ARTHUB FAVORITE: WEEK EIGHT
New Sensorium | Exiting from Failures of Modernization
Duration: 5 March – 4 September, 2016
Venue: ZKM_Atrium 1 + 2
Lorenzstraße, 76135 Karlsruhe, Germany
Arthub would like to introduce New Sensorium as our Favorite of the Week, the group exhibition at ZKM (Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) opens to the public tomorrow (March 5th).
The exhibition features the work of mostly non-Western, Asian artists – based on the classical definition of Asian: the Eurasian continent, minus Europe – and focuses on new sensory realms, indicating a new consciousness derived from globalization and digital technologies. Here, of course, sensorium means not only sensory inputs. It includes the accompanying cognition for reevaluating our changing living conditions. In this sense, our new sensorium is a collection of means enabling us to explore the transient close conjunction between our virtual and actual lives.
Just as the term Asian does not reflect a single culture or race, but rather a non-European tradition in Eurasia, New Sensorium offers a Logos essentially distinct from the European model, in that the work relies on intuitive ways that phenomena are handled, holistically integrating thought and action, without ever needing to bifurcate into subject/object. Many digital-native artists have lived their lives within the unstable and dynamic situation of connecting and disconnecting premodern or traditional cultural memory and the contemporary, in the context of the ideological shifts towards capitalism and the urbanization of Asia during these thirty years. They utilize digital media as a tool to create new living environments to retain their sanity.
At ZKM | Karlsruhe, curator Yuko Hasegawa presents the work of 16 artists sensing the way forward into the future, exploring exit strategies from the dark confusion at the precipices of dualist modernization. Digital space is where they thrive and collaborate on survival methods for political, social, and environmental crises in their actual surroundings. New Sensorium is a step towards a new ecosystem, of media and material.
More about the exhibition, including an extended curatorial text here.
Participating Artists
Tarek Atoui (LB), Rohini Devasher (IN), Valia Fetisov, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk (RU), 2bit Ishii, buffer Renaiss (JP), Lin Ke (CN), Tara Kelton (IN), Nile Koetting (JP), Mirai Moriyama (JP), Magdi Mostafa (EG), Kohei Nawa (JP), Daito Manabe, Rhizomatiks (JP), Bruce Quek (SG), Raqs Media Collective (IN), Sputniko! (JP), Shiro Takatani, Dumb Type (JP), Maria Taniguchi (PH), Yusuke Tomoto, Rhizomatiks (JP), Guan Xiao (CN)
About Curator
Yuko Hasegawa is chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (since 2006) and professor of art theory and curatorial practice at Tama Art University in Tokyo. Previously, she was chief curator and founding director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (1999 – 2006). Hasegawa has been responsible for numerous international exhibition projects. She was artistic director of the 7th Istanbul Biennial (2001), co-curator of the 4th Shanghai Biennale (2002), curator of the Japanese pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), co-curator of the 4th Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2006), artistic advisor to the 12th Venice Biennale of Architecture (2010), co-curator of the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010) and curator of the Sharjah Biennial (2013).
Featured Artists
The German based cultural bulletin board Life PR introduced ZKM’s upcoming show, with a closer look at a select number of artists. Find out more about a few of the exhibitions participating artists and the works they will present at New Sensorium below.
As part of the exhibition, the Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui (*1980 in Beirut, Lebanon) is presenting two new musical instruments, which appeal to both hearing people and the deaf public. Both instruments are part of Atoui’s ongoing project WITHIN, which was initiated in 2013 in collaboration with Al Amal School for Deaf Students in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). The project will continue not only in Karlsruhe but also in Bergen (Norway), Troy (New York) and Berkeley (USA). For each station of his project, Atoui has developed different instruments, which are to be tested and experienced together with deaf and hearing people of different ages.
In his work, Atoui addresses the relationship of the body to the instrument and, in intensive physical performances, combines composition, movement and software and hardware development. In 2012, Atoui took part in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
Dancer and actor Mirai Moriyama (*1984 in Kobe, Japan) has developed the performance Upload a New Mind to the Body, which dissolves the boundaries between subject and object, for the exhibition. Moriyama is wrapped in a membrane, which represents an operating system. With his movements, he peels himself out of the sheath, as if a new operating system, which did not support the existing function, had been installed. Moriyama will present his performance on 16 and 17 March 2016 in the ZKM_Medientheater, as part of the GLOBALE FINALE final weekend. The video Upload a New Mind to the Body can be viewed in the exhibition space.
With the large-scale installation FORCE in the ZKM’s Lichthof_2, Kohei Nawa (*1975 in Osaka, Japan) visualises gravitational force: Black, viscous oil pours like rain onto the ground into a deep black pool. Nawa investigated the viscosity of the liquid in his studio. Physical states become indistinct, liquid seems to turn into a solid, and a sculptural form emerges.
Daito Manabe (*1976 in Tokyo, Japan), a founding member of the Rhizomatiks Research group, developed a large-scale interactive installation specifically for the exhibition. It is based on the work Traders, which visualises and artistically transforms live data from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. For the new installation Chains, the artist has dealt with the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Rhizomatiks Research is a multidisciplinary Japanese artist and designer group, founded in 2006, which focuses on installations and performances with innovative technologies.
The British-Japanese artist Sputniko! (*1985 in Tokyo, Japan), who was voted “Vogue Woman of the Year” in her homeland Japan in 2013 and became known through her viral YouTube videos, is showing her work Menstruation Machine at the ZKM. The speculative machine, which is reminiscent of a chastity belt, allows the wearer to follow first-hand all aspects of menstruation. Electrodes evoke abdominal pain and a tank full of blood secretes drops. Her second installation is dedicated to Lunar Girl, the first woman on the moon. Her installations and videos were shown at the exhibitions Talk to Me, MoMA, New York (2011) and Bunny Smash, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2013), among other places. Since 2013, she has been an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.
Maria Taniguchi (* 1981 in Manila, the Philippines) was awarded the HUGO BOSS CHINA ASIA ART Award for Emerging Asian Artists in 2015. Her large-scale paintings of brick walls, which include the series Untitled (Brick Paintings) exhibited at the ZKM, function like architectural elements in the gallery spaces. Taniguchi uses black ink to meticulously fill out the grids drawn with pencil on canvases. Maria was featured in the HIGHLIGHTS section of the first issue of KALEIDOSCOPE ASIA. Check out the inaugural edition of the biannual and bilingual magazine, in which Joselina Cruz (curator, writer and Director of MCAD in Manila) explores the artistic practice of Maria Taniguchi – starting with an in-depth look at Untitled (Brick Paintings).
Program of Events
Friday, 4 March, 2016, 8:30 – 9:00 pm
Tarek Atoui: WITHIN 2
Saturday, 5 March, 2016, 2:00 pm
Artist Talk: Tarek Atoui, Magdi Mostafa, Kohei Nawa, Daito Manabe, Shiro Takatani
Saturday/Sunday, 16 – 17 April, 2016, 6:00 and 5:00 pm
Mirai Moriyama: Upload a New Mind to the Body
ZKM_Medientheater
Sunday, 17 April, 2016, 11:00 am
Guided Tour with Curator Yuko Hasegawa
ZKM_LH 1 + 2
Free admission