The Birdwatchers
Curated by Laura Bardier

Dec 8 December, 2011 – 21 January, 2012
bitforms gallery
New York, USA
www.bitforms.com

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce The Birdwatchers, a group exhibition featuring work of four contemporary artists that observe nature and repurpose it within altered landscapes, as part of their interdisciplinary practice. The exhibited works include physically animated plants and animals, video, animation, letterpress prints, and drawing on paper.

What is it about bird watching? Is it related to the urgency to comprehend, forecast and, later, control our immediate environment? The definition of nature always was, and still is, in flux. And yet, the notions of nature, and its representation, that we still embrace today originated at the end of the nineteenth century. During the Victorian era, there was a major shift in our understanding of the natural world and emphasis was placed on close observation of organisms. As humankind’s relationship with nature transformed, enthusiasm for walks in the woods, bird watching and collecting shells, grew. Currently, our apprehensive care of the environment goes along with our decreasing contact with nature. Many of us are unable to name our local trees or birds, many have no clue about how plants and animals interact with our surroundings. And yes, while we may be loosing connection with the natural world, we certainly have increased our interactions with ‘technological nature’.
Artists have always used nature, as subjects of inspiration or objects of manipulation. Art that engages nature can establish connections to a wide range of scientific, historical and philosophical concepts. Advances in biological and telecommunication technology make our interference with natural systems both sophisticated and substantial, modifying the way we look at and represent nature. It is human nature to compare, describe, and sort in order to form our own explanations of the world. We strive to acquire better understanding, prognostication, and control of our surroundings. But is there a purpose to observation if action is not taken?

Gabriela Albergaria’s projects are concerned with the relationships between the subtle and minute components of life and the large-scale appearance of the world. In her work “Fictional Landscape”, Albergaria considers the notion of a space where any two points can be joined by a path, and creates an artificial garden, drawing an impossible connection and unreal perspective between two trees distant from each other.
In a forest clearing, Jeffrey Blondes’ “La Taille des Antes” uses a mounted camera on a motorized turntable, recording one fluid 360-degree rotation over the course of a year in weekly segments of 27 minutes, 41 seconds and 13 frames each. The completed 24 hour loop reveals a slow evolution in real time, over four seasons, beginning and ending on the Winter Solstice, a romantic quote on the traditional schemes of landscape painting.
Adriana Salazar engineers “Moving Plants” and “Birds” constrained to follow the artist’s will. Instructional mechanical movements, using custom electronics, are imposed onto Bamboo branches and taxidermy feathered, winged, bipedal vertebrate animals. Adriana’s work, undertakes extreme path through the woods of bio art and wildlife management.
Marina Zurkow’s artistic practice leans towards environmental engagement, looking into novel and change over time in response to software-driven data inputs. The artist designs narrative spaces that bring together environment elements, under controlled conditions, into a complex dynamic composition.

image:
The Birdwatchers installation view left to right:

Jeffrey Blondes
La Taille des Antes : 52 Weeks – 24 Hour Film, 2007

Marina Zurkow
Heraldic Crests for Invasive Species: North American Gray Squirrel, 2011

Gabriela Albergaria
Brooklyn Botanic Garden (Hybrid Oak), 2011

Adriana Salazar
Moving Plant #24, 2011

Review published by DOMUS magazine 09.2011

Cory Arcangel descrive il suo lavoro come ‘una forma di mutilazione umoristica del software’. Pro Tools, la sua mostra personale in corso al Whitney Museum, s’inoltra nell’analisi delle strategie di promozione utilizzate per lanciare nuovi prodotti nel mercato. Arcangel si appropria del sistema dei ‘demo’ e della pubblicità, che manipola e sovverte per farci riflettere sul ruolo dei prodotti tecnologici nella cultura contemporanea. L’artista ci avverte sull’effetto ‘adesivo scintillante’ della tecnologia, sull’assurdità del ciclo vitale dei prodotti e sulla tensione tra il readymade e il processo creativo. Le opere in mostra sono generate al computer, sculture in bronzo, sculture cinetiche, stampe e disegni a plotter, video e videogiochi alterati. Di particolare interesse la monumentale installazione Various Self Playing Bowling Games (2011) che consiste in 14 videogiochi di bowling, dal 1970 al 2000: dallo statico Atari, i bips e blups del Nintendo, fino alle più realistiche simulazioni 3D della PlayStation.

Cory Arcangel describes his work as “a form of humorous mutilation of software”. Pro Tools, his solo show at the Whitney Museum, delves into an analysis of the promotional strategies used to launch new products on the market. Arcangel uses the “demo” and advertising, which he manipulates and subverts to help us think about the role of technological products in contemporary culture. The artist warns us about technology’s “scintillating adhesive” effect, about the absurdity of products’ life cycles and the tension between the readymade and the creative process. The works on show are computer generated, bronze sculptures, kinetic sculptures, prints and plotter drawings, videos and altered video games. Particularly interesting is the monumental installation Various Self Playing Bowling Games (2011) made of 14 bowling video games, from 1970 to 2000: from static Atari to Nintendo bips and blups, to reach more realistic 3D PlayStation simulations.

Richard Garet, Image Blur, Video still, 2011 35'59", Digital video.

Richard Garet: Espacios No-Euclídeos
Curated by Laura Bardier

11 August – 30 October 2011
EAC – Espacio Arte Contemporáneo
Montevideo, Uruguay
www.eac.gub.uy

Espacios No-Euclídeos is inspired by Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905), and references some principles and ideas explored through the model introduced by the physicist to construct a conceptual framing of the exhibition. Garet’s abstract and immersive works create a homogeneous space-time curvature. The accelerated movement of images and sound produce a vacuum effect that consequently makes physical heaviness disappear. There is not one type of Non-Euclidean space, but many.

Espacios No-Euclídeos is a solo show which brings together various representations of space and time, in order to introduce a selection the artist’s work that spans various media, including video, photography, live performances, but especially considering the possibilities of sound and light. In order to identify the structural elements of his surroundings, the artist, in an almost chromosomal analysis of his familiar landscape, isolates, transforms and rearranges the key units into new constructions. The result, perceptually abstract, is achieved by the methods of selecting and handling sensitive materials, through various analog and digital techniques. The lines, shapes, colors, and optical effects are key elements within the configuration of each piece.

The works presented in the exhibition are part of the natural evolution of the Latin American geometric abstraction artistic movement, which is concerned with the development of large cities and the process of modernization of industry and economy, and is based on the use of simple shapes combined in subjective compositions onto unreal spaces. Garet uses contemporary strategies to articulate similar urban experiences. Notions of functionality and harmony within mathematical order create new non-figurative realities that can be also associated with Op Art, Color Field Painting, or Post-painterly Abstraction artistic movements.

Richard Garet (b. 1972 Montevideo, Uruguay; lives in New York) completed his MFA at Bard College, and was awarded the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the Jerome Foundation Residency Grant through Issue Project Room, and the New York State Council on the Arts Grant through Lehman College. In 2006 he was artist in residence at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and has recently (2010) completed a three-month artist residency at Issue Project Room. Recent exhibitions and performances include: Fine Arts Museum of Montreal, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, Art Museum of Puerto Rico, and El Museo del Barrio. His sound compositions have been published by sound art labels such as And-Oar, Non Visual Objects, Winds Measure Recordings, Unframed Recordings, Con-V, Leerraum, White_Line Editions, and Contour Editions.

Founded in August 2010 by the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, the Espacio Arte Contemporáneo, looks forward to being the regional point of reference of international access for the promotion, research and exhibition of contemporary art. The Espacio Arte Contemporáneo organizes original exhibitions and offers international artistic residencies, support to in situ projects, and more.

This exhibition is generously supported by Ingener and the Embassy of the United States in Uruguay. Additional support is provided by Robert D. Bielecki and Asher Remy Toledo. All programs and activities of the Espacio Arte Contemporáneo are supported by the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay.

Wilfredo Prieto. Speech, 1999-2004.

It was love at first sight when I saw Wilfredo Prieto’s work Speech (1999), the ceramic toilet roll holder carrying a roll of toilet paper made from Cuba’s official newspaper Granma. It was indeed something I had never seen before, but was awaiting all my life.  The piece proved that Prieto’s strategy is to reduce the metaphor as much as possible, compress the information in order to make it as small as a placebo, but with the intention to live in your head afterwards.

Wilfredo Prieto was born in 1978 in the town of Espíritu Santo, now known as Sancti Spiritus, located in the central part of Cuba. Though he lived in one of the most beautifully preserved colonial cities in the region, Prieto moved to study at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Arte (ISA) in Havana. In 2002, he graduated in painting, a discipline he has not practiced since.

In 1959, after the revolution, Cuban art became isolated, state-sponsored, and auto-referential. Artists  were developing their work in the turmoil of discovering and shaping a national identity. Later, this sense of renovation and nationalism will be degraded and tokenized to the use of Cuba’s geographical silhouette and flag.[i] Prieto’s work is atypical and emerges from a personal point of view of this history, where Havana is a main reference, but the outcome is universal.

Linked to conceptual art, Prieto stays away from conventional artistic practices—constantly changing his medium as much as his ideas. Through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data, Prieto has become an archeologist of concepts, primarily focusing his studies on society. The artist’s goal is to excavate these concepts as a means to better understand contemporary culture. In this process of analysis, the ideas are cleaned, catalogued, and compared as a channel for synthesis in order to create the most effective images. For example, Grease, Soap and Banana (2006) consists of a daub of axle grease, a bar of soap, and a banana peel placed in a meticulous little pile on the floor of an otherwise empty exhibition space. It is a piece that evokes the idea of falling, without the actual fall. The missing elements in Prieto’s work are often evident, and it is this blatant absence that creates a powerful meaning. The banana peel would not guarantee a fall but could still prove to be a very useful slapstick comedy device.

Prieto’s body of work is, by its very nature, created to be intellectually contemplated. He is connected to the Isouian movement, defined as the art of the infinitely small and the infinitely large.[ii] Untitled (2002), in which ink markings on a chickpea suggest a globe, is a work where the miniaturization of the planet emphasizes the subject of world destruction–not as a cataclysm, but as a slow process of homogenization. As Mike Kelley writes, “In low comedy and political cartoons, reductive and distortional practices exist side by side. Here, both approaches are set to attack false or hated authority, for in the context of caricature’s distortions the refined figure becomes comic butt. In ‘fine art,’ on the other hand, reduction tends to be associated with revelation of the ideal.”[iii] Prieto’s artistic vocabulary, strategy, and gestures engage in this pattern of witticism. The consistent irony in his work is achieved through the presentation of sense within nonsense and illumination amid bewilderment. Above all, it is the brevity in Prieto’s wit that is essential to his artistic production.  The point is to reduce the metaphor so that it can be assimilated in an instant, in order to gain the highest effect with the least possible intervention.

Prieto does not employ his sense of humor as a means for entertainment within the work. Rather, it serves to amplify the critical scope of the piece. His use of atypical taxonomies and dialectic disparities manages to provoke optimal impact. The subtle repetition of words or elements in his works, along with variation, are techniques not intended to provide clarity, but to augment reality. This practice can be seen in Time is Gold (2007), consisting of a gold watch hanging from the ceiling, and Mucho ruido y pocas nueces II (2005; Much Ado About Nothing)[lb1] , which displays several meters of a water pipe and cables with an electric generator capable of providing power to a whole city, just to bring light and water to one small potted plant.

The seemingly effortless formalism of Wilfredo Prieto’s work is misleading. The artist embodies the challenge as a personal competition that is in constant reach of an unachievable goal. His work is highly structured and well planned, realized through a careful association of ideas that interact  with one another in a spare presentation.  Like a principal ballet dancer, with elegance and grace he is able to hide the hard work that is put into the production of his art.  Significant in this respect is White Library (2004), consisting of  more than six thousand blank books, each designed with its specific paper, cover, and dimensions. Every day we are expected to select the information that enters our lives; through this piece, Prieto introduces himself  as an administrator of this knowledge. The irony in the work lies in the fact that the books are there to be viewed by the public, but there is no text. However, like zombies unable to control the urge to leaf through the blank pages, the gesture is an automatic impulse, therefore the missing element—which is the text–allows for the construction of a new mode of representation  in the collection of knowledge. The participatory element of White Library is the key function that creates  the framework for a library; without the public, it is merely six thousand blank objects.

For Prieto, humor, irony, and sarcasm are systems of communication that permeate culture and political criticism. Politically Correct (2009) consists of a photo reproduction of a watermelon made to fit a cube to be placed on the floor. The piece strives to be adequate, to adapt to its new form, but it also needs to lose some its essential characteristics: to be round. If all of us were squared, we would be all easier to stack and store![iv] At least it might be what the farmers of the Zentsuji had in mind back in 2001. Through the standardization of the attributes that Mother Nature provides, fruits, people, and places could lose their own significance. As Marc Augé argues, one of the consequences of hyper-modernity is the non-place,[v] and Wilfredo Prieto refigures in the work Airport – Madrid, Brussels, Roma, Paris, La Havana, Barcelona (2008) a series of photographs of the floors of international airports, where besides the title, nothing in the image could identify them.

Prieto’s widely recognized piece Apolitical (2003) consists of thirty one flags from different countries, where the representative colors are represented in grey scale. Here the artist examines the concept of citizenship with the assumed pretense of abandoning barriers of ideology, identity, and politics. By reducing the symbols or canceling the colors, as the character Cobb from the neo-film-noir Following (1998) summarized, “You take it away, and show them what they had.”[vi]

In broader terms, the work of Wilfredo Prieto does not intend to proffer a new reality as an alternative to politics, but rather identifies political reality for what it is, without apology. It therefore maintains a certain reservation about promoting or creating an apology for politics. As a commitment to demystifying and criticizing the self-legitimizing attitude of modernity, he develops a project of dissection in order to construct a lexicon for defining contemporary facts and situations. Many elements in Prieto’s work have strong local connotations, though they still hold significance in a global context. Examples can be found in the use of particular materials, such as  peas, bananas, yeast, sugar, rum, and lemon, which serve as references to Cuban traditional cuisine and the Cuban agriculture system.

Prieto’s work is direct, but it is also open to different interpretations. Crane (2006), for example, is a sixty-meter high crane that unsuccessfully tries to lift itself. It is an epic image of the poetry of infinite disappointment. Moreover, Crane is an iconic image that is related to other contemporary artworks such as Francis Alÿs’s series “Paradox of praxis,” which reflects the sense of impotence and impossibility that we experience when dealing with the bureaucratic system.

By employing ostensible simplicity as strategy, and drawing on everyday spaces and objects as a communication code, his work shares methods with other artists of his generation such as Ivan Capote, Tatiana Mesa, and Orestes Hernández.  Prieto’s pieces generate constant reflection, demonstrating the capacity to alter forms at will through installations, sculptures, interventions, videos, and drawings. However, through their various media the ultimate focus is to synthesize and express a concise idea. As Gerardo Mosquera comments, “Although Prieto is an artist of ideas he is not a critical artist, inasmuch as he doesn’t set out to produce political or social commentary. [ . . . ] Prieto is a critical artist who does not ‘do’ criticism: it merges from the very context of his works.”[vii]

Oscar Boni,

LOS IMPOLITICOS
12.19.09 > 02.28.10
Ivan Abreu Ochoa, Marcela Armas, Stefan Bruggemann, Yoan Capote, Donna Conlon, Alexandre da Cunha, Detanico and Lain, Leandro Erlich, Dario Escobar, Jose Antonio Hernandez-Diez, Geraldine Juarez, Marcos Lopez, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jorge Macchi, Leo Marz, Cildo Meireles, Vik Muniz, Dulce Pinzon, Liliana Porter, Wilfredo Prieto, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Sara Ramo, Miguel Angel Rios, Adriana Salazar-Velez, Martin Sastre, Pablo Serra Marino.
curated by/a cura di Laura Bardier

The words and expressions one usually uses to define politics (a fundamental human activity), marginalize those areas which are impossible to think of or to express. This limitation derives from the challenges that permeate the idea of “representation” itself. However, it is also due to the fact that chaos does not reside neatly within the ‘polis’, but rather inside human beings themselves.
We find ourselves moving about in spaces where one’s thoughts are kept from totally conforming to the reality of politics; this condition is defined by the impossibility of identifying and expressing suitable terms and concepts. Thus, slowly, a new paradigm is generated. Not via a reductionist perspective, however, like in the case of a-political or anti-political sentiments, but rather in relation to a complex and multi-faceted situation: an actual reconfiguration of politics as a whole. This concept was developed and presented on more than one occasion by the Neapolitan philosopher Roberto Esposito, in particular with his article “Political and Impolitical” from 2005: “Thus the impolitical, finally, does not proffer a new reality as an alternative to politics, but rather simply identifies political reality for what it is, without apology. It therefore maintains a certain attitude, if you will, of reservation with respect to a situation of promoting or creating an apology for politics. [...] Hence the impolitical person’s commitment to demystifying, debunking, and criticizing this self-certifying attitude of modernity that says: ‘I – with my categories – I’m what’s valid,’ placing themselves up against that loss which modernity itself, in one way or another, constitutes.”
Following in Roberto Esposito’s footsteps, the exhibit “Los impoliticos” offers a project of dissection and analysis, a quest for the construction of a political lexicon to define contemporary facts and situations from a specific rather than from a generic point of view. It is in this sense, in fact, that we focus our attention on some regions of the Americas, connected by cultural, political or historical characteristics, which moreover have recently developed a critical sense or have debunked that self-legitimizing attitude of modernity. Countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela share – without denying each its own indispensable specificity and its regionalisms – similar challenges, but also similar potential solutions.
In these regions there has been a constant request for political alignment: to define clearly where one belongs and to classify one’s own personal ideological orientation and tendencies. Until the 1970’s, social action revolved around the reclaiming of cultural and social rights with regards to the States, the creation of alliances with all of the social and political-party factions, the struggle to modify the relationships among national powers, and military oppression. In a new phase, and as a response to the neo-Liberal wave of privatization exacerbated by the situation in the 1980’s (which upset the way of life for the common people) social action was expressed through the dissolution and de- construction of the consolidated forms of production and reproduction, whether territorial or symbolic, which made up the environment and everyday life.
From the early 1990’s the new models of social mobilization triggered changes of government and value systems, in certain cases with useful results; in other cases, without clear historical references and (likely) without a unifying critical vision. In any case, these movements, with their widespread, politicizing function, have historically determined the role and the objectives of artistic production. However, as a consequence of the public chaos in which the latest and most recent movements have been generated, there has emerged a faction of the population with a profoundly critical, sarcastic and irreverent vision of the organizational systems, of social functions and most of all of the essence of political thought overall.
Might we say, therefore – as Giorgio Agamben put up for discussion in the Padua Conference in 2005 –  there is an ‘alternative’ to civil war? And if this is true, what are its mechanisms and its strategies? What tools, terms and concepts are artists to employ, when the notion of movement itself is put in question? Cynicism, irony, sarcasm – modes of communication that permeate culture and artistic productions in these regions – could these prefigure areas and systems of resistance, ones of an impolitical attitude?

Los impolíticos takes a look at a series of works of art and artistic practices that handle complex and intricate themes relating to specific conditions, circumstances and questions that have accumulated in these American regions and countries. Among these is the theme migration patterns, the ebb and flow of immigration and emigration – a historical constant whose origins can be traced both locally and globally. More recently, the causes might be found in circumstances that range from economic instability to exacerbated hyper- urbanism.
Other thematic areas include the conditions of biased communication manipulated by the control systems and by the government on different levels and to varying degrees; urban and social decay, the obligation of heightened consumerism. Conditions such as this generate a strong sense of impotence. The impotence of rooting out the source of the problem, the inability to respond effectively to these issues, the inability to transform these conditions of instability. This impotence is transformed at times into violent forms and expressions; in other occasions, it generates a sincretism characteristic of these countries. A positive reaction to this inability to react is the appropriation of the very same conditions that create discomfort, the re-interpretation of the culture and of the imported iconography.
The expression Los impolíticos indicates the nature of the total exhibit. the works are itineraries run over and through by provisory orientation points, from which to sight the signs of artistic practice in its as-yet free-form experimental stage, with its closed or open forms, be they standard or transgressive, confirmed or recanted – to find oneself in the unsettling evolution of art as it is told today. Each of these works is the result of a particular journey in which a certain perspective is offered. The different journeys, taken together, give rise to a shared space that contributes to creating a collective memory of the present. A sensorial narration introduced into the space, of a collection of works determined to be significant, which articulate possible answers to matters that touch us all, albeit influenced by a regional, local or personal vision.

/
Le parole e le espressioni con le quali solitamente si definisce la politica, fondamentale attività umana, lasciano ai margini delle zone impossibili da pensare e da esprimere. Ci troviamo a circolare in spazi dove si incontrano impedimenti del pensiero nell’ aderire completamente alla realtà della politica, una condizione che si definisce attraverso l’impossibilita’ di individuare ed esprimere termini e concetti idonei.
Così, lentamente, si genera una nuova configurazione. Non però attraverso una prospettiva riduzionista, come può essere l’atteggiamento apolitico o antipolitico; ma piuttosto in relazione ad una situazione complessa e multiforme, ovvero la riconfigurazione della stessa politica.
Seguendo le tracce del filosofo napoletano Roberto Esposito, la mostra “Los impolíticos” offre un lavoro di dissezione e analisi, alla ricerca della costruzione di un lessico politico adatto a definire i fatti e le cose della realtà contemporanea da un punto di vista particolare e non generico. È proprio in questo senso che focalizziamo la nostra attenzione su alcune zone delle Americhe, collegate da caratteristiche culturali, politiche e storiche, che soprattutto recentemente hanno sviluppato un senso critico e demistificante dell’atteggiamento autolegittimante della modernità.
Paesi come Argentina, Bolivia, Brasile, Cile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Repubblica Dominicana, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Messico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Perù, Porto Rico, Uruguay e Venezuela condividono – senza escludere proprie peculiarità e regionalismi indispensabili – simili problematiche, ma anche simili possibili soluzioni.
In queste regioni c’è stata e c’è spesso una costante richiesta di allineamento politico, di una chiara definizione di appartenenza e collocazione dei propri orientamenti e tendenze ideologiche.Dall’inizio degli anni ‘90, i nuovi modelli di mobilitazione sociale hanno incoraggiato cambiamenti di governo e di sistemi di valori, in certi casi con utili risultati, in altre occasioni invece senza chiare referenze storiche e, probabilmente, senza una visione critica d’insieme. In ogni caso, questi movimenti, con la loro diffusa funzione politicizzante, hanno storicamente determinato il ruolo e gli obiettivi della produzione artistica. Però, come effetto del caos pubblico in cui sono stati generati gli ultimi e più recenti movimenti, è lentamente comparsa una fascia di popolazione con una visione profondamente critica, sarcastica, dissacrante, dei sistemi organizzativi, delle funzionalità sociali e soprattutto dell’essenza stessa del pensiero politico.
los impolíticos visualizza una serie di lavori e pratiche artistiche che affrontano temi complessi e intricati su certe condizioni, circostanze e questioni che accomunano queste regioni e paesi delle Americhe. Uno di questi temi è quello dei circoli migratori, i movimenti d’immigrazione ed emigrazione – una costante storica, che ha origini sia locali che globali. Più recentemente, le ragioni possono essere localizzate in circostanze che vanno dall’instabilità economica all’iper-urbanismo esacerbato. Altre aree tematiche sono quelle che comprendono le condizioni di comunicazione parziale, tendenziosa e manipolata dai sistemi di controllo e di governo su diverse scale; il degrado urbano e sociale; la costrizione al consumismo esasperato. Condizioni come queste generano un forte senso di impotenza. L’impotenza di individuare la vera origine dei problemi, l’incapacità di rispondere in maniera coerente a queste problematiche, l’incapacità di trasformare le condizioni d’instabilità. Questa impotenza si trasforma a volte in espressioni e forme violente; in altre occasioni, genera il sincretismo caratteristico di questi paesi, una reazione positiva a questa impotenza di reazione è l’appropriazione delle stesse condizioni che creano sconforto, la reinterpretazione della cultura e dell’iconografia importate.
L’espressione los impolíticos indica la natura d’insieme della mostra: un’insieme dei diversi percorsi, dà forma ad uno spazio condiviso che contribuisce a creare una memoria collettiva del presente. Una narrazione sensoriale inserita nello spazio, di una collezione di opere ritenute significative, che articolano risposte possibili ad argomenti che ci coinvolgono tutti, tuttavia proposte da una visione regionale, locale, personale.

ROBOTS

08.11.07 > 03.12.07
France Cadet / Christian Faubel / Pascal Glissmann e Martina Höfflin / Ken Goldberg / Leonel Moura / Kenneth Rinaldo / Robotlab
curated by Laura Bardier

A recurring image in contemporary society is the growing speed of digital information. Technology evolves and absorbs information at a dizzying speed, whereby knowledge is transmitted to intelligent machines in a process which seems to be leading us towards a post-human hybrid state. The exponential evolution of information technologies may produce the means by which artists will be able to create beyond their own vision and knowledge. On this occasion, the PAN has turned its attention to research and production in the field of robot art. Intelligent machines – once an oxymoron – are becoming commonplace. Robots are present in science and technology as well as in our homes, in art, in cinema and literature. Their importance is growing in diffuse sectors like industrial production and entertainment. At a deeper level, indeed, robotics raises fascinating cultural issues involving philosophers, artists, scientists and technologists. Experiments in this field started as early as in the 1950s with, for example, Edward Ihnatowicz’s Senster or Cybernetic Serendipity at London’s ICA, and are hosted also in the main contemporary art events, as it happens at the Mexican pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Contemporary robotics is the field in which the comprehension of human intelligence materialises; it is a topic that has always been transversal to scientific and human disciplines alike, and that has brought together research fields into neuroscience, engineering, computer science, biology, mathematics, psychology, philosophy. Transferring the processes of animal and human brain to robots is an ongoing effort which, besides technical difficulties, raises crucial questions on more general issues too: can an “intelligent” robot also imitate and learn, experience the world and become aware of it? What social status, what rights, what responsibilities will this and other types of “artificial life” have? What relationship will such a robot be able to establish with human beings? Will it be possible to design creative robots, able to act in a drama together with actors or to become recognised authors? How will aesthetics theories have to renovate themselves to account for this new dimension of art, where the artist can become a robot designer and the creation can eventually be a work and a process at the same time? These are the questions which the artists invited to FASTFORWARD ON NEW MEDIA ART: ROBOTS try to give an answer to, discussing many of these issues with varying experiences and results.
The exhibition hosts artists such as Moura and Robotlab, who propose robots that create art, or as Rinaldo, Glissmann and Faubel, who present robots that are works of art themselves or, finally, as Cadet and Goldberg, who create works inspired from the imaginative world related to robots and electronics.
Art supervisor Julia Draganovic
Special thanks to Ruben Coen Cagli for his scientific support.

ROBOTIC CONVERSATION | 11.9.07
Julia Draganovic, Direttore Artistico, PAN | Palazzo Arti Napoli
Romana Fabrizi, Giornalista Rai – Neapolis
Bruno Siciliano, Presidente IEEE RAS e Professore di Robotica del Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Guglielmo Tamburrini, Professore di Logica e Filosofia della Scienza del Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Jan Zappe di Robotlab
ROBOTIC GUIDED TOURS | 11.10.07 and 11.17.07
in collaboration with Associazione Progetto Museo
and the “Robot Nursery” Group of the Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Corso di Laurea in Informatica, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
FRAGMENTS OF ROBOTIC CINEMA | 11.29.07 and 12.01.07
in collaboration with Mediateca Santa Sofia.

Click to view slideshow.

FASTFORWARD ON NEW MEDIA ART SECOND INTERNATIONAL FORUM
11.22.07 > 11.24.07
NARRATIVE STRUCTURES / PERSPECTIVES AND LIMITS OF PRODUCTION / MAPPING AND NETWORKING / SHARING KNOW-HOW

SPEAKERS: Alex Adriaansens, V2 _Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam / Montse Arbelo y Joseba Franco, Art Tech Media, Islas Canarias / Paul Brown, Computer Art Society, London / Antonio Caronia, Accademia di Brera, Milano / Mario Costa, Artmedia, Salerno / Geoff Cox, University of Plymouth, Plymouth / Amanda McDonald Crowley, Eyebeam, New York / Dieter Daniels, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media Art Research, Linz / Kelli Dipple, Tate Modern, London / Michele Emmer, Leonardo – ISAST, San Franscio / Rosina Gómez-Baeza Tinturé, Laboral – Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial, Gijón / Johann Holland, Institute of Research and Innovation, Paris / Jon Ippolito, University of Maine, Orono / Yael Kanarek, Upgrade! International, New York / Simona Lodi, Share, Torino / Barbara London, MoMa – Museum of Modern Art, New York / Alessandro Ludovico, Neural, Bari / Emma Quinn, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London / Wonil Rhee, Curator, Seoul / Berta Sichel, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid / Yuliya Sorokina, Curator, Alma-Ata / Valentina Valentini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Roma / Atsushi Wakimoto, Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo / Lori Zippay, Electronic Arts Intermix, New York
ADVISORY BOARD: Laura Bardier, Julia Draganovic, Marina Vergiani

The second edition of the INTERNATIONAL FORUM FASTWORWARD ON NEW MEDIA ART includes a number of events and debates designed to explore the analysis of the relationship between new media art documents and works. The commitment of the PAN Documentation Centre to set up an art archive – and in particular to establish a collection of digital art works – is combined to the goal of promoting a reflection on the variety of experiences and on the subjective nature of research in the field of new media. Today, manifestations of digital arts concern disciplines, works, museum institutions, research and documentation centres, but also methods and instruments for communication and education to art. This year the INTERNATIONAL FORUM widens its scope and becomes one of the cultural initiatives promoted by the city in the framework of participation in the Universal Forum of Cultures of Monterrey. The venue has not changed, but the contents have grown and look fast forward, indeed FASTFORWARD ON NEW MEDIA ART, to 2013, the year for which Naples has submitted its candidature to host the major event promoted by the Unesco.
It is a choice which goes hand in hand with the will to record informed experiences and opinions on the development of production processes, archive systems, curators’ approaches and exhibition projects dedicated to the new media arts. In particular, in this edition contemporary art merges with other art languages and touches the most urgent issues of the contemporary world, mixing its experimental and multimedia languages and collecting contributions distributed across the four themes which constitute the conceptual core of the Universal Forum of Cultures: peace, sustainable development, cultural diversity and know-how.

DOCUMENTATION AND CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGES
FIRST INTERNATIONAL FORUM 12.14.07 > 12.15.07
CURATED BY Laura Bardier and Marina Vergiani

The international Forum Documentation and Contemporary Languages, is a three year project curated by the Documentation Center, PAN | Palazzo delle Arti Napoli. It offers a platform to discuss the conditions of art creation and fruition / enjoyment, promoting a systematic reflection on the active role of Centres for the Contemporary Arts regarding the development of the concepts museum, documentation and fruition. The Forum’s venue is Palazzo Roccella, the first exclusive and permanent Centre for the Contemporary Arts of the city of Naples. The main aim of this yearly meeting is to stimulate, to collect and to record, from a critical, shared point of view the different prospects and identities of the international network. Documentation and Contemporary Languages is an occasion for direct and practical exchange among the directors and managers of the cultural institutions representing an important part of the contemporary art system.
THEMES AND TOPICS
The sessions of the forum Documentation and Contemporary Languages will consider the following subjects:
• Artworks and documents, art in the creation of a history
• Art and public commisions
• Information and art languages
• Art, science and technology

SPEAKERS
Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, Roma, Italia
Basis Wien – Art, Information and Archives, Vienna, Austria
Centre Pompidou – Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Fance
Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italia
C/O Careof, Milano, Italia
Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, Montreal, Canada
DIA Art Foundation, New York, U.S.A.
Harvard University, Boston, U.S.A.
Institut National de L’Audiovisuel, Paris, France
M A D R E – Museo d’Arte DonnaREgina, Napoli, Italia
MAXXI – Centro di Documentazione, Roma, Italia
Museo della Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo, Italia
Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino, Italia
NTT Intercommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo, Japan
Palazzo delle Papesse – Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena, Italia
PAN | Palzzo delle Arti Napoli, Napoli, Italia
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, U.S.A.
Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e il Paesaggio e
per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico e Demoetnoantropologico di Napoli e Provincia, Napoli, Italia
Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Napoletano, Napoli, Italia
The Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
VIDEO REVIEW
A video review will be dedicated to the presentation of works and projects of the invited institutions.

http://www.palazzoartinapoli.net/pan/eng/attivita/forum/2006/programmazione.htm