Press Release Art In The Age Of...

Press release Rotterdam, 19 December 2014

Art In The Age Of….

Nicholas Mangan, Talk About the Weather (Deepwater Horizon), 2010, courtesy of the artist

Witte de With kicks off its 25 th anniversary with Art In The Age Of…, a three-part presentation series that investigates future vectors of art production in the 21st century, highlighting the circulation of art and its underlying economies rather than its territorial location, its spread and infectious expanse rather than its arrest within narrowly defined genealogies and media.

These presentations focus on the role of raw materials, destruction, and computation within art’s creation and its dispersal. With the core question: how does the creation of art relate to the flow of energy, or to algorithms; which infrastructures will it be parasiting in the 21st century?

Art In The Age Of… is presented throughout 2015 with frameworks dedicated to Energy and Raw Material, Planetary Computation (22 May – 23 August 2015) and Asymmetrical Warfare (11 September 2015 – 3 January 2016) opening May 21 and September 10 respectively.

About the Presentations Art In The Age Of… Energy and Raw Material 23 January – 3 May 2015 Pressopening: Thursday 22 January 2015, 4pm Opening: Thursday 22 January 2015, 5-8pm With: Nina Canell, Celine Condorelli, Mikhail Karikis, Nicholas Mangan, MAP Office, Marlie Mul, and Anton Vidokle.

The first installment of Art In The Age Of... focuses on how forms of energy and raw material shape, or are narrated by, contemporary artistic practices. Since early times art objects have drifted with the motion and transformation of raw materials like wheat, minerals, and cotton. How does contemporary art relate to geo- thermal energy? To oil, gas, or alternative sources such as the sun? Could it even fly on rays of cosmic energy?

The installation Strobank by artist duo MAP Office examines wheat, its distribution and symbolic capital, alongside a history of the stock market’s trading pit. Nina Canell mediates upon the loss of information and energy that occurs during processes of transference in her sculptural constellation of stumps and cross-sections of telecommunication and power cables, each becoming sentences cut-off mid flow or instances of material forgetfulness. In Children of Unquiet, Mikhail Karikis interweaves sound recordings of geothermal activity and industry in Larderello, Italy, with a cinematic and cultural history of Dante’s Inferno, whose vision of hell was inspired by that very location. Anton Vidokle’s This is Cosmos turns its eyes to the stars and charts the Cosmism movement in Russia and its disavowal of death through cosmic energy, positing the medium of film itself as an irradiation treatment. Through image and archive, Celine Condorelli addresses the relationship between Egypt’s cotton industry and its nationalization after Nasser’s revolution. Zircon, a 4,400-million-year-old mineral is excavated, dematerialized and reanimated in Nicholas Mangan’s A World Undone, whilst material is mapped to stock market fluctuations in Talk About the Weather. In Marlie Mul’s sculptural series Puddles, messy dark matter glistens and seeps, contaminated by human interaction.

Art In The Age Of... Planetary Computation 22 May – 23 August 2015 Opening: Thursday 21 May 2015, 5–8pm It took art several decades to acknowledge the digital revolution. This has not only affected content and style, but more importantly art as a mode of production. What is art in the age of

general quantification? Can art give a shape to an aesthetics of algorithms? How do images exist in a digital era?

Art In The Age Of... Asymmetrical Warfare 11 September 2015 – 3 January 2016 Opening: Thursday 10 September 2015, 5–8pm Uneven technological ability has produced specific conditions of conflict in our times. In this age of drones, the vertical perspective as an optimal point of view is a matter of life and death. The aerial image and mechanical eye speak of control and oversight. How does art become part of war machines? Does it intervene or forensically investigate? And from which point of view?

Art In The Age Of... is conceived by Witte de With’s Director Defne Ayas and curated by Natasha Hoare (Associate Curator).

About the Public Program The Last 100 Years, Part 1: WdW Review Offline Saturday 28 February 2015, 12am–6pm Staged with and through the institutions' online platform, WdW Review, this conference is comprised of three sections: Exposition, where selected historical art images will be reconsidered by contemporary writers; Conflicts and Developments, a critical trio of keynote lectures; and Denouement, which plays out through a panel of WdW Review's international network of editorial desks in Athens, Cairo, and Istanbul. Interventions by artist Dan Perjovschi will be staged throughout the day.

The event features prescient journalists, academics, and writers, including: Peter Busch (Senior Lecturer, Department of War Studies, King's College London), Binnaz Saktanber (Istanbul Desk, WdW Review), Yasmine El Rashidi (Cairo Desk, WdW Review), Alev Scott (freelance journalist and writer), Yanis Varoufakis (Athens Desk, WdW Review), and Annie Fletcher (Curator of Exhibitions, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven).

As a coda: extended text versions of these events will later follow in the pages of WdW Review at www.wdwreview.org.

This one-day event forms a core component of the international project Ottomans and Europeans – reflecting on five centuries of cultural relations.

Other public programming will be announced shortly.

Support The conference The Last 100 Years, Part 1: WdW Review Offline is kindly supported by the European Union.

About Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art is an international public institution with Rotterdam as its home base. Established in 1990, Witte de With explores developments in contemporary art worldwide. Witte de With has been commenting on the social and political predicament since its inception through the presentation of curated exhibitions, symposia, live events, educational programs, and a bold publishing arm.

Contact Witte de With For press requests or for further information, please contact Adelheid Smit via press@wdw.nl or call +31 10 411 01 44.