Month: May 2017

Commissioned by Kiasma for ARS17, Etsivä is both a part of and a film on ARS17. Taking at face value Virtual Reality’s promise to reproduce the world, the film plays with the tension between the experience of the exhibition and its representation in virtual reality. The soundtrack, inspired in Sigfried Kracauer’s Der Detektiv-Roman, highlights virtual reality’s positivist roots. The film will be available as part of ARS17+—the exhibition’s online section—creating a distance between the experience of the show at the museum and its experience on the film. Once the show has ended, Etsivä will remain as the most realistic documentation of what it was.

Milja Liimatainen writes in the ARS17 catalogue: “Straschnoy considers what happens when our physical contact with material objects decreases or ceases altogether. What happens to the work’s aura if the viewer only ever encounters its representation(s)?”

For more information on Axel Straschnoy please click here.

RAGING DREAMS over the horizon
Baptiste Debombourg 19.05-16.07.17
Vernissage 19.05.17 at 7 p.m.

S12 Open Access Studio and Gallery is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the opening of the exhibition RAGING DREAMS over the horizon by the French artist Baptiste Debombourg.

Debombourg has received international acclaim for his monumental installations. Waves of broken glass are breaking into and flooding rooms and structures, taking over and transforming buildings and areas. The work can be experienced as both threatening and beautiful as the artist both destroys and rebuilds. The broken and reconstructed material conveys many stories and is often interpreted as a critique of the world we live in – of consumerism or a world in the process of falling apart.

In S12’s Gallery Baptiste Debombourg has made a new installation– Raging Dreams where the energy and power of dreams is a central theme, and where the main material is laminated glass. Debombourg does work with a variety of materials and techniques, but prefers to use materials we are surrounded with in our daily life. In this installation, the remodeled sheets of broken laminated glass, remind us of the destructive abilities of natural forces, as they take over the the gallery, parallel with the silhouette horizon in the background. Through his unique and eye catching artwork he makes the viewer experience his/hers surroundings in a new and unexpected way.

Baptiste Debombourg is an innovative artist who pushes boundaries, explores various media and collaborates with artists from other fields, be it artists, architects or fashion designers. He lives and works in Paris. Debombourg has studied sculpture at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and did his post-graduate work at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In France he is one of the most outstanding artists of his generation
with numerous public presentations at home and abroad to his merit. He has built installations in cities such as Paris, Strasbourgh, Miami, Québec and Sarajevo, and will in May ´17 present a new public installation in Le Havre on the occasion of the city’s 500th anniversary.

For more information on Baptiste Debombourg please click here.

To download an interview on the project with Bergljót Jónsdóttir, Director of S12, Bergen, please follow this link:  NG 2 2017, S12 Baptiste Debombourg, S, 28 – 31.

The volume “Renewable Futures. Art, Science and Society in Post-Media Age” is out, edited by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits and Armin Medosch with contributions by Domenico Quaranta, Martha Buskirk, Miško Šuvaković, Dieter Daniels, Andreas Broeckmann, Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund, Ieva Astahovska, Karla Brunet, Oksana Chepelyk, Edith Doove, Gabriela Galati, Julian Hanna, Lisa Jevbratt, Normunds Kozlovs, AnneMarie Maes, Conor McGarrigle, Armin Medosch, Jennifer no.e Parker, Daniela de Paulis, Helena Sederholm, Ilva Skulte, Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Vygandas “Vegas” Šimbelis, Isidora Todorović, Polona Tratnik and Fields exhibition artists.

RIXC comes out with the newest book in Acoustic Space edition – Renewable Futures. Art, Science and Society in Post-Media Age. With this Renewable Futures volume, RIXC begins a new series of Acoustic Space, that will focus on exploring the transformative potential of art in the post-media age.

Book will be presented on April 28, in Eindhoven, during second Renewable Future conference and on May 3 in Riga, during the opening of the new RIXC gallery, in Lencu iela 2.

Acoustic Space comes out as an international peer-reviewed journal for transdisciplinary research on art, science, technology and society.

Acoustic Space Nr. 16. Renewable Futures. Art, Science and Society in Post-Media Age.

With this Renewable Futures volume, we begin a new series of Acoustic Space, that will focus on exploring the transformative potential of art in the post-media age. Our book presents the research and practices that aim to invent new avenues for more sustainable and imaginative future developments. The papers from the 1st Renewable Futures Conference selected in this volume are aimed at shaping new contact zones between traditionally separated domains – art and science, academic research and independent creative practices, sustainable businesses and social engagement in the 21st century.

The first chapter highlights the role of technology, considering “technopolitics” as a very profound perspective for the contextualisation of an art practice in the current phase of society. The second chapter introduces the notion of “contemporary conditions” and discusses theories and practices of “post-media”, “post-internet” and other “posts”. The third chapter looks at artistic engagement with different fields of science, ecological issues and interspecies relations, while the fourth chapter discusses yet another role which artists have been active in – partaking in collecting and coding, manipulating and retransmitting processes. The closing section includes an overview of the Fields exhibition (Riga 2014), a large-scale post-media manifestation, jointly curated by Armin Medosch, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits.

For more information on the book, please click here.