nexus of the virtual and the physical that is gaining increased attention as a space for artistic production and experiences. How are we interacting with it, and how can we shape its future direction in a more ethical and collaborative manner?

Through talks, discussions, and presentations, the speakers will share their insights and explore key questions such as: What are the forms of artistic practices at the intersection of the physical and the virtual? How do artists, using these technologies, engage with the ethical, social, and environmental implications? How can we counter big tech in deciding what the metaverse is and can become? And what role do we, as participants, play in shaping the future direction?

The conference will open on Friday at 8 p.m. at De Balie with the Dutch premiere screening of Ian Cheng’s Life after BOB: The Chalice Study, followed by a conversation with Ian Cheng.

Confirmed speakers include Morehshin Allahyari, Black Swan, Ian Cheng, Barbara Cueto, Ali Eslami, The Hmm, Trevor McFedries, Micaela Mantegna, Moving Castle (Arthur Roeing Baer+GVN), Marina Otero Verzier, Chao Tayiana, Shuruq Tramontini, and Veronica So. Further confirmed participants will be continuously added.

LINK: ART IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE

EVENT: I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR: ART AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN (FEBRUARY 12-APRIL 30 2023, FORT WORTH, TEXAS)

Nam June Paik, Video Flag Y, 1985. 84 ten-inch television sets, three Plexiglas cases, fans, LaserDisc players, LaserDiscs, and video tapes. 72 x 144 x 50 inches. JPMorgan Chase Art Collection. © Estate of Nam June Paik.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen
February 12–April 30, 2023

Curated by Alison Hearst 

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76107 USA

press release

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth presents the landmark I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen, a thematic group exhibition that examines the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present. This exhibition surveys more than sixty works by fifty artists over the past five decades. The artists included examine screen culture through a broad range of media such as paintings, sculpture, video games, digital art, augmented reality, and video. Organized by Curator Alison Hearst, I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen will be on view at the Modern February 12 through April 30, 2023.

Screens affect nearly every aspect of life today. Their pervasiveness has bred a 24/7 breaking news cycle, the looming corporate-sponsored virtual-reality “Metaverse,” unlimited accessibility and content, and an ease in how ideas and images are distributed, undoubtably shaping culture in profound ways. This exhibition starts in 1969—the year of the televised Apollo moon landing and the launch of the internet’s prototype, ARPANET—as this was the watershed year where collective connectivity through screens was first mobilized in modern society. This era forged what the media theorist Marshall McLuhan presciently deemed in the 1960s a “global village,” a place where distance is collapsed and people from across the world readily interact. Following this trajectory, contemporary life is hybrid and increasingly mediated through screens. These flat and finite surfaces embody more than what meets the eye—they hold up a mirror to society and contribute to forming meaning in life and mainstream culture.

I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen is organized into nine key themes:

liminal space: From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, several artists were working alongside the early major technological developments of the screen: Gretchen Bender, Nancy Burson, Harold Cohen, Vuk Ćosić, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Eduardo Kac, Tatsuo Miyajima, Nam June Paik, Lillian F. Schwartz, and Andy Warhol. These artists’ works are highlighted in this section for their innovative processes.

connectivity: Screens connect us with incredible ease to friends, colleagues, a network of other users and players, apps, news, and streaming services. We share—and are shared with—through screens. As culture courses through society via these means, screens are at the axis of most of our interactions, and these connections are a topic interrogated by many artists, including Cory Arcangel, Liss LaFleur, Eva and Franco Mattes, Cassie McQuater, Jacolby Satterwhite, Frances Stark, and Wickerham & Lomax.

surveillance: While we find community through technology, we simultaneously become linked to broader systems of data extraction through our devices. Our information is captured for national security purposes, geo-mapping, and corporate surveillance capitalism, where targeted ads are deployed based on purchases and browsing history. Hasan Elahi, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Jon Rafman investigate the positive, negative, and humorous aspects of surveillance today.

the repository: Today’s constant stream of data has led to round-the-clock ingestion of content. This informational sphere is made even more accessible via handheld devices. Speaking to a vast and complex array of image and information circulation in the screen age are the artists Morehshin Allahyari, Kahlil Robert Irving, Trevor Paglen, Jason Salavon, Skawennati, and Penelope Umbrico.

digital abstraction: While painters of all genres use technology in their work, artists such as Cory Arcangel, Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, and John Pomara explore the intersections of the digital screen and formal abstraction. Historically compared to windows and mirrors, the often flat, rectangular format of paintings also acts like a screen in today’s world—a passageway that disrupts the viewer’s physical space or mirrors contemporary life.

the posthuman body: In the digital age, technology has become an extension of the body. Posthumanism, a concept arising from science fiction, is the idea that humans will be transformed by technological progress. Depictions of the human body in a media-induced world are far from monolithic, as demonstrated by the artists Caitlin Cherry, Petra Cortright, Huntrezz Janos, Guthrie Lonergan, Carson Lynn, Avery Singer, and Hito Steyerl, who traverse concepts of self and portraiture in the technological era.

automation and the loneliness epidemic: The relationship between man and machine is addressed by Cao Fei and !Mediengruppe Bitnik, specifically the tension of isolation in an increasingly automated world. Set in environments where human labor has been replaced by automation, Cao Fei’s and !Mediengruppe Bitnik’s works exemplify the paradoxes of human intimacy in the screen age.

ecology: Electronic debris, such as plastics, batteries, monitors, and phones, fills landfills and off-gasses toxins that contribute to water pollution. Several artists in this exhibition, including American Artist, Alice Bucknell, Simon Denny, Kristin Lucas, Rick Silva, and Elias Sime, demonstrate the complexities of ecology in the digital age.

turning a mirror on ourselves: Holding a mirror to society and ourselves, screens construct reality, molding many of the themes at the forefront of culture today. Through extraordinarily different works, the artists Arthur Jafa and Molly Soda make videos that shine a light on society through the lens of found, vernacular videos already circulating online.

More than 25,000 square feet of gallery space will be devoted to the exhibition, which will include iconic works by prominent national and international artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Cory Arcangel, American Artist, Gretchen Bender, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Arthur Jafa, Nam June Paik, Hito Steyerl, and Andy Warhol, as well as several leading artists living in Texas, including Liss LaFleur, Kristin Lucas, and John Pomara. Several new and never-before-seen works by key artists Caitlin Cherry, Simon Denny, Hasan Elahi, and Kahlil Robert Irving will debut in this exhibition. This is the most in-depth show of its kind in the Southwest region and is one of only a few presentations exploring art and digital technology in the past decade at this scale.

Curator Alison Hearst notes, “Artists have long shone a light on the world and the human experience, and the artists in I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen respond to, challenge, and probe new technologies and the cultural conditions these technologies have shaped. Using the screen as a tool and formal device, many of the artists in this exhibition expand the parameters of artmaking through the digital language unique to their generation.”

Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring contributions by Alison Hearst, curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Dr. Omar Kholeif, director of collections at Sharjah Art Foundation; Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, Assistant Curator at Buffalo AKG Art Museum; and professor and cyberpsychologist Dr. John Suler. 180 pages, 100+ illustrations; published by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and distributed by DelMonico Books/D.A.P.

There will be an online platform for the exhibition.

Artists in the exhibition:
Morehshin Allahyari, Cory Arcangel, American Artist, Gretchen Bender, Alice Bucknell, Nancy Burson, Caitlin Cherry, Harold Cohen, Petra Cortright, Vuk Ćosić, Simon Denny, Hasan Elahi, Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Cao Fei, Wade Guyton, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jacqueline Humphries, Kahlil Robert Irving, Arthur Jafa, Huntrezz Janos, Eduardo Kac, Liss LaFleur, Guthrie Lonergan, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Kristin Lucas, Carson Lynn, Eva and Franco Mattes, Cassie McQuater, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Tatsuo Miyajima, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, John Pomara, Jon Rafman, Jason Salavon, Jacolby Satterwhite, Lillian F. Schwartz, Rick Silva, Elias Sime, Avery Singer, Skawennati, Molly Soda, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Penelope Umbrico, Andy Warhol, Wickerham & Lomax

LINK: I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen

EVENT: PAUL LOUBET'S 4X—EXPLORE EXPAND EXPLOIT EXTERMINATE (OCTOBER 15 - JANUARY 8 2023, SÈTE, FRANCE)

 

Paul Loubet
4X—eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate
October 15, 2022–January 8, 2023

Curated by Marie Cozette

Centre régional d’art contemporain Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée
26 quai Aspirant Herber
34200 Sète
France

Read more about the research and game genre that inspired this work.

press release

Paul Loubet: 4 X—eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate
Paul Loubet is a prolific all-rounder who spreads his painter vocabulary all over the place: canvases, murals, fanzines, objects,  illustrations, flyers, installations in public space... His work draws from a variety of aesthetics and cultural references ranging from geometric abstraction to CGI, from history painting to video games by way of graffiti, urban cultures and science fiction.

For several years he has been more particularly exploring cartographic representations, blueprints, and aerial views, whether in the form of old maps or through new image types like those produced by drones. Paul Loubet is inspired by digital images, to which he applies an elementary rendering while using artisanal methods of production. For example, he paints on floppy discs, creates wooden drones, makes video game consoles out of backlit plexiglas, in a sense reheating the disincarnate world of robotics and computer technology through a manual rendering, a DIY aesthetic rooted in minimal art no less than in naïve art.

The exhibition that the Crac Occitanie is dedicating to his work, presented upstairs, follows his 2021 residency at the Villa Médicis as part of the prize put in place by the Occitanie region in partnership with the French Academy in Rome. In that context, Paul Loubet conducted research into Civilization II, a strategy and conquest game that consists in creating an empire, by means of nothing less than the destruction of all surrounding others. Civilization II belongs to a broader family of “4X” games (eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate). Imperialism and cultural domination, whose final stage would be extermination, are the main thrusts of these games, which reflect a long history of civilizations at their most brutal.

Alongside analysis of the game, Paul Loubet took advantage of his residency to study the iconographic resources of the Vatican’s “Galleria delle carte geografiche”, a 120-metrelong gallery painted by Ignazio Danti between 1580 and 1585, which presents obvious analogies with the isometric views of the game Age of Empires. In the course of his research, Paul Loubet has unearthed the script of a game of the 1990s, the visual inspiration for a series of new paintings. A large tryptic in the form of an altarpiece represents the end game, namely a world map that sees Rome dominating all other civilisations. Like a game archaeologist—and as if to better conjure up the horror—the artist confronts us with a depiction of the end of the world: the map produced sets out past conquests and destructions, while projecting us into a dystopian future, where a single culture reigns.

From 1990s video games, the artist has preserved the pixelated visual identity, a simple and flat colour palette, and a system of representation with no depth or base line. Across from this tryptic, five canvases zoom in on five of the game’s key dates. If the format that Paul Loubet revisits here refers to historical and religious painting, the deployed motifs stem from mass culture and entertainment as embodied by video games. Shifting our perspective on these different worlds, the artist radically and thoroughly decompartmentalises them.

LINK: Paul Loubet

LINK: 4X—eXplore eXpand eXploit eXterminate

EVENT: DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY & JOSÈFA NTJAM (DECEMBER 2 2022 - APRIL 9 2023, LIVERPOOL, UK)

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, When Our Worlds Meet, 2022. Installation view, FACT Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, 2022. Photo: Rob Battersby.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley & Josèfa Ntjam
December 2, 2022–April 9, 2023

FACT Liverpool
88 Wood Street
Liverpool L1 4DQ United Kingdom
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–6pm

press release

FACT Liverpool presents a new exhibition featuring commissions by artists Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley & Josèfa Ntjam. Working across archives, maps and video games, the artists consider how acts of resistance, rebuilding and reimagining can lead to transformative new worlds. The exhibition runs until spring 2023 and is the final instalment of Radical Ancestry, FACT’s exploration into the sense of belonging.

Since February 2022, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley has worked with a group of young people from Liverpool, self titled “The Bandidos.” The project, culminating in the production of When Our Worlds Meet (2022), began with three simple questions: how would you redesign Liverpool for your community? What does your world need? And, what rules does your world have?

Throughout her practice, Brathwaite-Shirley creates artwork that archives the experiences of Black trans people and communities who can be otherwise underserved. Here, she brings to life The Bandidos' imaginative visions, developing a video game that can be explored online and through four zones inside the gallery.

Passing through a bus shelter displaying a set of terms and conditions, visitors emerge onto remnants of a suburban street. Lamp posts, buildings and public spaces have been hacked and transformed into the architecture of a new world, watched over from above by avatars representing the project participants.

The large-scale installation encourages exploration and learning: a space that offers a reshaping of the rules and systems that frame our lives and prompts players to consider how we live together, how we represent ourselves, and how others receive us.

Artist, writer and performer Josèfa Ntjam works across a wide range of mediums, combining sculpture, photomontage, film and sound. Ntjam presents an immersive installation titled, When the moon dreamed of the ocean (2022). The exhibition centres around her film, Dislocation (2022), and includes new sculptures as part of her Metamorphosis (2019-present) series.

Strewn with jellyfish, plankton and rock pools, the gallery is transformed into a watery cave filled with mythological icons and symbols of resistance and care. Through her practice, Ntjam looks at ways to reject widely accepted Western narratives around origin, identity and systems of classification by intertwining research of archives, African mythologies and counter-culture.

Ntjam’s work promotes alternate readings of history, with references spanning the galactic mythic future of jazz composer Sun Ra, the siren goddess Mami Wata, and the speculative underwater civilisations popularised by Detroit techno duo Drexyia. For Ntjam, these tales of resilience offer ways to rethink the aftermath of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, through new forms of knowledge and connections.

By drawing parallels between natural processes and human experience, Ntjam offers alternative ways of navigating through the flows of the past, ultimately demonstrating how spaces of solidarity and revolution can thrive in even the most inhospitable conditions.

Both Brathwaite-Shirley & Ntjam conjure experiences that reposition those whose stories are often mishandled or underserved. Their immersive installations present richly layered works that explore erasure, and the collaborative processes built by communities in defiance of this.

Maitreyi Maheshwari, Head of Programme at FACT, said: “The final chapter in our Radical Ancestry programme presents two new works that imagine spaces for our future selves. Grounded in ideas of resilience and change, they share worlds in which the archives of the past and present include the stories and experiences of those most often overlooked, to create fantastical hybrid lifeforms and architectures that flow in and out of our linear perception of time.”

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley & Josèfa Ntjam is now open at FACT Liverpool until April 9, 2023. The free exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme of events including artist talks, curator tours and family workshops.

LINK: Brathwaite-Shirley & Ntjam

EVENT: IN-GAME PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION (DECEMBER 10 2022, BERLIN, GERMANY)

December 10 2022

12:30 - 13:30 Berlin Time

C/O Berlin

Hardenbergstraße 22–24,

10623 Berlin Germany

Curators turned sports commentators Jon Uriarte and Marco De Mutiis will present artistic projects that have been created using in-game photography. The works address questions of photorealism, simulation, photographic practices in and against video games. Uriarte and De Mutiis ultimately ask the help of the audience to choose what they consider to be the most exciting and best work. Visitors play an important part in the process: they can cast their vote and decide who amongst the artists did it better in in-game photography!

This event is part of Capturing the (Game) World: Over the last two decades a new photographical practice evolved in the realm of the digital: In-Game Photography. Open world computer games are increasingly shipped with an implemented photo mode, users post game snapshots to their social media timelines as a matter of course, and artists present their in-game photo works in museums and galleries.

Capturing the (Game) World is a series of events which invites students, scholars, artists, photographers, hobbyists as well as professionals, gamers as well as non-gamers, theorists as well as practitioners to explore the quickly developing new photography practice called in-game photography. The series offers insightful talks - about the practice, aesthetics, and the history of in-game photography - as well as hands-on workshops to explore photography in games and in-game photographical techniques. 

LINK: In-game photography competition

EVENT: MICHEL MAJERUS, DATA STREAMING (NOVEMBER 12 2022 - FEBRUARY 12 2023, HAMBURG, GERMANY)

Michel Majerus, MoM Block Nr. 76 (ca. 2000), Acrylic on Canvas, 200 x 180cm, Private Collection, Foto: Jens Ziehe, Berlin, © Michel Majerus Estate

Michel Majerus
DATA STREAMING
November 12, 2022–February 12, 2023

Kunstverein in Hamburg
Kunstverein in Hamburg
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg, Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 12–6pm

press release

DATA STREAMING features a series of works by Michel Majerus (1967–2002), produced during the latter stages of his career, in which he intensively negotiated the rising prominence of the digital within late-1990s and early-2000s visual culture. In this body of work, Majerus overlays figurative and abstract painterly elements drawn from the emerging digital image-production technologies of the time, adopting the formal language, capabilities, and motifs of post-production software such as Adobe Photoshop and translating them to canvas.

As an avid user of technology and an active participant in digital culture, Majerus features a number of icons, both real and virtual, from video games, animation, and hacking in his work—for instance, he depicts the hacker Tron (1972–1998), and characters from Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario, among others. Combining such references with a wider range of imagery sampled from contemporary art and art history, he fuses an intricate network of visual and thematic references with methods of image-production to create smaller-format, large-scale, or multi-panel paintings.

DATA STREAMING also includes Majerus’ key installation “the space is where you’ll find it” (2000), centrally positioned within the exhibition. This immersive installation exemplifies Majerus’ synthesis of new and existing aesthetic strategies from the worlds of painting, installation, and conceptual art, enveloping viewers in an analogue cosmos of digital images. By bringing paintings and installation together in the present, DATA STREAMING asks how to view, understand, and interpret Majerus’ oeuvre through the prism of technological and artistic developments made in the last 20 years.

DATA STREAMING is part of a series of exhibitions that will look at Michel Majerus’ oeuvre anew to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the artist’s passing, with solo presentations hosted at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, the Michel Majerus Estate, and at neugerriemschneider. In parallel, thirteen museums throughout Germany will showcase works by Michel Majerus from their collections.

LINK: DATA STREAMING

EVENT: HYPERSCAPES – VIRTUELLE LANDSCHAFT ALS SEHNSUCHTSORT? (NOVEMBER 25 2022 - JANUARY 29 2023, BERN, SWITZERLAND)

Hyperscapes – Virtuelle Landschaft als Sehnsuchtsort?

25/11/22 — 29/01/23 (Vernissage: 24.11.2022, 18:30 Uhr)

Ausstellung
Stadtsaal 1. OG

Bern, Switzerland

 

Kuration: Nicolas Kerksieck
Marlene Wenger
Christian Schnellmann

Press release (English below)

Mit der Loslösung des Menschen von der Natur änderte sich die Bedeutung von Landschaft. Die ehemals bedrohliche Wildnis wurde zum Sehnsuchtsort für den Ruhesuchenden, die Touristin, den Wanderer oder die Öko-Aktivistin. Landschaft ist heute Natur, gesehen aus dem Blickwinkel des Menschen, ein Ort, den wir immer ästhetisiert wahrnehmen und der uns anzieht. Diese Entwicklung spitzt sich in den digitalen Räumen zu. Hier gestalten wir Landschaftsräume in Videogames oder im Metaverse genau nach unseren Wünschen und Bedürfnissen. Die echte Natur liefert uns eine immer fernere Vorlage dazu.

Die Ausstellung «Hyperscapes – Virtuelle Landschaft als Sehnsuchtsort?» interessiert sich für die Flucht in menschgemachte hybride und digitale Landschaftsräume. Was suchen wir da? Und finden wir, was wir suchen? Hyperscapes ermöglicht dem Publikum, selbst in künstliche Landschaftsräume einzutreten, deren Wirkung zu erfahren und eine reflektierte Haltung einzunehmen.

Die Ausstellung konzentriert sich auf Landschaften als idealisierte Sehnsuchtsorte. «Hyperscapes – Virtuelle Landschaft als Sehnsuchtsort?» geht insbesondere der Frage nach, wie sich diese Idealisierung der Landschaft im digitalen Raum fortsetzt. Ausgehend von der Beobachtung, dass virtuelle Räume in der digitalen Kunst und im Game Design als natürliche Landschaft gestaltet werden, möchte die Ausstellung der Beschaffenheit dieser gestalteten Landschaften nachgehen.

Dabei sind zwei Tendenzen zu beobachten: einerseits sehr mimetische, naturalistisch bis hyperrealistische Landschaften, die an die traditionelle Landschaftsmalerei und die aus menschlicher Sicht möglichst naturgetreue Darstellung von Natur anknüpfen. Andererseits eine freiere, total der Fantasie überlassenen Gestaltung von digitaler Landschaft, die sich den bekannten physikalischen Gesetzen und Vorstellungen entledigt und neue, spekulative Landschaften entstehen lässt. Gerade im digitalen Raum haben die Freiheiten so weit zugenommen, dass sich Landschaft ganz abgekoppelt von Natur den individuellen Wünschen der Gestaltenden fügt.

Die Ausstellung «Hyperscapes – Virtuelle Landschaft als Sehnsuchtsort?» möchte zeigen, auf welche unterschiedliche Weise wir uns die Landschaft im virtuellen Raum vorstellen und bauen und wie wir uns darin bewegen.

Ein Ausstellungsprojekt organisiert durch das Kornhausforum Bern in Zusammenarbeit mit der Berner Design Stiftung.

Ausgewählte Künstler:

Alice Bucknell

Mélanie Courtinat

Deer Hunter / WizardWorks

dribnet

Pascal Greco

Gabriel Lory (Vater und Sohn)

Mélodie Mousset

David O'Reilly

Christiane Peschek

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Studer / van den Berg

Terra Nil / Free Lives

Walden, a Game / Tracy Fullerton and the Walden Team

---

With the detachment of man from nature, the meaning of landscape changed. The formerly threatening wilderness became a place of longing for the peace seeker, the tourist, the hiker or the eco-activist. Today, landscape is nature as seen from the human perspective, a place that we perceive in an increasingly aestheticized way and that attracts us. This development comes to a head in digital spaces. Here we design landscape spaces in videogames or in the metaverse exactly according to our wishes and needs. Real nature provides us with an increasingly distant template for this.

The exhibition "Hyperscapes - Virtual Landscape as a Place of Desire?" is interested in the escape into man-made hybrid and digital landscape spaces. What are we looking for there? And do we find what we are looking for? Hyperscapes allows the audience to enter artificial landscape spaces themselves, to experience their effect and to take a reflective stance.

The exhibition focuses on landscapes as idealized places of longing. "Hyperscapes - Virtual Landscape as a Place of Longing?" specifically explores the question of how this idealization of landscape continues in digital space. Based on the observation that virtual spaces in digital art and game design are designed as natural landscapes, the exhibition aims to investigate the nature of these designed landscapes.

Two tendencies can be observed: on the one hand, very mimetic, naturalistic to hyper-realistic landscapes that tie in with traditional landscape painting and the representation of nature that is as true to nature as possible from a human perspective. On the other hand, a freer design of digital landscape, totally left to the imagination, which gets rid of the known physical laws and ideas and allows new, speculative landscapes to emerge. Particularly in digital space, the freedoms have increased to such an extent that landscape, completely detached from nature, conforms to the individual wishes of the designer.

The exhibition "Hyperscapes - Virtual Landscape as a Place of Desire?" wants to show the different ways in which we imagine and build the landscape in virtual space and how we move within it.

An exhibition project organized by the Kornhausforum Bern in collaboration with the Berner Design Stiftung.

Featured artists:

Alice Bucknell

Mélanie Courtinat

Deer Hunter / WizardWorks

dribnet

Pascal Greco

Gabriel Lory (Vater und Sohn)

Mélodie Mousset

David O'Reilly

Christiane Peschek

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Studer / van den Berg

Terra Nil / Free Lives

Walden, a Game / Tracy Fullerton and the Walden Team

LINK: Hyperscapes – Virtuelle Landschaft als Sehnsuchtsort?

EVENT: PLAY THE PAST: A GAMING FOCUS (OCTOBER 26 - NOVEMBER 11 2022, BERLIN/ONLINE)

Play the Past: A Gaming Focus

26.10.–6.11.2022 / HAU3, HAU4 (online)

With machina eX and The Mycological Twist

Games create a multitude of worlds. The HAU is bringing together three different game projects that connect the past to the present day. They create scenes where the players playfully learn something both about socio-historical developments as well as make decisions about the course of events on their own or in groups. Games thus become source of inspiration and media for discourse. The experienced game developers from machina eX who have produced at the HAU for many years and the artist duo The Mycological Twist, who combine ecological and social practices with digital culture, will examine the artistic potential of games together with the audience in HAU3. In addition, the games expert Melanie Eilert recommends “Through the Darkest of Times” by the renowned Berlin-based indie studio Paintbucket for those at home, a historical strategy game about the resistance against National Socialism that she subjects to an accessibility test.

HAU4 is the digital stage of HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

LINK: Play the Past

EVENT: THE PIECES I AM (SEPTEMBER 30 2022 - JANUARY 8 2023, SHANGHAI)

panGenerator, Infinity, 2020

The Pieces I Am

Curated by Douyin Art 

September 30 2022 - January 8 2023

UCCA Edge
2F, No.88 Xizang Bei Lu,
Jing'an District, Shanghai

press release

SHANGHAI, China — From September 30, 2022, to January 8, 2023, UCCA and Douyin Art present the group exhibition “The Pieces I Am,” focused on humanity’s existence in the digital age. The exhibition features 27 artists and groups from China and abroad who use and/or explore technology in their works. The Chinese exhibition title takes its inspiration from the idiom 吉光片羽(jíguāngpiànyǔ), which metaphorically refers to fragments of treasured ancient relics, and changes the first character to the homophonous 集 (jí) to alter the meaning to suggest a collection of precious, beautiful, and enlightening “pieces” drifting down from the digital world. “The Pieces I Am” offers a possible starting point for understanding our digitized reality, interpreting and disenchanting the contemporary digital age through a wide range of art that traverses between digital and real, authentic and virtual, natural and technological, and logical and emotional. In doing so, it seeks to offer us new ways of recognizing the self, the world, and the relationship between the two in our fragmented contemporary context. “The Pieces I Am” is curated by UCCA Lab Curators Liya Han and Yoojin Tang together with special guest curator Iris Long, designed by Shen Ruofan, and organized by the UCCA Lab team.

Exhibition co-organizer Douyin Art has specially developed an online exhibition space as well as interactive viewing experiences for the offline exhibition. Douyin Art also hosted a special opening livestream including the premiere of an eponymous exhibition concept film starring art ambassadors selected by UCCA. Please find more information on the opening and film below.

Works in the exhibition

Participating artists include Pascale Birchler (b. 1982, Einsiedeln), Ian Cheng (b. 1984, Los Angeles), Chun Shao (b. 1987, Hangzhou), Guo Cheng (b. 1988, Beijing), Ann Veronica Janssens (b. 1956, Folkestone), Lawrence Lek (b. 1982, Frankfurt am Main), Lin Ke (b. 1984, Zhejiang province), Liu Di (b. 1985, Shaanxi province), Jiayu Liu (b. 1990, Liaoning province), Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City), David OReilly (b. 1985, Kilkenny), panGenerator (formed 2010), Pete Jiadong Qiang (b. 1991, Shaanxi province), Shinseungback Kimyonghun (formed 2012), Shi Zheng (b. 1990, Jiangsu province), Yehwan Song (b. 1995, Seoul), Studio Above&Below (formed 2018), Sun Yitian (b. 1991, Wenzhou), Tang Chao (b. 1990, Hunan province), Coralie Vogelaar (b. 1981, Delft), Wu Ziyang (b. 1990, Xuzhou), Xin Yunpeng (b. 1983, Beijing), Ye Xuan (b. 1989, Hunan province), Yin Yi (b. 1978, Shanghai), Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (formed 1999), Wenxin Zhang (b. 1989, Hefei), Payne Zhu (b. 1990, Shanghai)

UCCA EDGE: Opened in May 2021, UCCA Edge occupies 5,500 square meters over three levels of the new EDGE tower in Shanghai’s Jing’an District. Designed by New Yorkbased architecture practice SO – IL, the museum includes 1,700 square meters of gallery space as well as a wraparound outdoor terrace and public spaces including a lobby and auditorium. Situated just north of People’s Square and Suzhou Creek, and directly above the Qufu Lu station of the Shanghai Metro in a bustling revitalized neighborhood, UCCA Edge will quickly become an essential destination and an integral part of Shanghai’s vibrant cultural fabric.

David OReilly, Everything, 2017

Wu Ziyang, Pasig River 2030 - 6 Plus, 2022

Ian Cheng, BoB (Bags of Belief), 2018-2019

LINK: The Pieces I Am (Thanks, Gemma!)

EVENT: SLIP.STREAM.SLIP (PART 2) RESISTANCE AND VELOCITY IN GAME ENGINE CULTURE (OCTOBER 13 - DECEMBER 16 2022, MANCHESTER, ENGLAND)

Slip.Stream.Slip (Part 2)—resistance and velocity in game engine culture

Curated by Valentino Catricalà

Modal gallery at the School of Digital Arts (SODA), Manchester, England

October 13–December 16, 2022, Monday–Friday, 12–5pm

 

press release

Modal is a brand new digital gallery showcasing artists working at the forefront of creative technology, based at the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Join us for part two of our inaugural exhibition, Slip.Stream.Slip – focusing on game engine culture and the shift toward gamification as a model for understanding our lived experiences. The exhibition explores the tensions and contested spaces that open up when the micro politics of everyday living meet complex, simulated worlds.

Featured artists: Dara Birnbaum, Joseph DeLappe, Mishka Henner, Pierre Huyghe, Trevor Paglen, Quayola, Hito Steyerl, and a selection of DIS artists.

This is the follow up to Part 1  (24 June – 18 September 2022).

Joseph DeLappe, Killbox: A Game About Drone Warfare, Interactive Installation, 2015-2016

Hito Steyerl, The Tower, Three channel high-definition video installation, environment and sound, 2015

LINK: Slip.Stream.Slip (Part Two)