NEW.BRAVE.WORLD!
Biennial for art and technology
Trondheim October 7 – November 7, 2010
1 month – 25 nations – 125 artists, musicians, writers and researchers!
Norway´s most extensive culture event for art and science.
Introduction.
The development and use of new technologies happens at an increasingly rapid pace, and bio technology, nano technology and new communications- and computer technologies entails examples of new tools for artists, tools that can open new worlds of ideas as well as making previously not manageable ideas realizable.
New scientific insights often implies philosophical and existential problems and questions. Artistic and scientific research are continuously part of challenging and changing our perspectives. The artist as a directly and an indirectly conveyor and interpreter of new knowledge and research, plays a crucial role for society’s abilty for both having a proper insight, as well as being able to maintain an adequate discourse, regarding the use of new technologies and scientific advancements.
Meta.Morf will for a broader audience, present artists, musicians, writers and researchers with projects and performances that in different ways reflects humankind’s position and possibilities in our globalized time.
The biennial includes art exhibitions at Trondheim Art Museum, Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art, and Babel Art Space, as well as several conferences, workshops, film screenings and concerts through out the whole month!
TEKS has for eight years in a row, since 2002, arranged an annual festival for arts and technology called Trondheim Matchmaking. The festival acted as an arena for presentations of innovative ideas, music- and art projects, a place to share and develop technological and artistic competence and resources. Meta.Morf is the festival’s successor and the new biennial will continue and further develop the traditions build during the Trondheim Matchmaking festival series.
Trondheim 2010
Espen Gangvik
Director TEKS
Curatorial statement
Meta.Morf 2010 – New.Brave.World!
Almost nothing on this planet has been left untouched by humankind and its actions. Sometimes as a side effect, but often as a conscious interference from trying to sculpt the world according to our dreams and fears. Mastering and designing all aspects of life is closely related to the development of science and technology. New technologies have become tools for trying to change nature from its unpredictable and uncontrollable state, into the opposite, a predictable and controllable planet of ‘perfection’. Ideas we can recognize amongst other from Modernistic thinking and practice.
The logic and politics of the pure as a basic principle for shaping our lives has for the last century been the leading mindset within our society, and it has had amazing, world changing consequences. New models for perceiving and understanding the world and ourselves has been introduced, giving possibilities for new specialized knowledge domains to emerge. However, today one are experiencing how limited some of these ideas and their according lifestyles can be. We just have to look at the many examples of mistakenly bio politics, and the devastating effects it has had on the environment, whether it applies to natural resources, urban planning, population control, agricultural and refined food production, or the issue of diversity in general.
The experiences we´ve made from these experiments has taught us that the processes that sustain and shape our lives cannot be controlled top down: they work bottom up, continuously becoming more complex. Even modest activities on a micro scale interacts and coalesce into the macro systems governing our tangible world.
We have during the last decade, within different creative practices, the sciences and the educational sector, seen several initiatives that foster trans- and interdisciplinary collaborations. New alliances and new ways of collaborations between the arts and the science field have created new areas of research and a new ‘practice’. This explorative playfulness is characterized by hybridity and cross-fertilization that as a result constitute qualitative factors for creating and understanding interactivity in its widest sense.
The need to understand how humans and objects interact with one another (and thus recreate each other) is critical with regards to the dire issues of our age, such as the questions of sustainability, the environment, material resources, food production, energy resources, migration problematics and so forth. Contemporary artistic practice has seeped into all these aspects of our modern life, and this biennial seeks to further reflect and explore this practice.
Meta.Morf 2010 acknowledges the bankruptcy of our exploitive lifestyle. There is an urgent need to create new concepts and models that can cope with the contemporary state of the world, a world which in its ground is based on contradictions, instability and disorder. These factors has given us the impression of an uncontrollable, fuzzy and incomprehensible world because of the fact that we are not used to look for coherence in what as a first sight can be seen as chaotically behaving patterns.
Meta.Morf 2010 wishes to explore the contradictory and unstable features of Life and Art and make use of them as productive impulses and tools for artistic and scientific projects.
Meta.Morf 2010 positions itself as a trans-disciplinary platform for artistic practices that presents, debate and investigates new models and concepts for how sustainable structures can emerge from complex and ‘messy’ interactions.
New, brave and global perspectives.
Trondheim 2010
Alex Adriaansens
Espen Gangvik
// Exhibition curators //
Alex Adriaansens, director V2_
Espen Gangvik, director TEKS
// Conference curators and moderators //
Angelica D. Schmitt
Theorist, Berlin
Michel F. van Dartel
curator, Rotterdam
Jeremy Welsh
Artist, Professor, Bergen National
Academy of the Arts
Roy Ascott
Artist, Author, Professor, Planetary
Collegium, University of Plymouth
// Concert curators //
Espen Gangvik, TEKS
Arnfinn Killingtveit, TEKS
Per Platou, PNEK
Gisle Frøysland, PIKSEL
// Film curators //
Svein Inge Sæther, Cinemateket
Torbjørn Grav, Cinemateket
Ola Lund Renolen, Kosmorama
Jan Wilhelm Andersen, Kosmorama/ TEKS
Gisle Frøysland, PIKSEL
(established 2007)
Jeremy Welsh, professor Bergen National Academy of The Arts
Jemima Rellie, vice president, Comms & public progr. Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles
Clive Kellner, director, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
Alex Adriaansens, director, V2 and DEAF, Rotterdam
Zhang Ga, curator, Media Art China, The National Museum of Modern Art, Beijing
•Babel Art Space
•CIANT
•Cinemateket Trondheim
•Dokkhuset
•Galleri KIT
•Kosmorama
•NTNU
•PIKSEL Festival
•Planetary Collegium
•PNEK
•ReMida
•Scandic Solsiden
•Trondheim Kunstmuseum
•Trøndelag Teater
•Trøndelag Senter for Samtidskunst
•V2_
Espen Gangvik, Director/ Curator
Catherine Kahn, Event manager
Jan Wilhelm Andersen, Booking manager
Arnfinn Killingtveit, Producer
Daniel Richards, Producer
Martin Palmer, Assistant
Audun Eriksen, Assistant
Joakim Moldestad, Assistant
Per Kristian Nygård, Assistant
Vigdis Haugtrø, Assistant
TEKS
PB 2227 Sentrum
7412 Trondheim
Norway
Phone: +47 73 48 80 30
E-mail: teks[AT]teks.no
Thanks to:
Unni S. Harrison, TIBE-T
Jan Hollås, EIE NA AS
Per Amundsen, Amundsen Sveis og Mek AS
Astrid Lægreid, NTNU
Magne Børset, NTNU
Per Gatzschmann, NTNU
Sverre Halvorsen, NTNU
Pete Roze, NTNU
Madeleine Park, Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art
Marit Kristine Flåtter, Babel Art Space
Merete Hovdenak, Trondheim Art Museum
Randi Lundquist, Scandic Solsiden
Merete Søbstad, Dokkhuset
Kristian Seltun, Trøndelag Teater
Olav Sjelmo, Verkstedhallen
Arvid Esperø, Rockheim
Bård Flikke, Pstereo
