The Radical Anthropocene is an interactive kaleidoscopic digital wallpaper installation wherein the participant assembles marine debris under a live camera.

Rebellious artists and designers search for beauty in an age of industry in Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement. These artists challenged the new industrial world and looked to the art of the past for inspiration, reasserting the value of the handmade over the dehumanizing sterility of mass production in 19th-century England. Victorian Radicals presents an unprecedented 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures, stained glass, jewelry, textiles, and decorative arts—many never before exhibited outside of the United Kingdom. See vibrant works by the major figures associated with the subversive Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the later Arts & Crafts Movement.

As industrialization brought sweeping changes to British life, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The young artists were reacting to the traditional training methods of the Royal Academy of Arts, which they regarded to be as formulaic as industrial methods of production. While these works of art may not offend the sensibilities of today’s audiences, they were referred to as “Lamentable and revolting . . .” and as “. . . Monstrously perverse . . .” by their contemporary critics.

Discover an archaeology of living things and artificial life in an exhibition that presents, in a forward-looking manner, the recent works of fifty creators along with the research coming from scientific laboratories. The very material of the exhibition is evolving, certain works being involved in a process of growth or degeneration. One hundred projects are exhibited, several of which have been designed for the occasion

“Mutations/Creations”, the annual creation and innovation laboratory at the Centre Pompidou questions the links between the arts, science, engineering and innovation. The cycle brings together artists, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs, all the protagonists of the sensory and the intelligible, who affect and transgress our present. For its third edition, the event brings together the visual and digital arts, design and speech, in the course of a collective exhibition: “Designing the Living [La Fabrique du Vivant]”, the first personal and monographic exhibition in Europe of the Brazilian artist Erika Verzutti, and the third edition of the Vertigo forum, conducted by the Ircam.

Shamees Aden ; Laure Albin Guillot ; François Azambourg ; Heather Barnett ; Sonja Bäumel and Manuel Selg ; BCL (Georg Tremmel + Shiho Fukuhara); Hicham Berrada ; Burton Nitta (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta) ; Julian Charrière ; Natsai Audrey Chieza ; Carole Collet ; Amy Congdon ; Marcos Cruz and Brenda Parker (Bio-ID, UCL) ; The Disease Biophysics Group from Harvard University ; Alexandre Echasseriau ; Jonas Edvard ; Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Christina Agapakis and Sissel Tolaas ; Lia Giraud ; Guillian Graves (Big Bang Project) ; Andreas Greiner ; Ernst Haeckel ; Perry Hall ; Jean-Luc Hervé ; Marlène Huissoud ; Eduardo Kac ; Amy Karle ; Allison Kudla ; Joris Laarman ; The Living (David Benjamin) ; Julia Lohmann ; Julian Melchiorri ; MIT Media Lab (Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao) in collaboration with Microsoft Research ; Mogu ; Isaac Monté ; Gabriela Munguia ; Officina Corpuscoli ; Neri Oxman & The Mediated Matter Group, MIT ; Jean Painlevé ; Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto (EcoLogicStudio) ; Institut Pasteur ; Špela Petric ; PILI (Marie-Sarah Adenis) ; Pamela Rosenkranz ; Daan Roosegaarde ; Karl Sims ; Studio Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin) ; Studio Nienke Hoogvliet (Nienke Hoogvliet) ; Studio Klarenbeek & Dros ; Studio Libertiny (Tomas Libertiny) ; The Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr) in collaboration with Robert Foster ; Samuel Tomatis ; Urban Morphogenesis Lab (The Bartlett UCL) ; Tim van Cromvoirt ; Teresa van Dongen ; Elaine Whittaker ; Worcester Polytechnic Institute ; Wyss Institute from Harvard University ; XTU Architects (Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazières) ; Hongjie Yang ; Tokujin Yoshioka.

The exhibition focuses on the artistic use of new technologies and opens up views into the future, in various modules. It shows us our new reality, which is shaped by 3-D printers and robots, cyborgs and chimeras, molecules and gene pools, wearable technologies and medical miracles, synthetic life forms, bionic suits and silicon retinas, artificial tissue and repair techniques, and new discoveries in space research, molecular biology, neurology, genetics, and quantum information science.

When humans began walking upright, feet turned into hands. Human beings used their hands to create works. These works included tools. Walking upright set human hands free to be used as tools, making human beings themselves “the first of the creation left [sic] free” (J. G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, 1803).

From manual to mental tools, from the hammer to language, over the course of thousands of years human beings have created a culture of tools, an engineering culture that has expanded the boundaries of perception and of the world. The human being has outsourced his bodily functions: the hand to the hammer, the foot to the wheel, the arms to the bow and arrow, the spoken word to the written word, memory to clay tablets and computers, etc. Through the chain of rendering things exterior, the human being transcends evolution. He liberates himself from the violence of nature; he creates an artificial exo-evolution through his tools and through organs made exterior. From exo-biology to exo-planets, from exo-skeletons to »exo-pregnancy«, the contours of a new world deeply marked by technology are taking shape. In the early twenty-first century, art also can no longer stand apart from this technological development.

Traditionally art was focused on representing that which the human eye naturally perceived. When rendering the world of objects visible, painters were trapped in retinal effects and limited to the surface of things. From the microscope to computed tomography, technologies of perception have developed in science. Objects unrecognizable to the naked eye have been artificially made visible. New media bring the technologies of artificial perception, from photography to the computer, into the realm of art. This creates a new awareness of the interconnection of natural and artificial perception, of the object world and the media world, and of art and science. Media are not, however, merely image and sound machines; they are also interfaces in the construction of new realities and new forms of communication. We communicate, negotiate and act through media. The transformation from visual to social media makes clear that the use of media is a vital factor. Media are performative. Their impact is ubiquitous and long-lasting. That is why we speak not only of pictures, but rather of picture acts (Bildakten), not only of language, but of language acts, not only of perception but of acts of perception. Actions have become art forms. Now that a certain amount of overlap exists between the tools of artists and those of scientists, artists’ studios sometimes resemble scientific laboratories and vice versa. Artists today are less in search of subjective expression. Rather, their frames of reference are social systems and scientific structures and methods. This is the reason for new research areas such as art and science labs and art-based research. Scientization of art is beginning to emerge as it did during the Renaissance, creating a sort of Renaissance 2.0.

Participating artists

::vtol:: · 1024 architecture · Yuri Ancarani · Jinsoo An · Alisa Andrasek · Alisa Andrasek & Jose Sanchez · Suzanne Anker · Anthropocene Observatory Artificial Nature (Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield) · Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway · Nurit Bar-Shai · Sonja Bäumel · Sonja Bäumel & Manuel Selg · Ursula Biemann & Paulo Tavares · Howard Boland & Laura Cinti (C-LAB) · Ecke Bonk / typosophes sans frontiers · Adam W. Brown & Robert Root-Bernstein · Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr & Corrie Van Sice · Center for PostNatural History · Jürgen Claus · Sam Conran · Hermann Cuntz · Hermann Cuntz & Marvin Weigand · Theresa Dankovich · Robert Darroll · Caitilin de Bérigny · Frederik de Wilde · Thierry Delatour · Louis-Philippe Demers & Bill Vorn · Heather Dewey-Hagborg · Kitsou Dubois · Anna Dumitriu · ecoLogicStudio · Electronic Shadow (Naziha Mestaoui & Yacine Aït Kaci) · Peter Fend / Ocean Earth · Thomas Feuerstein · Verena Friedrich · Klaus Fritze · FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik · Eyal Gever · Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg · Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Sascha Pohflopp · Niklas Goldbach · Andy Gracie · Tue Greenfort · Terike Haapoja · History of Others (Terike Haapoja, Laura Gustafsson) · Zaha Hadid Architects · Stephen Hawking · Ivan Henriques · Camille Henrot · Lynn Hershman Leeson · Bart Hess · Heurisko Gesellschaft für Biologische Technologien GmbH & Karlsruher Institut für Technologie · Chris Jordan · Manfred Kage · Wanuri Kahiu · Felix Kemner · KIT | Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung · Allison Kudla · Nandita Kumar · Ebru Kurbak & Irene Posch · Christian Lölkes & Adrian Vielsack · Andy Lomas · Wolfgang Mally · Daria Martin · Mediated Matter Group | MIT Media Lab · Agnes Meyer- Brandis · Yann Mingard · MVRDV & The Why Factory (in Kooperation mit MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho) · Dave Murray-Rust & Rocio von Jungenfeld · Michael Najjar · Geraldine Ondrizek · Lucy & Jorge Orta · Neri Oxman · Geoffrey Ozin · Tariq Rahman · Reynold Reynolds · Byron Rich · Adam G. Riess · robotlab · Hermann J. Roth · Scenocosme (Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt) · HA Schult · SEAD (Space Ecologies Art and Design) · Conrad Shawcross · Semiconductor · Maja Smrekar · Studio Swine · Luisa Székely · Yesenia Thibault-Picazo · Luca Trevisani · Troika · UdK | Design Research Lab · Andrei Ujica · Koen Vanmechelen · Paul Vanouse · Aline Veillat · Pinar Yoldas · Martin Walde · Peter Weibel, · Daniel Widrig · Where Dogs Run

Credits

• Peter Weibel (Curator)
• Sabiha Keyif (Co-Curator)
• Philipp Ziegler (Co-Curator)
• Giulia Bini (Co-Curator)

Exhibitions team

Exhibition architecture: Stadelmann Schmutz Wössner, Berlin / London
Exhibition graphics: 2 x Goldstein + Fronczek

Organization / InstitutionZKM | Karlsruhe

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees came at a critical time, as we struggle evermore to devise fair ways of living alongside ‘nonhumans’ (animals and plants). This exhibition focused on plants and their relationship to other species by featuring works by artists who examine plants’ complexity through experiments, performances, design and action.

Plants are no less sophisticated than animals and over the course of evolution they have developed their own peculiar body shapes, lifestyles, and modes of reproduction. They are active and autonomous beings perceiving the world in ways both alien and familiar to us.  The works, featured in the exhibition reveal ways in which artists are contributing to our efforts to understand plants. Celebrating plants lives and stressing the necessity to deal with them on their own terms and for their own sake. Visitors were invited to inquire into plant behaviours, their cognitive abilities, their strategies to avoid and attract others and also to fantasize and to dream.

Our future is tightly connected with plants and there is so much we can learn as they harvest solar energy and minerals, produce oxygen and food for animals and their bodies are organized as systems and networks which are decentralized, modular, and able to feed on light. The exhibition aimed to create a space to give plants sufficient recognition for what they are.

Featuring artists Brandon Ballengee, Karl Heinz Jeron, Chiara Esposito, Spela Petric, Dimitris Stamatis and Jasmina Weiss, Pei- Ying Lin, Allison Kudla, Kathy High and Oliver Kellhammer.

Curated by Monika Bakke.

The Arts and STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) share a necessity for undertaking imaginative inquiry of what we perceive as truth and beauty. This exhibition highlights these endeavors in showcasing work that has both cursory and direct symbiotic relationships between the Arts and Sciences.

Artists featured in this exhibition range from being inspired by science, such as Mark Dion and printmaker Taiga Chiba, to those who engage in direct scientific analysis within a branch of STEM, as exampled by Allison Kudla. In offering this diversity of relationships between the Arts and Sciences through a selection of works suggesting different definitions and paradigms of the connectivity among these fields, we start to get a sense of the similar yet diverging streams of intention in the Arts and Sciences along with their shared methodologies and intuitions about order and disorder.

This exhibition is co-curated by Assistant Professor Mark Lee Koven, in the USU Department of Art and Design, and Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art Assistant Curator Adriane Dalton. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Obert C. Tanner lecture series: ARTsysTEM organized by Mark Lee Koven. ARTsySTEM is a new, semester-long program at USU integrating Art and Design with branches of STEM.

Alter Nature: We Can shows the work of 20 international contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition focuses on the different ways in which people have displaced, manipulated or designed nature: from small gardens to private islands, from carrots and bonsai trees to acoustic plants and orange pheasants.

In  Alter Nature: We Can, Z33 looks at the sub-aspect of fauna and flora in nature. Through the works of some twenty international artists we explore how humankind manipulates nature and how the concept of ‘nature’ constantly changes as a result of this.

The works are not about using nature to meet basic needs (such as health, food, protection, etc.). Interesting projects in this context are legion, but  grouped together they almost inevitably lead to simplified contradictions. On the one hand, one has  projects that  look ‘positively’ upon  transforming nature: they find out what technology can do or they show solutions. These projects are often criticised because they seem to subscribe seamlessly to the scientific belief in  progress. On the other hand, some projects show the negative side; they look at interventions in nature that have gone  wrong. These projects are criticesed to bethe autonomous art corner’s wagging finger. They criticise but do not  offer any solutions.

Alter Nature: We Can wants to go beyond this simplified pro-contra positioning. The works on display are therefore devoid of strict utilitarianism and the emphasis is on the historic context of intervention, the multiplicity of manipulations and  our fluctuating  understanding of the concept of nature.

Alter Nature: We Can is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.

Curator:
Karen Verschooren (Z33)

Artists:
Makoto Azuma (JP)
BCL: Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
David Benqué (UK)
Julien Berthier (FR)
Merijn Bolink (NL)
Center for PostNatural History
Mark Dion (US)
Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
Daisy Ginsberg (UK)
Tue Greenfort (DK)
Natalie Jeremijenko (US)
Eduardo Kac (US)
James King (UK)
Allison Kudla (US)
Reinier Lagendijk (NL)
Antti Laitinen (FIN)
Hans Op de Beeck (B)
Michael Sailstorfer (D)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (B)
Adrian Woods (NL)
Adam Zaretsky (US)