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Posts tagged ‘North America’

Mar 23

Spaced out … the relationship between art and space agencies

A chair floats above the Earth against the blackness of space

Simon Faithfull, Film still from Escape Vehicle No. 6 (2004). Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst

I was in Paris earlier this month at the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)’s spring meeting, chairing a meeting of the IAF’s technical activities committee on “cultural utilization of space” (ITACCUS), a stimulating cross-disciplinary committee of individuals who act as liaisons for different space agencies, space bodies and cultural organisations.

ITACCUS members believe that the future of space exploration requires an ongoing societal and cultural dialogue, in which the arts can play a vibrant and vital role.  The aim of the committee is to promote, develop and raise the profile and quality of artistic and cultural activities that engage with space exploration, space science and space activities. I am the co-chair alongside the astronomer and editor Roger Malina, currently Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology at the University of Texas, Dallas. You can read more about ITACCUS on the IAF’s site or on Arts Catalyst’s.

A woman floats, apparently asleep, in mid air

The Otolith Group. Film still from Otolith I, 2003. Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst & MIR consortium

We set up the committee in 2008, under the auspices of the International Astronautical Federation, after several years of working to develop artistic projects with the space world – an endeavor that met with mixed success. One of the problems has been that the European Space Agency (ESA) in particular has not appeared to understand the arts as a profession and discipline. In contrast to the cutting edge, peer-reviewed scientific research selected by the space programmes, art projects that ESA has commissioned have tended to come about through personal interests and contacts of individual space agency personnel, rather than through an institutionally-recognised professional engagement with art experts. Of course, this is not a unique problem. Ariane Koek, cultural specialist at CERN, directly and forcefully addressed this problem in an article she wrote in CERN’s international journal when setting up its new artist residency programme.

A man stalks a crescent moon with a gun

Leonid Tishkov, Private Moon, 2011.

There have been some positive initiatives by other space agencies to engage with the arts world. In 1962, NASA established an Art Program to commission artists to commemorate its missions. Some interesting works of art have been produced, some of which were shown last year in the exhibition NASA | Art : 50 Years of Exploration at the Smithsonian. There have been fewer examples of more direct engagement with space facilities and technologies, although in 1986 NASA commissioned a survey of arts organisations to gauge interest in the artistic utilisation of the proposed space station, and in 2004, it appointed Laurie Anderson as official NASA artist in residence, which resulted in the artist’s musical performance ‘The End of the Moon’ (perhaps not quite the outcome NASA had hoped for).

Ahead of the field, Japan’s space agency JAXA has a pioneering official arts and humanities strand to its International Space Station programme, and aims to produce a number of artistic projects on its Kibo module.

In Russia, The Arts Catalyst with the MIR consortium has undertaken several successful projects with the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, including projects by the Otolith Group, Stefan Gec, Yuri Leiderman, Andrew Kotting, Kitsou Dubois, and Marcel.li Antunez Roca. (We’ve also commissioned more “DIY” approaches to space, such as Simon Faithfull’s launch of a chair to the edge of space in 2004, as well as many projects based more in the imagination of space than space itself.)

Stefan Gec, Celestial Vault (installation), 2003. Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst & MIR consortium

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been less engaged with the arts than NASA or JAXA, although in 2005, it attempted to develop a professional relationship with the cultural world by announcing an open tender for a contract to develop a cultural utilisation policy and proposed programme for the International Space Station, which The Arts Catalyst won with a small consortium of organisations it brought together. After a workshop at ESA with space personnel, artists, curators, astronauts and scientists, and other consultations with artists and curators across Europe, Arts Catalyst produced a report with a series of recommendations and some proposed pilot projects. Some of these projects were given preliminary feasibility assessments, and the organisation was given a second contract to begin to realise them. We were also commissioned by ESA to curate an exhibition in Berlin as part of ESA’s International Space Exploration Conference in 2008, in which we showed works by Tomas Saraceno, Marko Peljhan, Kitsou Dubois, Simon Faithfull, Tim Otto Roth and Agnes Meyer-Brandis. But after a change of ESA personnel in 2007, the cultural utilisation project stalled, although technically we still hold this contract.

Transparent globe containing small plant

Kirsten Johannsen, Nomadic Nature Kit, 2010.

Five years later, a separate team, the “ESA Topical Team Arts & Sciences” (ETTAS) – although with some overlapping members to the original team – has produced another excellent and thorough report, with a very similar set of recommendations to ours. Let us hope this report meets with a more sustained response by ESA.

In the meantime, ITACCUS will continue to endorse and promote strong, innovative artistic projects that engage with space themes and the space programme. Excitingly, this appears to be developing into a genuinely international initiative. At this month’s meeting, we had proposals for projects for ITACCUS endorsement from France, the USA, India, Mexico and Poland.

Artists will always be interested in why humans are predisposed to look to the heavens for personal meaning. But the question is: Is promoting culture and the arts within the international space community worth the time and effort, and how best should we go about it?

A dancer in a red dress on a Russian parabolic (zero gravity) flight

Morag Wightman, Film still from Gravity - A Love Story, 2001. Commissioned by The Arts Catalyst

Jan 3

A new art-science renaissance – in Texas?

The remarkable Roger Malina is – unsurprisingly – already shaking things up in his new role at the University of Texas at Dallas. As Distinguished Chair of Arts and Technology and Professor of Physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, where he is developing art-science R&D and experimental publishing research.

He has just announced a PhD in Art-Science. This new PhD at the University of Texas, Dallas, “seeks to enable research and education that couples the Arts and Humanities with the Sciences and Engineering”. Students with backgrounds in science, engineering or arts and humanities may enroll in the PhD. in fact, they are specifically seeking candidates from diverse backgrounds, including “academia, private industry, non governmental organizations, make and hacker collectives”.

There’s more info at: http://www.utdallas.edu/admissions/graduate/degrees/detail.php?d=1641.

Roger Malina has a remarkable track record of initiatives in the area of art and science, as well as a distinguished career as an astronomer. Malina was the former Director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence, France. He was the Principal Investigator for the NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Satellite at the University of California, Berkeley, US. He also has been involved for 25 years with the Leonardo organisation, based in the US, whose mission is to promote work that explores the interaction of the arts and sciences and the arts and new technologies. Since 1982 he has been the Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. More recently he has helped set up the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMERA) and is co chair of the ASIL ( Arts, Sciences, Instrumentation and Language) Initiative of IMERA which hosts artists in residence in scientific research laboratories of the Marseille region.

Jan 2

2012: autonomous infrastructures, uneasy energies, and the machine wilderness …

Yahoo. 2012! What’s coming up this year in the art/science world? Here’s a highly subjective list of things I’m looking forward to.

Melanie Jackson, still from new work (in progress), 2012

Arts Catalyst’s Republic of the Moon exhibition is currently running at FACT, Liverpool, to 26 February, and there’ll also be a Kosmica event at FACT at the end of the month. In March, Agnes Meyer-Brandis’ Moon Goose Analogue tours to the Great North Museum, Newcastle, as part of AV Festival.

Later this month, we’ll announce a call for an exciting artist’s fellowship at a major science facility in Europe (details to come). We’ll also be launching a new series of workshops and commissions in our Autonomous Artists’ Infrastructures strand, following on from the Planetary Breakdown event at BALTIC, including new work by Hehe.

We’ll be busy all year round in our Clerkenwell space in London with a new series of Kosmicas and other events, exhibitions and workshops, beginning with ‘Trust Me, I’m an Artist’, exploring the ethics of art/science collaborations. Later this Spring, I’m greatly looking forward to showing our new commission from Melanie Jackson, a new essay film that takes us from the botanical garden to the synthetic biology laboratory in the artist’s ongoing investigation into the impulse for form, informed by her participation in our Synthesis workshop last year.

Throughout the year, we’ll unveil a number of other artists’ projects currently in development at different venues across the UK. I’m also planning to trail Alec Finlay when I can around the northernmost parts of Scotland for his investigations into small-scale wind power. And we’ll continue our involvement in the Arctic Perspective Initiative.

Illustration from E. W. Golding's The Generation of Electricity by Wind Power (1955). From Alec Finlay’s http://skying-blog.blogspot.com/

Beyond Arts Catalyst, Berlin’s wintry transmediale is always a good get-together for people inhabiting the art-tech-politics end of the art and science spectrum. This year, the festival takes the theme of ‘in/compatible’. Its exhibition ‘Dark Drives – Uneasy Energies in technological times’ promises “works of art and artefacts of everyday culture that direct our attention to the dark side of our technologised lives”, including a series of photographs by environmental scientists Vibek Raj Maurya and Jack Caravanos of the overwhelming amounts of electronic waste deposited in developing world.

Vibek Raj Maurya, e-waste series, Accra, Ghana

In June, back to Germany as documenta finally rolls around again. Will there be much engagement with science in this 5-yearly massive survey of contemporary art?  How could there not be, if it plans at all to consider art in relationship to contemporary existence, given the currency of environmental issues and 2011′s scientific excitements, which have included glimpses of the Higg’s boson, Einstein-defying neutrinos, and the discovery of Earth’s “twin”? We know, at least, that Amy Balkin’s ongoing Public Smog project will be part of documenta (13), relocating her park in the atmosphere and intelligent discourse over governance of the skies to Kassel.

Amy Balkin, Public Smog (2004 ongoing). Part of documenta (13)

Of the UK’s Cultural Olympiad offerings this year, I’m keen to see Owl Project’s FLOW, an environmentally sustainable watermill on the River Tyne, come to fruition after all their hard work, and I’d like to hop onto Alex Hartley’s Arctic nowhereisland, navigating the South-West of England coast. Meanwhile, Film and Video Umbrella is commissioning a series of moving image artworks that reflect that transient period when an athlete attains a heightened state of performance, generated by four artist-scientist partnerships: Dryden Goodwin and Elsa Bradley; Cornford and Cross and Dr Richard Ramsey; Susan Pui San, Tali Sharot and Nicky Clayton; and Roderick Buchanan and Dr David Shearer. All four new works will be shown at De la Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, in summer 2012.

Come Autumn/Fall, I’m already very excited about ISEA 2012, taking place this year in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and glorying in the title ‘Machine Wilderness’. The themes are very much up our street: The Cosmos, Wildlife, Transportation, Power. New Mexico: it’s got deserts, it’s got mountains, it’s got art, and it’s even got a dropzone. What’s not to love?

Ivan Puig and Andrés Padilla Domene, SEFT-1, Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria Tripulada, Manned Railway Exploration Probe. Showing at ISEA 2012.

Back from ISEA in September, I may pay a visit to the small market town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, birthplace of Isaac Newton, where they’re planning a “major art and science festival”. (It’s also the birthplace of Maggie Thatcher, but let’s not go there)

What have I left out? Let me know your art and science highlights for 2012, particularly in other parts of the globe.

Oct 4

Reunions and resistance – Critical Art Ensemble

Great to meet up with Steve Kurtz at AND festival, Liverpool, last week, recovered from his four-year ordeal of FBI intimidation.

Photo of Steve Kurtz in panel discussion smiling in black jumper and blue jeans

Photo of Steve Kurtz by Steve Reynolds

Kurtz’s story is well-known and much written about. But for those on another planet at the time: in 2004, Kurtz, of art collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), together with his scientific collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, were slapped with charges of bioterrorism by the US Dept of Justice. These were triggered by CAE’s art projects critiquing commercial biotechnology and US biowarfare research, and Kurtz’s biological lab equipment and supplies, discovered because he had called 911 to report that his wife had died of heart failure.

Men in white hazard suits enter a house marked of by yellow warning tape

The FBI searching Kurtz's house


When the bioterrorism charges could not be substantiated – after several months and a pile of public money – the DOJ downgraded the crime to “mail and wire fraud”. These charges involved a minor contractual technicality over Ferrell’s sale of some harmless bacteria to Kurtz for his project “Marching Plague” (commissioned by Arts Catalyst). Under the US Patriot Act the maximum sentence for these charges was five to twenty years. The FBI continued for four years to try to find ways to reinstate the bioterrorism charges.

Critical Art Ensemble, Marching Plague, action on Isle of Lewis (2006), commissioned by The Arts Catalyst)

Ferrell eventually pleaded guilty to these smaller charges to avoid a federal trial, leaving Kurtz to forge on alone for both Team Art and Team Science. Ferrell wasn’t so much scared of the DOJ as just extremely ill. He has had non-Hodgkins lymphoma for the past 30 years, and three strokes since the charges were brought against him.

In 2008, after a long expensive legal battle, a judge finally dismissed all charges against Kurtz.

But has Kurtz really recovered, as he says? He talked at his keynote lecture at AND festival / Rewire conference about the Lacunian “big other”, and the policeman and the lawyer who now sit in his head. Critical Art Ensemble will be at Documenta next year, enfolded into the bosom of the mainstream arts world, presenting critical work that is powerful but covers subject matter that other artists do. Is CAE going to play it safe now? Has the FBI won, in some sense, by quieting their critique and dulling their actions?

What inspired me so much about CAE was their tactical invasion of specialist knowledge economies, such as biotechnology, that are controlled and commodified.

But talking to Steve, I am reassured and immensely cheered. He is a remarkable man, battered but resilient, and absolutely unbroken. Expect more mischief-making and provocations in new and unexpected knowledge domains. I will report.

Three smiling people in a dark bar

Absolutely sober Arts Catalyst / Steve Kurtz reunion at AND festival. Photo:: someone in a bar