API in Dortmund

27/07/2010

Steel Mill HMKV Phoenix Halle: Photo Shiraz Ksaiba

After the hell of Luton Airport we (Jo, Gillean and I deicide not to travel from there again....until the next time which for me is on Friday). Arriving in Dortmund we were greeted by Nadine and driven around the city in the lovely evening sunlight. We got to the HMKV exhibition space at Phoenix Halle and were blown away by the size and industrial look of it, the sun setting behind the old steel works.

The building itself is an old steel works spare parts unit, the whole place a mass of space. London has some big spaces but I wasn't used to the scale and size of this. Once in we were in the building we where confronted with the size and scale of the actual show, Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman and the HMKV team had been working on this for a long time and wow it showed. The space was very busy with a lot of people still working and I had a feeling that they may be carrying on into the small hours. And so we called it a night and went to Hotel Unique and that it was .. Kitsch doesn't quite cut it.

In the morning Jo and Nicola went to the exhibition’s press launch and Gillean and I had some time to explore the city. The place was buzzing with excitement of that afternoon’s World Cup match. Next to the Hotel was the U Building, which is still in being renovated but (just) accessible. Again, here in another huge space, HMKV were holding another two exhibitions. most striking was Agents and Provocateurs - research-based art about forms of confrontation and dissenting artistic attitudes. Also Building Memory – four films about architecture, monuments and community

After the football we headed back HMKV Phoenix Hall for the main event. The show looked stunning. From the incredible throat singing in the entrance installation, setting the scene, to the towering images, reconstructions, films, soundtracks, architectural models and bell tent in the main space.

We were made very welcome by HMKV and it was good to see how the other part of the show came together as there were so many more elements than the Canada House show. I could really understand why Marko and Matthew where so passionate about The North and the peoples who live there.

Shiraz Ksaiba, Administrator

Autonomous technology and art in the North

28/05/2010

Zacharias Kunuk and Matthew Biederman on live video satellite link from the Arctic wilderness to Canada House, London, 20 May 2010

My mind has been on our Arctic Perspective Initiative lately, so I felt I should blog some thoughts about it.

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is working towards the construction of free, open, information sharing infrastructures for people living in the Arctic. It is the brainchild of artists Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman, and grew out of Peljhan's 10-year Makrolab project. As the first step, the API is working in collaboration with communities in Arctic Canada to design a mobile work and habitation unit to support seasonally nomadic lifestyles. A prototype is currently being built in Pond Inlet, Nunavut. When complete, the unit will be customisable to suit a variety of needs and uses on the land: from basic survival and safety, to global media streaming, communications, and environmental monitoring.

At our event last week at Canada House to launch the Arctic Perspective exhibition, we set up a live satellite internet video link between our panel and audience sitting in Trafalgar Square, London, and Zacharias Kunuk, an Inuit film-maker, and artist Matthew Biederman, in a temporary cabin in the wilderness around Foxe Basin. Zacharias spoke of his excitement at being able to speak live and direct to people in the south about the changes taking place in his environment, whilst still being able to live in the way his traditionally nomadic people do: hunting seals and moving from place to place.

During an intelligent and engaged discussion, a member of the audience asked “Where is the art in this?”, to which there are many possible replies, not least an answer given by Marko Peljhan “I am an artist and this is my art”, which was elaborated on by Honor Harger (in the audience), who outlined the artistic heritage of social sculpture, the work of the Helen and Newton Harrison, and so on.

I have written before about the role of artists in society beyond their artistic 'output', but I also think that - given current intense interest in the Arctic, and initiatives to encourage artists to address 'climate change' – we should look at how the specific, local, and the broader geopolitical, contexts of the Arctic are being explored and represented in the work of artists. As an inhabited region, covering several countries, including Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Greenland, Canada and the USA (Alaska), the Arctic is home to many indigenous people and others. It's difficult even to think of it as a region: the Arctic as an entity is a modern idea and is, in fact, a vast and varied part of the world. In recent years, there has been a plethora of art exhibitions and events featuring work by artists who have been to the Arctic, and it seems to me that much of the artistic output conforms to the accepted iconography of remoteness, beauty, harshness, challenge and fragility, without any sense of an inhabited landscape and the social and historical processes shaping it.

'Context is half the work' was one of Artist Placement Group's key assertions. Context in the Arctic includes local cultures and histories, ecological, industrial and political pressures, and the challenges of working across nationalities and disciplines. For art projects, context includes relevant histories in art, current art discourse, and the particular schemes and institutions backing artists' visits.

API is an art project, conceived by an artist and presented in arts contexts, which sets out to highlight the cultural, geopolitical and ecological significance of the Arctic and its indigenous cultures. It is also a network of individuals and organisations working collaboratively on a practical project: a utopian quest for an a 'third culture' beyond specialisation and national interests. It it art? It seems to me that more interesting questions are rather: Is this something that art can do? And how do we do it well?

Nicola Triscott, Director

Dark Places, Autonomous Infrastructures, Deviant Toads

08/03/2010

Bike Power at the Energy Cafe

Muddy green wellies  have a place in all our recent activities. They were mandatory on our Dark places Bus tour of secret sites on Southern England. The New Scientist came along for the ride: 'The sun has barely risen and every seat on the overheated bus is taken. I look around at the other passengers. Together we're a motley crew - historians, academics, a few artists and a couple of hungover students, people united by curiosity and the promise of being shown the secret side of England. None of us are sure what to expect. The promotional blurb was deliberately vague: "...a fascinating bus tour of critical sites of advanced technological development...sites that emerged during the tensions and paranoias of the Cold War". Hopefully worth getting out of bed for'. Read more here.

The Energy Cafe, pictured above, is one of the 30 or so artists, technologists, utopians and thinkers meeting at the Baltic in Newcastle/Gateshead this week as part of Autonomous Infrastructures and the public event Planetary Breakdown organised by us, Intersections at Newcastle University and the AV festival. AV10 is already underway and generating an impressive number of tweets at #AV10. You can still sign up for Planetary Breakdown on the Intersections website here. You can sign up for the Autonomous Infrastructures group if you are on Facebook and follow on #aut_in if you tweet.

Brandon Ballengee spends most of his time splashing around in ponds in wellies investigating amphibians for deformity and trying to understand why this occurs. The Case of the Deviant Toad starts on March 15 at the Royal Institution''s impressively refurbished premises with a Cafe Scientifique. Sign up here. You can leave your wellies at the door.

Futurologies

13/01/2010

Artificial Moon by Wang Yuyang

Futurology, futurity, back to the future...with the Mayan calendar supposedly due to end in 2012 (and the UK arts budget in an Olympic-sized splash) the future is on everyone's mind in the first few days of a new decade. Transmediale 10, Berlin, is on the subject of 'Futurity' and I am moderating a panel on the nearest possibility for living off the planet, the Moon, in a Salon presentation. Destination Moon. Featuring Pavel Medvedev, whose 'On the Third Planet of the Sun' was blogged here by us, Wang Yuyang whose 'artificial moon' is featured above, curator Li Zenhua and Agnes Meyer Brandis featured here, who will also be showing her Cloud Core Scanner and a performance Making Clouds at Schering Stiftung in Berlin. The Futurity Long Conversation will also take place at Transmediale inspired by Jem Finer's longplayer and the Long Now Foundation. My colleague Nicola Triscott will take part along with a number of other luminaries and visionaries.

Featuring another proposed future, Star City - the Future under Communism at Nottingham Contemporary opens February 12 and I am speaking about the present day Star City at The Futurological Congress, inspired by Stanislaw Lem along with participating artists Aleksandra Mir (who will show the Arts Catalyst-commissioned Gravity), Pavel Althamer, The Otolith Group and others.

With the breakdown of Copenhagen, artistic strategies for intervention in radically re-thinking infrastructure become increasingly important. Taking place on March 10 at the Baltic, part of AV 2010 (theme - Energy) Newcastle and curated and organised by The Arts Catalyst and Intersections, Newcastle University, the apocalyptically-titled Planetary Breakdown- Automomous Infrastructures for a Sustainable Future explores the possibility of creating new autonomous infrastructures across energy, trade and transport, offering a space for everyone to contribute to an active dialogue about our futures. Confirmed speakers include: writer on Utopian Futures Malcolm Miles and international artists Lise Autogena, HeHe, Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson, Kate Rich, Ashok Sukumaran and Shaina Anand.  Following the symposium there will be a free lecture by artist Gustav Metzger, whom I understand will be talking about 'extinction'...

Curator, Rob La Frenais

Welcome to the new look website (blog)

22/12/2009

www.artscatalyst.org our new homepage

We're pleased to announce our new website. We've redesigned it with a new look, improved navigation and integrated access to our social networking sites.

Today we're officially launching our new website - we hope by now the web servers across the globe will have the new site fully functional, because we're itching to share some of the new features with you:

Archive:

You'll now find a visual and - when possible - audio-visual archive of our past Projects and Experience & Learning activities, which we hope you will enjoy browsing. You can search these in a variety of ways, by year, title, artists' name, theme and even location. Each project is now fully linked to blog entries, media downloads etc which we hope will bring you easy and fun browsing. We've uploaded lots of projects already, but we thought we'd like to share them with you while we add more over the coming weeks and as future projects are added.

Search function:

Hurrah! No more wondering where we’ve hidden key information on that symposium you missed! Give it a try - we're really thrilled with this feature.

Over to you:

We'd like to know what you think about our work and the ideas we explore. Our new Network & Blog section is open for your comments, contributions and feedback. It also includes integrated access to our Twitter feeds (from Director, Nicola Triscott and Curator, Rob La Frenais), and links to our other social networking sites: Facebook, Youtube and Blip TV.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts on what we have done - and still have to do.  We know every website needs to evolve. (For technical queries, please specify your operating system and browser version.)

We're trying to make sure we link with artists' and partners' websites, so please email any links you think appropriate to us and please put a link to us (http://www.artscatalyst.org) on your websites, blogs and social networks too.

Access:

Our new site has been designed to enable greatly improved use by people of all abilities and disabilities. It is designed to help those using screenreader software. Text and images are enlargable. Links are underlined.

Our website has been designed by COG Design.

Finally - I'd like to wish you all best wishes for the season - on behalf of The Arts Catalyst.

Jo Fells, Head of Marketing & PR

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