Through writing, research and curatorial projects, I work with art as a matter and mode of caring for its participation in human technocultural evolution and contemporary, digitally networked conditions of existence.
My curatorial practice is centered around issues of perception and explores how art works with and challenges perception as linked to both biological and imaginative human faculties and as changing and adapting to the sensorial world that we live in.
Digital technology affects our access to the world. Our conditions for ‘seeing’ changes when what appears to us increasingly results from interactions and calculations that are technologically conditioned. Phenomena that engage digital processes and interobjective temporalities have different implications to human perceptual systems than analog ones. They are different because when mechanisms for selecting what we see and register change so do our experience of appearances and the impact they have on our perceptual system.
This also affects art’s appearances and intra-active modes of existence. I am interested in art as something that exists and acts in our world – and how it does so – rather than something that exists for its own sake or discourse. Seeing art as something that in its ontology ‘does,’ rather than something that ‘is,’ I am interested in the art as phenomena that is contingent with technological innovation and culture, existing through continuous and co-constitutive mode of exchange.
Curatorially, I have primarily worked around the concept of urban media art. Rather than intended to indicate a genre or modality, I have used this term with reference to art that exists with urban media. Urbanity in this sense is a place as much as a condition for cultural communality. In common public spaces, virtually or in the city, we share narratives, practice life stories, form relations with each other, and continuously negotiate norms, rituals and cultural practices. We ground ourselves through shared modes of perception, through thinking and agreeing on who we are, all different. I am interested in how art, through co-production of public space and public spheres, contributes to producing a common sense of realness – even if abstract or imaginative or full of friction – in a world that is increasingly shaping from irreality and competing ideas of truth. Caring for appearances and experiences that provide opportunities for sharing and negotiation realness – what reality is for us, how we can exist in it, and how we can commonly and democratically produce it – is of urgent necessity in order to maintain cultural plurality, complexity and coherency.
ACTIVITIES PERTAINING TO THIS RESEARCH
ESSAY: “Art Time (of the Audience),” in. Levande Bilder – Levande Stad. Edited by Geska Brečević and Annika Wik. 1st ed. Stockholm: Film Capital Stockholm, November 2020.
KEYNOTE: Curatorial Inquiry in Times of Cognitive Crisis, at Ph.D. Summer Camp, Artistic Production and Curating in The Age of Technogenesis, at CATCH in Elsinore and in the framework of Media Art Histories Re:Sound 2019.
KEYNOTE: A Topology For Urban Art And Change In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, at Elektronika Festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in January 2018.
ARTICLE: Art in the Intelligent City, published in SCB Journal, October 2017.
RESEARCH & WRITING: Migrating Stories in Stavanger, Curatorial research and written introduction for the Screen City Biennial 2017 – Migrating Stories in Stavanger, Norway.
PH.D. THESIS: Images Of Urgency: A Curatorial Inquiry With Contemporary Urban Media Art, 2017, Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
TEACHING: URBAN MEDIA ART ACADEMY, a networked, global educational initiative that investigates and intermediates urban media art as an interdisciplinary domain of practice, theory and knowledge sharing. Initiated and co-directed with Susa Pop.
WRITING: Disobedient Urban Art, Book Chapter in Media Architecture Compendium: Digital Placemaking, M. Hank Häusler, Martin Tomitsch, Luke Hespanhol and Gernot Tscherteu (eds.), Stuttgart: Avedition Gmbh , 2017.
VIDEO INTERVIEW: On Curating Urban Media Art, for the Media Architecture Summit 2016 (MAS) in Toronto.
TALK: Urban Inquiries of Urgency, Invited talk at the Media Architecture Summit, Toronto, Sep 29 – Oct 1, 2016.
BOOK: What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why When Where & How?, co-edited anthology on Urban Media Art co-edited with Susa Pop, Nerea Calvillo, and Mark Wright, av edition, 2016.
KEYNOTE: What Urban Media Art Can Do, at Live The City, at the Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre (BACC), June 7, 2016.
TEACHING: URBAN MEDIA ART ACADEMY.
KEYNOTE: The Urgent Urban Place of (Digital) Art, at City Link 2015: Reimagining the City, October 30, 2015, in Copenhagen.
INTERVIEW: Museum Without A Place | Interview For Unplace Project.
RESIDENCY: Curatorial Residency at AVXLab in São Paulo, January and February 2018.
WRITING: Curatorial writer for the Future DiverCities program, funded by the Creative Europe Programme.
CURATED EXHIBITIONS
Art’s New Natures, online exhibition curated with Nina Colosi at StreamingMuseum.org as part of the Digital Dynamics: New Ways of Artprogram. With artists Æsa Bjørk and Tina Thorsteinsdóttir, Anders Eiebakke, Lundahl & Seitl, Anne KatrineSenstad and Jana Winderen.https://www.streamingmuseum.org/
Screen City Biennial, Stavanger, October 2017Curator, with Daniela Arriado; with artists Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Dana Levy, David Blandy, Duncan Speakman, Enrique Ramírez, Eric Corriel, Evangelia Kranioti, HC Gilje, John Cleater, John Craig Freeman, Larry Achiampong, Lodovica Guarnieri, Lorenzo Gerbi, Lotic, Marcel Odenbach, Marcus Neustetter, Margarida Paiva, Maria von Hausswolff, Matti Aikio, Mirelle Borra, Olivia McGilchrist, Rona Yefman, Sam Wolson, Shezad Dawood, Søren Thilo Funder, Tanja Schlander, Telcosystems, Tobias Zielony, Transforma, Trevor Snapp, Utopian Union, Vasco Araújo, Yael Bartana, Yucef Merhi http://2017.screencitybiennial.org/
Here All Alone, Copenhagen, June 3-5, 2015Curator and organizer, with graduate students of the graduate course Critical Curating: Urban Digital Art, Institute of Arts and Cultural Studies, Copenhagen University: Zahra Al Ziheiri, Nina Cramer, Aaron Dishy, Levi Easterbrooks, Helene Gamst, Camilla Jaller, Noémie le Bouder, Pedro Filipe da Silveira, and Mikkel Stig Rørbo,multimedia installation with artist Anders Weberg, assisted by Nuleinn (Rine Rodin and Magga Ploder), Novozymes factory. http://hereallalone.dk/
Digital Afterimage, SP Urban Digital Festival, SESI SP Digital Art Gallery, Sao Paulo, 2015Curator, with Marília Pasculli; with artists Andar7, Thiago Hersan & Radamés Anja, Lucas Bambozzi, The Constitute, Eduardo Kac, Yucef Merhi, Suse Miessner, and Marina Zurkov
Nordic Outbreak, New York City and Nordic, 2012-2014Curator, with Nina Colosi; moving image exhibition and public program, visiting New York (Scandinavia House), Helsinki (Kiasma), Copenhagen (Danish Architecture Centre), Reykjavik (Reykjavik Art Museum), Stavanger (Screen City Festival), Nuuk (Katuaq), Umeaa (Umeaa2014); with artists Eija-Liisa Ahtila, J Tobias Anderson, Björk, Ken Are Bongo, Jeannette Ehlers, Efterklang, Jette Ellgaard, Jessica Faiss, Marit Følstad, Søren Thilo Funder, Sigurdur Gudjonsson, Styrmir Örn Gudmundsson, Eva-MariHaikala, Iselin Linstad Hauge, Kaia Hugin, Hanne Ivars, Mogens Jacobsen, Vibeke Jensen, Jesper Just, Hannu Karjalainen, Antti Laitinen, Dan Lestander, Una Lorenzen, Pernille With Madsen, Dodda Maggy, Eva Olsson, QNQ/AUJIK, Miia Rinne, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Magnus Sigurdarson, Birgitte Sigmundstad, and Superflexwww.nordicoutbreak.org
Play!, SP Urban Digital Festival, SESI SP Digital Art Gallery, 2014Curator, with Marília Pasculli; with artists Pfadfinderei, Noobware & Nutune, Duo2, vapor 324, and Dollsquimia
Performance: Digtal Expressions, SP Urban Digital Festival, SESI SP Digital Art Gallery, 2013Curator, with Marília Pasculli; with artists Samira Brandão, Rogério Borovik, Stratofyzika, Cynthia Domenico, Lev Manovich, and Collective NoiseTupi
Digital Citizen, SP Urban Digital Festival, SESI SP Digital Art Gallery, 2013Curator, with Marília Pasculli; with artists Pablo Ena,Reza Safavi,Sergio Galán; Anaisa Franco, James George, Rune Madsen,Leandro Mendes/VJ Vigas,Paloma OlivieraandMateus Knielsen, Julian Opie, Karolina Sobecka,andUnited VJ’s
Play!, SP Urban Digital Festival, SESI SP Digital Art Gallery, 2013Curator, with Marília Pasculli; with artists Alberto Zanella,Andrei Thomaz,Les Liens Invisibles (image),Lummo,Mark Essen,Suzete Venturelli and team Midialab-UnB
Cyborg Alarm, Big Screen Plaza, New York City, 2012Curator, with Nina Colosi; cosponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange,a public program Administered by NYFA with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA); with artists Sophie Kahn, caraballo-farman, Jason Bernagozzi, Michael Greathouse, James Case-Leal, and Karolina Sobecka.Co-curator, Letters from the Field, curated by the residents at Node Center of Curatorial Studies, Berlin, 2012
Maurice Benayoun solo exhibition, Big Screen Plaza, New York City, 2012Co-curator, with Nina Colosi;January 31 –March 31
Image: Duncan Speakman, It Must Have Been Dark By Then (2017), Screen City Biennial, Stavanger, Norway