The exhibition brought together different international artists who deal with the theme of nature and landscape. In animated videos, the artists referred to the human interaction with nature. In the Q18 space, there was an installation of analogue and digital elements that cross-fertilised each other.
Curated by Wilko Austermann
When? 19.06, 18-22 h, each Sunday 14-17 h
The exhibition could also be seen in LIVE-STREAM at 8.30 pm.
The stream runs from 7pm and also shows the dance-showing before.
Screening: 21.06: Samuel Capps, Diane Edwards
28.06: Eva Papamargariti
05.07: Jan Robert Leegte
Samuel Capps
Samuel Capps studied at the Royal College of Arts in London and lives in London. In his videos and installations, the artist deals with the relationship between technology and nature. In his work, Capps refers to the rhizome theory of the scientists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It defines the interconnectedness of different plants through roots. This theory is transferable to today’s digital interconnectedness.
“When our data, information and lives are uploaded into a space where only gods exist, we cannot understand everything because our grounding becomes unstable and the ground below falls away. Previously separate dichotomies like biology and technology soon become so blurred that we can no longer tell where the line is drawn. Along with biotechnology, this phenomenon of blurred duality is evident in many contemporary signifiers such as quantum, post-truth, augmented and virtual realities and artificial intelligence. Viewed through the lens of a new machine-learned subjectivity, computer vision conflates our own version of reality with an amalgam of what it perceives but ultimately blurs.” Samuel Capps
Diane Edwards
Diane Edwards works with synthetic and organic media to create sculptures, moving images and installations. Her research-led practice draws on themes of life science, technoscience, life and society. Recent projects have explored digital / organic ontologies. Edwards is concerned with rare earths; the human microbiome, speculative notions of life after ‘mass extinction’; the socio-technological issues of AI, technology dependency and labour. Diane Edward’s imagery is informed by a research into nature and its evolution. The artist often combines video works within an installation. For the exhibition, Edwards has developed a new work that explores the theme of breeding.
“The digital ecosystem is trans-geographic. It reaches toxic tentacles cut through land and sea, connecting people and places virtually and physically, recklessly assimilating and metabolising natural resources, and discharging toxic chemical and radioactive excretions into the biosphere.” Diane Edwards
Eva Papamargariti
Eva Papamargariti studied architecture in Athens at the University of Thessaly and communication design in London at the Royal College of Art. She creates digital visual worlds, which she presents as analogue sculptures and digital videos. Her work deals with issues and themes of simultaneity, the merging and dissolution of our environment with the virtual, the constant proliferation of artificial synthetic images that define and fragment our identity and everyday experience, the symbiotic processes and entanglements that take place between humans. Nature and technology.
https://evapapamargariti.tumblr.com/
Evangelos Papadopoulos
Evangelos Papadopoulos studied at the Kunstakademie Münster with Mechthild Frisch. Evangelos Papadopoulos’ spatial installations consist mainly of plasterboard panels which, screwed together, are mounted on wooden support structures and, if necessary, are additionally secured by steel or hemp ropes or held above floor level by thin iron rods. Plasterboard comes from the field of dry construction; it is a modern, industrially manufactured material that is commonly used in house construction for non-load-bearing interior walls, for ceilings or sound-absorbing fixtures. With this everyday material, the installations make direct reference to the rooms in which they are created and thus enter into dialogue with their surroundings on the material level alone. Yet formally, they also refuse any mimicry of the functionality of architecture and enter into the greatest possible contradiction to it. Papadopoulos works intuitively and situationally, i.e. he reacts directly to the respective spatial conditions such as floor plan, ceiling height, proportions, lighting situation, use, etc. without making sketches or preparing drafts beforehand. His working method is additive, the individual elements are joined one to the other and fixed with screws, whereby the gradually expanding structures are stabilised with supporting and holding measures if necessary.
http://www.evangelospapadopoulos.eu/
Sebastian Thewes
Sebastian Thewes studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and is concerned with the relationship between people and nature. He develops sound works, animations and photography, which he combines with elements of net art and game art. Thewes often links different levels in his video works. The viewer is confronted with an image mass that irritates and has an aesthetic appeal. For the exhibition, Sebastian Thewes creates a new video work in which he constructs a digital landscape.