Posted by 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Nicola Triscott 