About the :RE exhibitions Based on the initial framework of each artist’s project, the use of RE- was identified as a general tendency, where artists are invited to rethink, redesign, reimagine themselves and the world around them. The prefixRE connects the exhibitions :REWORLD, :REWILD, and :RETOOL. The presentations form a trilogy, each with a specific narrative that enables it to be explored in its uniqueness.
-Press release
Repairing the Present
The aim of the three :RE exhibitions in Milan, Rome, and Karlsruhe is to create narrative frameworks in which the residency program, Repairing the Present, can be articulated as a collective effort. Intended to explore how to restore our present, the exhibitions serve as a launching platform for ideas that can reshape our future. The works presented are the result of bricolage, hands-on thinking and knowledge, collaborative research, prototypes and radically speculative scenarios that transform our perspectives.
:REWORLD addresses worldbuilding as a fundamental activity of digital culture.
Constructed, augmented, mixed realities or metaverses have unparalleled potential in providing critical visualizations for both natural ecosystems and human infrastructures and flows. Wassim Alsindi, known for his experiments of collective knowledge practice, presents an interactive work inspired by pre-internet gamebooks, a journey in a fantasy world where we see the impact of blockchain and crypto economies on the environment.
Kate Austen and Fara Peluso’s video sculpture highlights circular alternative to the extractive models and includes a prototype of biomaterial which could replace vinyl records with a zero – or low-carbon way for listeners to acquire sound works.
Samira Benini Allaouat reimagines electricity in public spaces proposing an understanding of geobacteria as collaborators in the city ecosystem rather than “invaders”
Felix Gaedtke proposes a VR experience in which participants can explore a utopian Berlin with completely sustainable mobility
German studio Lapatsch | Unger and Johanna Schmeer illustrate groundwater research in Berlin that highlight the importance of mapping and understanding the water that we drink; artists from London-based Studio Above & Below present a digital sculpture synchronised to real-time environmental data taken from the Flanders.
The artwork is based on research conducted to improve the quality of the subsoil for the benefit of all species.
Sissel Marie Tonn collaborated with immunologists and AI experts to build a simulation of human reactions to micro-plastics, presented as video animations.
Joseph Hovadik shares a journey through mass tourism in Cyprus with data and information presented as video animations and a 360º video experience.
– MEET Digital Culture Centre in Milan from 4-30 October 2022
:REWILD explores the urgency of cooperation between species, of decolonising nature and future ecosystems.
The exhibition emphasizes possible intersections between the natural and synthetic, artificial and organic, animal and mineral kingdoms, as we shift towards renewed forms of becoming in the Anthropocene. Renowned French artist Olga Kisseleva presents Cities Live Like Trees, cartographies that use layers of data to analyze people’s journeys in various cities in relation to the arborescent structure of cities.
The Amsterdam-based artist and researcher Penelope Cain shows a narrative work that draws on the potential of lichens for a call for socio-environmental sustainability in cities
Belgian artist Filip Van Dingenen in collaboration with Congolese artist David Shongo present a video work based on folk traditions related to listening to birds in order to create new languages for navigation and orientation in areas critically affected by climate change such as Congo
Austrian artist Susi Gutsche shares a multimedia installation in the shape of an “island of waste” that reflects on the way towards a “resilient waste mobility” based on research from Rome
Dutch artist, xenologist, and professor Adriana Knouf presents a video work that illustrates how space missions can be built for queer and post-colonial futures, as opposed to contemporary commercial, military, and expansionist purposes.
London-based Irishman Lugh O’Neill presents a live spatial sound performance that speaks about cultural engagement with acoustic spaces and habitats.
In Rome, works by artists present in :REWORLD will be shown: Samira Benini Allaouat’s prototype installation of a garden illuminated with light coming from a bacterial cultivation that generates electricity, and Lapatsch | Unger and Johanna Schmeer’s research on Berlin’s groundwater will materialise as glass sculptures.
– MAXXI the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome from 15 October – 13 November 2022
:RETOOL presents processes of mediation and illustrates our sense of instrumentality, proposing a performative approach to the creation of instruments and tools to address global emergency scenarios.
Looking briefly at the works in the exhibition: the duo Grown Your Own Cloud, formed by Polish Monika Seyfried and Briton Cyrus Clarke, presents an installation that explores the possibility of transforming the urban spaces of The Hague into Universal Biological Cloud Facilities that use plants for their data storage.
Based on a research done in Milan, Austrian Markus Jeschaunig has designed an installation that stores the heat that would otherwise be wasted during daylight hours.
Hypercomf -Greek artists Ioannis Koliopoulos and Paola Palavidi- have organized a nomadic film festival that is completely powered by agricultural crops, and will take place in different locations each year
Artists duo Unit Lab explores how the circular economy could be introduced into the school curriculum in Greece by mixing science with art and making.
We will also see, in new site-specific versions, works by artists also included in :REWORLD and :REWILD including the live spatial sound performance from Lugh O’Neill; Cities Live Like Trees by Olga Kisseleva; and Bodies of Water by Lapatsch | Unger and Johanna Schmee.
– ZKM | Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe from 18 November – 18 December 2022
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