Being Social- Inaugura la Furtherfield Gallery nel cuore di Finsbury Park
Furtherfield sta per aprire una nuova galleria dedicata all’arte, alla tecnologia e ai cambiamenti sociali; Being Social sarà la mostra inaugurale. Si tratta della prima di una serie di mostre sul tema della network culture che coinvolgerà vari artisti, alcuni emergenti e altri già famosi in tutto il mondo: Annie Abrahams, Karen Blisset, Ele Carpenter, Emilie Giles, moddr_, Liz Sterry e Thomson e Craighead.
La Furtherfield Gallery è diventata famosa in tutto il mondo per essere la prima galleria di Londra dedicata alla networked media art; è stata inaugurata a Haringey nel 2004. Adesso è stata spostata in uno spazio suggestivo e decisamente più ampio: l’obiettivo è quello di invitare artisti e tecnici (amatori, professionisti, star internazionali e appassionati) a interessarsi di questioni locali e internazionali, temi quotidiani ed epici in un processo di scambio immaginativo e di collaborazione.
Oltre alla mostra e alle diverse attività in programma nella Galleria, sul sito vengono mostrate altre opere di net art e sono state inserite le opere di artisti che hanno partecipato all’open call sul tema Being Social.
Una presentazione di Being Social
A partire dalla metà degli anni 90 gli strumenti informatici hanno cambiato la nostra idea di stare insieme. Prima è stata la volta di Internet, adesso dei mobile networks: entrambi sono diventati spazi culturali che hanno creato un nuovo tipo di interazione, selvaggia e banale, burocratica e di controllo, inventando nuovi modi di “socializzare”.
Liz vive in Inghilterra, Kay in Canada. È da un po’ di tempo che Liz sta seguendo il blog di Kay. Adesso la conosce abbastanza bene da riuscire a realizzare una copia perfetta della sua stanza e di molte altre cose.
Annieha chiesto a varie donne di nazionalità diversa di mostrare il proprio volto con una webcam e di scaricare tutta la loro rabbia davanti alla telecamera.
Su moddrle persone volevano avere indietro la loro vita reale e hanno costruito una macchina che li ha aiutati ad uccidere il mondo del Web 2, cancellando i loro profili pubblicati in rete.
Jon e Alidanno ascolto ai vari flussi di coscienza della gente di Finsbury Park e raccolgono i loro commenti su Twitter che saranno poi esposti sulle pareti della nuova galleria.
Karenè una persona aperta e libera e vi invita a ESSERE lei.
Ele e Emiliechiedono alle persone provenienti da tutto il mondo di organizzarsi in gruppi e di creare un unico dizionario sui termini digitali comuni.
I visitatori sono invitati ad andare a vedere le mostre e a partecipare agli eventi dedicati alla software art e alla networked art; inoltre sono invitati a partecipare ad attività creative per scoprire come le tecnologie digitali stanno plasmando la nostra vita, privata e politica.
La Furtherfield Gallery
Quattro spazi- il parco, la galleria, la stanza comune, il www
La nuova galleria di Furtherfield presso il McKenzie Pavillon si trova in una zona particolarmente vivace del Finsbury Park, accanto ad un laghetto per il canottaggio e ad un parco giochi, ad un bar e ad una pista d’atletica. La diversità della gente, degli esseri viventi, delle piante, delle attività e delle passioni che si respirano nel parco ha contribuito a creare la giusta atmosfera e a dare l’ispirazione per Furtherfield. Il padiglione ha due stanze.
La Galleria, in cui verranno allestite mostre evocative e provocatorie di opere d’arte contemporanea dedicate alla tecnologia e ai cambiamenti sociali, richiamando l’interesse della rete internazionale di artisti di Furtherfield.
La stanza comune(Common Room), in cui verranno mostrate le opere di artisti che hanno partecipato all’ open call, realizzate in collaborazione con la gente del posto. Inoltre questa stanza sarà la sede per le attività gratuite dedicate alle scuole e ai visitatori del parco.
Infine Internet connette gli utenti locali ad una rete internazionale di appassionati, esperti. Essa fornisce uno spazio per le persone nel quale condividere le proprie opere d’arte, proposte, idee e commenti. Permetterà anche l’accesso ad altre informazioni sulle mostre, tra cui cataloghi scaricabili, saggi, informazioni sui programmi di eventi gratuiti e attività e un archivio vivente con tutte le opere.
Furtherfeld esporrà il meglio della produzione contemporanea in fatto di arte, tecnologia e cambiamenti sociali in uno spazio veramente “pubblico”, sviluppato con e per i residenti e gli utenti del parco e per un numero più ampio di partecipanti e di pubblico. In definitiva, siamo alla ricerca di modalità che permettano alla popolazione locale ed ai visitatori del parco e a chi arriva da più lontano di condividere questo spazio immaginativo e di connettersi con la nostra comunità internazionale di artisti, designer, pensatori e tecnici.
Gli artisti
Annie Abrahams
Annie Abrahams si è laureata presso l’Accademia delle Belle Arti di Arnhem e ha conseguito un dottorato in biologia presso l’Università di Utrecht. Con la sua attività, usando video,performance e Internet, si interroga sulle possibilità e i limiti della comunicazione in generale e in particolare indaga le sue modalità in rete. Pioniera di livello internazionale della net art, molte delle sue opere sono state esposte in Francia, al Pompidou Centre di Parigi, e in diverse gallerie internazionali tra cui, tra le altre, l’Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, il Museum of Contemporary Art di Tokyo; l’Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art di Yerevan, festival come il Moscow Film Festival e il Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Rotterdam e su piattaforme online come Rhizome.org e Turbolence.
Liz Sterry
Liz Sterry è un’artista con base nell’Essex ed è prossima alla laurea in Arte digitale e Design presso il Writtle College. Nelle sue opere Liz utilizza mezzi diversi, tra cui la fotografia, i video e le installazioni. La comunicazione è ormai diventato un argomento centrale nella sua opere. La sua aspirazione è di creare arte che inviti a mettere in discussione ciò che si pensa di sapere già.
Karen Blissett
Karen Blissett è nato il 3 Maggio 1991, lo stesso giorno in cui è stato eseguito il primo trapianto head-heart doppio in un ospedale di Londra. I suoi genitori sono i neoisti Karen Eliot e Luther Blissett. Si interessano solo di arte e politica e non di come passi le sue giornate su Internet.
Ele Carpenter
Ele Carpenter è curatrice, scrittrice, ricercatrice e artista con base a Londra, dove insegna al MFA Curating al Goldsmiths College. Attualmente segue un Research Fellowship presso lo HUMlab in collaborazione con il BildMuseet presso l’Università di Umea in Svezia. Le sue pratiche curatoriali rispondono a specifici contesti socio-politici culturali collaborando con individui, gruppi e organizzazioni. Il suo interesse costante per il rapporto tra la creatività e l’azione politica è stato influenzato dal periodo di formazione effettuato presso il Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp e il Cruisewatch. Fuggendo dalle polarità dell’attivismo per entrare a far parte del mondo dell’arte, da sempre si interroga sul rapporto tra cambiamento culturale e politico attraverso la creatività curatoriale. La sua ricerca ha dato esiti curatoriali e creativi tra cui mappature, ricami e programmi di ricerca.
Emilie Giles
Emilie Giles è un ex studente dell’MA Interactive Media: Teoria Critica e Pratica presso il Goldsmiths College. Dalla sua laurea nel 2010 si è dedicata alla co-organizzazione di MZTEK, una comunità di tecnologia e arte composta da donne, oltre a completare un’internship con la comunità di artisti Blast Theory e a collaborare con il distributore di social video Unruly. Attualmente si occupa di TESTIMONIES, un progetto che esplora la storia orale in relazione alle Olimpiadi 2012 e ai Giochi Paraolimpici in gran parte attraverso i social media. L’attività di Emilie ruota attorno a nozioni di gioco pervasivo, combinate all’esplorazione urbana e alla psicogeografia. Ultimamente è concentrata nella ricezione dei principi fondamentali di gioco tramite Geocaching e nell’esplorazione delle conseguenze dell’aggiunta di una dimensione emozionale.
moddr_
Il moddr è uno spazio con sede a Rotterdam per i media/gli hacker/di collaborazione e un fab lab di DIY/FOSS/OSHW per appassionati di arte, fa parte del Worm Insitute for Avantgardistic Recreation. Da quando è stato fondato nel 2007 da ex studenti del Piet Zwart Institute (del dipartimento di Networked Media) accoglie e promuove giovani talenti locali e internazionali con un focus sulla modificazione artistica (“modding”) delle attuali tecnologie in ascesa. moddr_ ha un atteggiamento critico rispetto al “nuovo” panorama dei media producendo e sviluppando progetti artistici, workshop, conferenze, mostre e naturalmente organizzando piacevoli ricevimenti.
Thomson and Craighead
Thomson and Craighead sono artisti che vivono e lavorano a Londra. Creano opere d’arte e impianti presenti in gallerie, su internet e a volte all’aperto. Gran parte del loro recente lavoro è rivolto ai live network come il web e il modo in cui stanno cambiando il nostro modo di percepire il mondo che ci circonda. Parte del loro lavoro è stato esposto in importanti mostre internazionali e fa parte di collezioni pubbliche all’Harris Museum e al British Council Collection. Sono tra gli artisti candidati per il Samsung Art Prize 2012. Tra i premi recenti Current (2011) e Vital Spark (2005). Hanno studiato entrambi al Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art di Dundee, Jon tiene lezioni part time presso il Slade School of Fine Arts, University College di Londra, mentre Alison è un ricercatore senior presso l’Università di Westminster e insegna Belle Arti presso la Goldsmiths University.
http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery
FURTHERFIELD GALLERY – LONDON
25 FEBRUARY – 28 APRIL 2012
Being Social – Furtherfield Gallery opens in the heart of Finsbury Park
Furtherfield is opening a new public gallery for art, technology and social change with Being Social. This is the first in a series of exhibitions about network culture featuring emerging and internationally acclaimed artists: Annie Abrahams, Karen Blissett, Ele Carpenter, Emilie Giles, moddr_ , Liz Sterry and Thomson and Craighead.
Furtherfield has established an international reputation as London’s first gallery for networked media art, working in Haringey since 2004. With this exciting move to a more public space we invite people – artists and techies: amateurs, professionals, celebrated stars and private enthusiasts – to engage with local and global, everyday and epic themes in a process of imaginative exchange and collaboration.
Alongside the exhibition and public programme of activities in the gallery, the website displays other net art work and public contributions to an open call on the theme of Being Social.
Introducing Being Social
Since the mid-90s computers have changed our way of being together. First the Internet then mobile networks have grown as cultural spaces for interaction – wild and banal, bureaucratic and controlling – producing new ways of ‘being social’.
Liz lives in England. Kay lives in Canada. Liz has been following Kay’s blog for a while. Now she knows enough about Kay to build an exact physical copy of her bedroom and a lot more.
Annie has asked women of different nationalities to meet on their computer screens to communicate their anger in front of their webcams until there is no anger left.
The people at moddr_ wanted their real-lives back so they have built a machine to help them commit Web2.0 suicide, deleting their social media profiles.
Jon and Ali are listening to a collective stream of consciousness of people all around Finsbury Park, gathering their Tweets to print out and paste onto the new gallery walls.
Karen is an open, free and public multiplepersonality and invites you to BE her.
Ele and Emilie are inviting people to join groups around the world in embroidering – word by word- a shared lexicon of terms about the Digital Commons.
Visitors are invited to view art installations, software art, networked performances and to get involved with creative activities to explore how our lives – personal and political – are being shaped by digital technologies.
More about Furtherfield Gallery
Four spaces – the park, the gallery, the common room, the www
Furtherfield’s new gallery at McKenzie Pavilion is located in a highly animated area of Finsbury Park next to a boating pond and adventure playground, near to the café and athletics track. The richly connected diversity of people, creatures, plants, activities, enthusiasms alive in the park provides the context and the inspiration for Furtherfield. The pavilion has two rooms.
The Gallery, which will display evocative and provocative exhibitions of selected contemporary artwork that address technology and social change drawing on Furtherfield’s international network of artists.
The Common Room, which will display work contributed by open call in response to exhibition themes, curated with local people. It will also act as the base for a series of free activities for local schools and visitors to the park.
Finally the www connects local users to an international network of enthusiasts, experts and audiences. It provides a place for people to share their artworks, proposals, ideas and commentaries. It will also provide access to further information about exhibitions, including downloadable catalogues and essays, information about programmes of free events and activities, and a living archive of all past work. Furtherfield will exhibit the best of contemporary work in art, technology and social change in a truly ‘public’ space, developed with and for local residents and users of the park, and wider participants and audiences. Ultimately, we are looking for ways for local people and visitors to the park and from further afield to use this art space imaginatively together, and to connect with our international community of artists, designers, thinkers and technologists.
About the Artists
Annie Abrahams
Annie Abrahams has a doctorate in biology from the University of Utrecht and a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Arnhem. In her work, using video, performance as well as the internet, she questions the possibilities and the limits of communication in general and more specifically investigates its modes under networked conditions. She is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. She has performed and shown work extensively in France, including at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and in many international galleries including, among others, Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan; festivals such as the Moscow Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, and on online platforms such as Rhizome.org and Turbulence.
Liz Sterry
Liz Sterry is an Essex based artist currently completing a Digital Art and Design degree at Writtle College. Liz works using different mediums including performance photography, video and installations. Communication has now become a key theme in her work. She aspires to make art that invites people to question what they think they already know.
Karen Blissett
Karen Blissett was born on the 3rd of May 1991 at exactly the same time that the first successful double head-heart transplant was being carried out in a hospital in London. Her parents are the neoist artists Karen Eliot and Luther Blissett. They are only interested in art and politics not in how Karen spends her days on the Internet.
Ele Carpenter
Ele Carpenter is a curator, writer, researcher and sometimes artist based in London UK where she teaches in the MFA Curating at Goldsmiths College. She is currently undertaking a Research Fellowship at HUMlab in affiliation with the BildMuseet at the University of Umea, Sweden. Her curatorial practice responds to specific socio-political cultural contexts in collaboration with individuals, groups and organisations. Her life-long interest in the relationship between creativity and
political action has been influenced by her formative years at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and on Cruisewatch. Fleeing the polarities of activism to join the art-world, she has continuously interrogated the relationship between cultural and political change through curatorial creative practice. Her research has written curatorial and creative outcomes including mapping, embroidery, and research projects.
Emilie Giles
Emilie Giles is an alumnus of MA Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths College. Since graduating in 2010 her time has been spent co-organising MzTEK, a women’s technology and arts collective, as well as completing an internship with arts group Blast Theory and working for social video distributors Unruly. She is currently involved with TESTIMONIES, a project which explores oral history in relation to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games largely through social media.Emilie’s own practice revolves around notions of pervasive gaming, married with urban exploration and psychogeography. Her most recent focus lies in taking fundamental gaming principles from Geocaching and exploring the consequences of adding an emotional dimension.
moddr_
moddr_ is a Rotterdam-based media/hacker/co-working space and DIY/FOSS/OSHW fablab for artgeeks, part of the venue WORM: Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation. Since being founded in 2007 by alumni of the Piet Zwart Institute (department of “Networked Media“) they host and promote young local and international talent with a focus on the artistic modification (’modding‘) of contemporary and emerging technology. moddr_ represents a critical attitude in our ‘new’-medialandscape through spawning and development of artistic projects, workshop series, lectures, exhibitions and of course good parties.
Thomson and Craighead
Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead are artists living and working in London. They make artworks and installations which are shown in galleries, online and sometimes outdoors. Much of their recent work looks at live networks like the web and how they are changing the way we all understand the world around us. Their work has been shown in major international exhibitions and is part of public collections at Harris Museum and British Council Collection. They are shortlisted artists for the Samsung Art Prize 2012. Recent awards include Current (2011) and Vital Spark (2005). Having both studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Jon now lectures part time at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, while Alison is a senior researcher at University of Westminster and lectures in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University.
http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery
FURTHERFIELD GALLERY – LONDON
25 FEBRUARY – 28 APRIL 2012
Being Social – Furtherfield Gallery opens in the heart of Finsbury Park
Furtherfield is opening a new public gallery for art, technology and social change with Being Social. This is the first in a series of exhibitions about network culture featuring emerging and internationally acclaimed artists: Annie Abrahams, Karen Blissett, Ele Carpenter, Emilie Giles, moddr_ , Liz Sterry and Thomson and Craighead.
Furtherfield has established an international reputation as London’s first gallery for networked media art, working in Haringey since 2004. With this exciting move to a more public space we invite people – artists and techies: amateurs, professionals, celebrated stars and private enthusiasts – to engage with local and global, everyday and epic themes in a process of imaginative exchange and collaboration.
Alongside the exhibition and public programme of activities in the gallery, the website displays other net art work and public contributions to an open call on the theme of Being Social.
Introducing Being Social
Since the mid-90s computers have changed our way of being together. First the Internet then mobile networks have grown as cultural spaces for interaction – wild and banal, bureaucratic and controlling – producing new ways of ‘being social’.
Liz lives in England. Kay lives in Canada. Liz has been following Kay’s blog for a while. Now she knows enough about Kay to build an exact physical copy of her bedroom and a lot more.
Annie has asked women of different nationalities to meet on their computer screens to communicate their anger in front of their webcams until there is no anger left.
The people at moddr_ wanted their real-lives back so they have built a machine to help them commit Web2.0 suicide, deleting their social media profiles.
Jon and Ali are listening to a collective stream of consciousness of people all around Finsbury Park, gathering their Tweets to print out and paste onto the new gallery walls.
Karen is an open, free and public multiplepersonality and invites you to BE her.
Ele and Emilie are inviting people to join groups around the world in embroidering – word by word- a shared lexicon of terms about the Digital Commons.
Visitors are invited to view art installations, software art, networked performances and to get involved with creative activities to explore how our lives – personal and political – are being shaped by digital technologies.
More about Furtherfield Gallery
Four spaces – the park, the gallery, the common room, the www
Furtherfield’s new gallery at McKenzie Pavilion is located in a highly animated area of Finsbury Park next to a boating pond and adventure playground, near to the café and athletics track. The richly connected diversity of people, creatures, plants, activities, enthusiasms alive in the park provides the context and the inspiration for Furtherfield. The pavilion has two rooms.
The Gallery, which will display evocative and provocative exhibitions of selected contemporary artwork that address technology and social change drawing on Furtherfield’s international network of artists.
The Common Room, which will display work contributed by open call in response to exhibition themes, curated with local people. It will also act as the base for a series of free activities for local schools and visitors to the park.
Finally the www connects local users to an international network of enthusiasts, experts and audiences. It provides a place for people to share their artworks, proposals, ideas and commentaries. It will also provide access to further information about exhibitions, including downloadable catalogues and essays, information about programmes of free events and activities, and a living archive of all past work. Furtherfield will exhibit the best of contemporary work in art, technology and social change in a truly ‘public’ space, developed with and for local residents and users of the park, and wider participants and audiences. Ultimately, we are looking for ways for local people and visitors to the park and from further afield to use this art space imaginatively together, and to connect with our international community of artists, designers, thinkers and technologists.
About the Artists
Annie Abrahams
Annie Abrahams has a doctorate in biology from the University of Utrecht and a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts of Arnhem. In her work, using video, performance as well as the internet, she questions the possibilities and the limits of communication in general and more specifically investigates its modes under networked conditions. She is an internationally regarded pioneer of networked performance art. She has performed and shown work extensively in France, including at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and in many international galleries including, among others, Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan; festivals such as the Moscow Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam, and on online platforms such as Rhizome.org and Turbulence.
Liz Sterry
Liz Sterry is an Essex based artist currently completing a Digital Art and Design degree at Writtle College. Liz works using different mediums including performance photography, video and installations. Communication has now become a key theme in her work. She aspires to make art that invites people to question what they think they already know.
Karen Blissett
Karen Blissett was born on the 3rd of May 1991 at exactly the same time that the first successful double head-heart transplant was being carried out in a hospital in London. Her parents are the neoist artists Karen Eliot and Luther Blissett. They are only interested in art and politics not in how Karen spends her days on the Internet.
Ele Carpenter
Ele Carpenter is a curator, writer, researcher and sometimes artist based in London UK where she teaches in the MFA Curating at Goldsmiths College. She is currently undertaking a Research Fellowship at HUMlab in affiliation with the BildMuseet at the University of Umea, Sweden. Her curatorial practice responds to specific socio-political cultural contexts in collaboration with individuals, groups and organisations. Her life-long interest in the relationship between creativity and
political action has been influenced by her formative years at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and on Cruisewatch. Fleeing the polarities of activism to join the art-world, she has continuously interrogated the relationship between cultural and political change through curatorial creative practice. Her research has written curatorial and creative outcomes including mapping, embroidery, and research projects.
Emilie Giles
Emilie Giles is an alumnus of MA Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths College. Since graduating in 2010 her time has been spent co-organising MzTEK, a women’s technology and arts collective, as well as completing an internship with arts group Blast Theory and working for social video distributors Unruly. She is currently involved with TESTIMONIES, a project which explores oral history in relation to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games largely through social media.Emilie’s own practice revolves around notions of pervasive gaming, married with urban exploration and psychogeography. Her most recent focus lies in taking fundamental gaming principles from Geocaching and exploring the consequences of adding an emotional dimension.
moddr_
moddr_ is a Rotterdam-based media/hacker/co-working space and DIY/FOSS/OSHW fablab for artgeeks, part of the venue WORM: Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation. Since being founded in 2007 by alumni of the Piet Zwart Institute (department of “Networked Media“) they host and promote young local and international talent with a focus on the artistic modification (’modding‘) of contemporary and emerging technology. moddr_ represents a critical attitude in our ‘new’-medialandscape through spawning and development of artistic projects, workshop series, lectures, exhibitions and of course good parties.
Thomson and Craighead
Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead are artists living and working in London. They make artworks and installations which are shown in galleries, online and sometimes outdoors. Much of their recent work looks at live networks like the web and how they are changing the way we all understand the world around us. Their work has been shown in major international exhibitions and is part of public collections at Harris Museum and British Council Collection. They are shortlisted artists for the Samsung Art Prize 2012. Recent awards include Current (2011) and Vital Spark (2005). Having both studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Jon now lectures part time at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, while Alison is a senior researcher at University of Westminster and lectures in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University.