From c4afa5d3bedff9bbe1b0b848d3b9f89fe8874632 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jules Laplace Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2021 14:17:38 +0200 Subject: artist essays --- frontend/site/projects/museum/constants.js | 63 ++- frontend/site/projects/museum/icons.js | 668 +++++++++++++++++++++++- frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.css | 19 +- frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.js | 14 + frontend/site/projects/museum/views/credits.js | 2 - frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.css | 21 + frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.js | 162 ++++-- 7 files changed, 864 insertions(+), 85 deletions(-) diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/constants.js b/frontend/site/projects/museum/constants.js index bec8e4d..4913717 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/constants.js +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/constants.js @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ export const ARTISTS = { `, statement: `

- AFU. This is not a hackerspace. + AFU. This is not a hackerspace.

Welcome to some savage archaeology in outta space! Occupy Archaeology! Occupy hackerspaces! @@ -115,30 +115,30 @@ export const ARTISTS = {

Charles Stankievech (b.1978, Canada) is an artist whose research has explored issues such as the notion of “fieldwork” in the embedded landscape, the military industrial complex, and the history of technology. His diverse body of work has been shown internationally at the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MassMoca, Massachussetts; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Venice Architecture and SITE Santa Fe Biennales. His lectures for Documenta 13 and the 8th Berlin Biennale were as much performance as pedagogy while his writing has been published in academic journals by MIT and Princeton Architectural Press. His idiosyncratic and obsessively researched curatorial projects include Magnetic Norths at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University and CounterIntelligence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto. From 2010-2011 (and again currently from 2014-15) he was hired as a private contractor for the Department of National Defense where he conducted independent research in intelligence operations under the rubric of the CFAP.  He was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.  Since 2011, he has been co-director of the art and theory press K. Verlag in Berlin.

- `, + `, statement: ` -

-Shot primarily at the historic Cosmic Ray Research Station in the Canadian Rockies, on Winter Solstice, The Glass Key travels across the time and space of humans attempting to understand and communicate a sense of place in the cosmos: from ancient sun worship through to contemporary neutrino and dark matter research. In narrative terms, the work starts with a paradoxical climbing of the mystical “mountain of the sun” while the subject dives into a deeper interior, psychological, “cosmic cave.” -

-

-The soundtrack, which guides the project and is composed as a binaural work for headphone listening, has three components: A reverbing drone is generated out of field recordings of MIT radomes and WWI sound mirrors; sparkling field recording of ionospheric collisions crackle around the cranium, occasionally catching the signalling of satellites. Finally, literary text fragments are translated into morse code expressed in the pulse of a heartbeat. These three layers are spatially mixed, from spacious soundscape through the threshold of the head into the interior of the body. -

-

-As a counterpoint to modern scientific investigations into cosmic rays, LIDAR (laser 3D measurement) recordings were done on Spring Equinox at a Mayan temple in the Yucatan.  Retracing not only the architectural history of Mesoamerican culture, The Glass Key follows Robert Smithson’s 1969 journey through the landscape as he attempted to define site-specific art in particular contrast to the archival format of photography and mapmaking.  -

-

-As we move close to the summit of the Cosmic Research Station, we are reminded of the materiality of light via the historical use of Icelandic Spar in ancient navigation and scientific processes.  Thomas Pynchon speculates that such polarizing of light also creates a hidden world for the non-human and the doubling of existence between the visible and non-visible, a sort of superpositionality between site and non-site. A pop up video of 1980s HyperCard coding language (a precursor to the user interface of the internet today) visualizes the ancient antithetical iconography of the cave in the mountain (a triangle within a triangle).  -

-

-If there is an antithesis to the pure light of the sun or almost massless aspect of neutrinos, then it is the history of meteorites.  Nothing more solid falls from the cosmos into the earth’s atmosphere. And yet, it enters as a luminous ball of fire from the heavens.  Placed at 2km above sea level at the Cosmic Ray Research Station, a cross section of the oldest known meteorite to have impacted the earth becomes a portal into the Canadian Neutrino observatory (SNO) buried 2kms below the earth's surface.  Eliade, one of the founders of the field of comparative religion, reminds us that the oldest word for iron is an•bar— or the pictogram of fire•sky—the source of the most mystical material before classical antiquity. -

-

-Catapulted from the interior back to the exterior, we encounter the same meteorite, but this time as a 3 dimensional meteorite crystal, balanced on the peak of the mountain (reminiscent of Rene Magritte’s surrealist masterpiece La clef de verre, 1959).  A title originally stolen from the English detective novel, The Glass Key reveals the dream when one attempts to force a locked space with a fragile decoder and the key shatters in the lock. An excerpt from Clarice Lispector’s most enigmatic short story discusses the birth of the metaphysical round object that denies all understanding. -

-

-The Glass Key ends not by focusing on a natural history object (spar or meteorite) but perhaps the most uniquely anthropogenic crystal: Trinitite.  Laying on a bed of snow crystals, a dark green fragment remains—an object composed of fused sand, created when the desert was super-heated by the first nuclear explosion: Trinity.  A video of the explosion closes the cycle, where The Desert Turned to Glass. A nuclear winter descends, and we retreat from the pinnacles of mountains and temples into our isolated underground caves, connected through a communication system designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. Lispector’s lament closes our eclipsed world.” -

- ` +

+ Shot primarily at the historic Cosmic Ray Research Station in the Canadian Rockies, on Winter Solstice, The Glass Key travels across the time and space of humans attempting to understand and communicate a sense of place in the cosmos: from ancient sun worship through to contemporary neutrino and dark matter research. In narrative terms, the work starts with a paradoxical climbing of the mystical “mountain of the sun” while the subject dives into a deeper interior, psychological, “cosmic cave.” +

+

+ The soundtrack, which guides the project and is composed as a binaural work for headphone listening, has three components: A reverbing drone is generated out of field recordings of MIT radomes and WWI sound mirrors; sparkling field recording of ionospheric collisions crackle around the cranium, occasionally catching the signalling of satellites. Finally, literary text fragments are translated into morse code expressed in the pulse of a heartbeat. These three layers are spatially mixed, from spacious soundscape through the threshold of the head into the interior of the body. +

+

+ As a counterpoint to modern scientific investigations into cosmic rays, LIDAR (laser 3D measurement) recordings were done on Spring Equinox at a Mayan temple in the Yucatan.  Retracing not only the architectural history of Mesoamerican culture, The Glass Key follows Robert Smithson’s 1969 journey through the landscape as he attempted to define site-specific art in particular contrast to the archival format of photography and mapmaking.  +

+

+ As we move close to the summit of the Cosmic Research Station, we are reminded of the materiality of light via the historical use of Icelandic Spar in ancient navigation and scientific processes.  Thomas Pynchon speculates that such polarizing of light also creates a hidden world for the non-human and the doubling of existence between the visible and non-visible, a sort of superpositionality between site and non-site. A pop up video of 1980s HyperCard coding language (a precursor to the user interface of the internet today) visualizes the ancient antithetical iconography of the cave in the mountain (a triangle within a triangle).  +

+

+ If there is an antithesis to the pure light of the sun or almost massless aspect of neutrinos, then it is the history of meteorites.  Nothing more solid falls from the cosmos into the earth’s atmosphere. And yet, it enters as a luminous ball of fire from the heavens.  Placed at 2km above sea level at the Cosmic Ray Research Station, a cross section of the oldest known meteorite to have impacted the earth becomes a portal into the Canadian Neutrino observatory (SNO) buried 2kms below the earth's surface.  Eliade, one of the founders of the field of comparative religion, reminds us that the oldest word for iron is an•bar— or the pictogram of fire•sky—the source of the most mystical material before classical antiquity. +

+

+ Catapulted from the interior back to the exterior, we encounter the same meteorite, but this time as a 3 dimensional meteorite crystal, balanced on the peak of the mountain (reminiscent of Rene Magritte’s surrealist masterpiece La clef de verre, 1959).  A title originally stolen from the English detective novel, The Glass Key reveals the dream when one attempts to force a locked space with a fragile decoder and the key shatters in the lock. An excerpt from Clarice Lispector’s most enigmatic short story discusses the birth of the metaphysical round object that denies all understanding. +

+

+ The Glass Key ends not by focusing on a natural history object (spar or meteorite) but perhaps the most uniquely anthropogenic crystal: Trinitite.  Laying on a bed of snow crystals, a dark green fragment remains—an object composed of fused sand, created when the desert was super-heated by the first nuclear explosion: Trinity.  A video of the explosion closes the cycle, where The Desert Turned to Glass. A nuclear winter descends, and we retreat from the pinnacles of mountains and temples into our isolated underground caves, connected through a communication system designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. Lispector’s lament closes our eclipsed world.” +

+ `, image: "", globePosition: { top: "15%", @@ -153,8 +153,8 @@ Catapulted from the interior back to the exterior, we encounter the same meteori Jakrawal Nilthamrong (b.1977) is Thai artist and filmmaker based in Bangkok. He holds a MFA in Art and Technology Studies. In 2007, he was an artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s work spans from short films, documentary films to video installations and feature films. The themes of his work often relate to Eastern philosophy in contemporary context and local history of specific environments to establish dialogue among multiple perspectives. His has been shown in international film festivals including Rotterdam, Berlinale, Toronto and Yamagata, as well as exhibitions at 2012 Taipei Biennial and 2014 SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul, it is collected by institutions including Kadaist.

`, statement: `

-

Wildfires

occur frequently during the dry season in northern Thailand’s high mountains. The source of fire is not natural but arson. In the past it was hypothesized that local people set the fires to clear land for agricultural use, or for hunting. There were efforts to solve the problem at the community level, but the fires only became more severe. Strangely, the blazes often occurred in the national park—an area difficult for villagers to access. During the wildfire suppression efforts of May 2020, a group of scholars and volunteers discovered important evidence that would change the original hypothesis: They found several instances of improvised devices made of clothes pegs connected to a small battery by a power cable. Combustion was triggered by a small clod of clay positioned in the middle between the pegs, acting as a timer—after melting in the heat the wires attached to the batteries would ignite. Villagers who were interviewed said that this was not a technique that they were familiar with. Although we cannot know the intention of the burners, it is likely that the park’s natural resources are being used to benefit some group of people. And the poor have always been condemned.  -

` + Wildfires occur frequently during the dry season in northern Thailand’s high mountains. The source of fire is not natural but arson. In the past it was hypothesized that local people set the fires to clear land for agricultural use, or for hunting. There were efforts to solve the problem at the community level, but the fires only became more severe. Strangely, the blazes often occurred in the national park—an area difficult for villagers to access. During the wildfire suppression efforts of May 2020, a group of scholars and volunteers discovered important evidence that would change the original hypothesis: They found several instances of improvised devices made of clothes pegs connected to a small battery by a power cable. Combustion was triggered by a small clod of clay positioned in the middle between the pegs, acting as a timer—after melting in the heat the wires attached to the batteries would ignite. Villagers who were interviewed said that this was not a technique that they were familiar with. Although we cannot know the intention of the burners, it is likely that the park’s natural resources are being used to benefit some group of people. And the poor have always been condemned.  +

`, image: "", globePosition: { top: "39%", @@ -175,7 +175,7 @@ Catapulted from the interior back to the exterior, we encounter the same meteori I chose the location because of its originally intended function: A crematorium. This was one of the ambitious but unfortunately unfinished projects initiated by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah government in the 1970s. The building has been abandoned until today.

-   I am very interested in the rough aesthetic of the concrete adjoining with the scrabbled walls, which has developed in the last fifty years. The impression of the building is something historic and it reminds me of the inspirational material for a body of work which I sourced from tomb paintings: the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. +   I am very interested in the rough aesthetic of the concrete adjoining with the scrabbled walls, which has developed in the last fifty years. The impression of the building is something historic and it reminds me of the inspirational material for a body of work which I sourced from tomb paintings: the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The structure is present in central Accra, giving a mysterious backdrop for the prints and works that I share in the videos. It connects in sync with my narrative; to understand ways and visual forms which can take on the journey to an afterlife. @@ -194,3 +194,12 @@ export const ARTIST_ORDER = [ ] export const PROJECT_PAGE_SET = new Set(["essay", "artists", "credits"]) + +export const ESSAYS = { + nadim: { title: "The Last Museum", author: "Nadim Samman", }, +} + +export const ESSAY_ORDER = [ + "nadim", +] + diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/icons.js b/frontend/site/projects/museum/icons.js index fdd2a39..9b88856 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/icons.js +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/icons.js @@ -12,8 +12,670 @@ export const ArrowRight = ( ) -export const ArteLogo = ( - - +export const Globe = ( + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ) diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.css b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.css index 929c10f..015a4db 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.css +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.css @@ -101,27 +101,30 @@ display: none; } .page-artists .artist-left { - padding-top: 0vh; + padding-top: 2vh; padding-bottom: 4vh; padding-left: 2vw; padding-right: 2vw; - width: 100vw; - font-size: 1.5vw; + width: 50vw; + font-size: 1.2vw; line-height: 1.4; } -.page-artists .artist-left p { +.page-artists .artist-left p, +.page-artists .artist-right p { margin: 0 0 2vw 0; } .page-artists .artist-right { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 50vw; - background-size: cover; - background-position: center right; + padding-top: 2vh; + padding-bottom: 4vh; + padding-left: 2vw; + padding-right: 2vw; width: 50vw; - height: 100vh; + font-size: 1.2vw; + line-height: 1.4; /*background: #222222;*/ - pointer-events: none; } .page-artists .artist-location { position: absolute; diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.js b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.js index 20345d0..912e0e8 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.js +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/artists.js @@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ export default class Artists extends Component { constructor(props) { super(props) + this.ref = React.createRef() this.showArtist = this.showArtist.bind(this) this.previousArtist = this.previousArtist.bind(this) this.nextArtist = this.nextArtist.bind(this) @@ -25,6 +26,7 @@ export default class Artists extends Component { showArtist(currentIndex) { this.setState({ detail: true, currentIndex }) + this.scrollToTop() } previousArtist() { @@ -38,6 +40,15 @@ export default class Artists extends Component { go(step) { const currentIndex = (this.state.currentIndex + step + ARTIST_ORDER.length) % ARTIST_ORDER.length this.setState({ currentIndex }) + this.scrollToTop() + } + + scrollToTop() { + setTimeout(() => { + Array.from(this.ref.current.querySelectorAll(".artist-content")).forEach(el => { + el.scrollTo(0, 0) + }) + }, 0) } render() { @@ -81,6 +92,9 @@ const ArtistDetail = ({ artist, index, isCurrent, onClose }) => {
+
+ +
{artist.name} diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/credits.js b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/credits.js index 9a19fcf..6187209 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/credits.js +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/credits.js @@ -3,8 +3,6 @@ import actions from 'site/actions' import "./credits.css" -import { ArteLogo } from "site/projects/museum/icons" - export default class Credits extends Component { constructor(props) { super(props) diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.css b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.css index 1a80575..3de705d 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.css +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.css @@ -1,8 +1,14 @@ +.page-essay.page-artists .artist-list { + justify-content: flex-start; +} .page-essay .page-content { flex-direction: column; justify-content: flex-start; padding-bottom: 10vh; } +.page-essay .page-title { + cursor: pointer; +} .page-essay .page-subtitle { margin: 0rem 0 2vw 0; } @@ -16,6 +22,21 @@ text-decoration: underline; } +.page-essay.page-artists .artist-location { + padding: 1vh 0; + margin: 0; + background: #111; + pointer-events: auto; + cursor: pointer; +} +.page-essay.page-artists .artist-detail.visible { + overflow-y: auto; +} +.page-essay.page-artists .artist-detail.visible::-webkit-scrollbar { + display: none; +} + + .globe { width: 100%; margin-bottom: 2vw; diff --git a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.js b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.js index 0320475..81a264c 100644 --- a/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.js +++ b/frontend/site/projects/museum/views/essay.js @@ -1,79 +1,151 @@ import React, { Component } from 'react' import actions from 'site/actions' +import "./artists.css" import "./essay.css" -import { ARTISTS, ARTIST_ORDER } from "site/projects/museum/constants" -import { Globe } from "site/projects/museum/icons" +import { ARTISTS, ARTIST_ORDER, ESSAYS, ESSAY_ORDER } from "site/projects/museum/constants" +import { ArrowLeft, ArrowRight, Globe } from "site/projects/museum/icons" -import { history } from "site/store" +export default class Essays extends Component { + state = { + currentIndex: 0, + detail: false, + } -export default class Essay extends Component { constructor(props) { super(props) - this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this) - this.state = { - } + this.ref = React.createRef() + this.showEssay = this.showEssay.bind(this) + this.previousEssay = this.previousEssay.bind(this) + this.nextEssay = this.nextEssay.bind(this) + this.close = this.close.bind(this) } componentDidMount() { actions.site.interact() } - handleClick(e) { - e && e.preventDefault() + showEssay(currentIndex) { + this.setState({ detail: true, currentIndex }) + this.scrollToTop() + } + + previousEssay() { + this.go(-1) + } + + nextEssay() { + this.go(1) + } + + go(step) { + const currentIndex = (this.state.currentIndex + step + ESSAY_ORDER.length) % ESSAY_ORDER.length + this.setState({ currentIndex }) + this.scrollToTop() + } + + scrollToTop() { + setTimeout(() => { + Array.from(this.ref.current.querySelectorAll(".artist-detail")).forEach(el => { + el.scrollTo(0, 0) + }) + }, 0) + } + + close() { + this.setState({ detail: false }) } render() { + const { currentIndex, detail } = this.state return ( -
-
The Last Museum
-
By Nadim Samman
-
-

- The Last Museum is an exhibition that explores productive tensions between the putative ‘anywhere’ of the digital and its relation to local particulars. Deploying a hybrid offline-online format, the project invites an international group of artists to reimagine site-specificity, through a sequence of interventions that cut across both real and virtual domains. The artists are Nora Al-Badri (Germany/Iraq), Juliana Cerqueira Leite (Brazil), Nicole Foreshew (Wiradjuri Nation/Australia), Jakrawal Nilthamrong (Thailand), Zohra Opoko (Ghana), and Charles Stankievech (Canada). -

- -

- The Last Museum connects disparate sites, spanning six continents and the virtual sphere. It is an experiment that deploys a unique exhibition design—embracing the overlapping analog and digital dimensions of a given location while, additionally, exploiting the unique potentials of each for dramatic effect. Altogether, The Last Museum comprises an epic para-site that is most accessible through a web interface. -

-

- Each artist was commissioned to author a sculptural group, to be installed at an outdoor site of their own choosing. The choice was only limited by a request that it be associated with communication and connectivity. Final choices ended up highlighting both technical and more esoteric forms of transmission—and included a notorious hacker hangout (Berlin’s C-base), ancestral land in rural Australia, a down-at-heel electronics mall in downtown Sao Paolo, a neutrino observatory in the Rocky Mountains, and more. -

-

- Each sculptural intervention was videoed by the artists, and the resulting clips (from all over the world) were handed over to a digital artist, Jules LaPlace, who brought them together through a digital way-finding protocol; the exhibition’s ‘hang’. The public outcome, debuting as a pop-up window on the KW start page, is a website experience that unfolds as an interactive sequence of objects and places, navigable using bespoke tools. At times, these tools amount to additional (digital) artworks. Visitors will have a sense that that the exhibition is a wormhole, of sorts. -

-

- Some of the featured locations are associated with infrastructure and the World Wide Web, others include waterways and climate. Uniting these seemingly disparate aspects, a conceptual leitmotif of visually grounding planetary networks and other globe-spanning systems will be evident. Call it a web-site-specific project—in the sense that both art and exhibition design re-imagines the stakes of ‘site-specificity’ for digital times. What this means is that The Last Museum’s ‘site’ is a layered reality or (to borrow a term from computational engineering) a ‘Stack’. Our exhibition-stack encompasses material facts on the ground, digital code, and softer site specificities—including those previously outlined by the art historian Miwon Kwon, such as ‘cultural debates, a theoretical concept, a historical condition, even particular formations of desire’. Each artwork in The Last Museum is a kind of a vector that intersects with all of the stack’s layers. -

-

- For visitors, The Last Museum will offer a blurring between cinema and website interactivity. The ability to stay with a moving image for as long as you want, pushing the edit along at your own pace, is not normally available as a filmic experience. In fact, it is more a province of gaming. Other interactions will include releasing files for download, accessing texts, switching soundtrack variations and more. All of these things will be artist directed and thus in no way interpretive or secondary materials. -

-

- Rather than being a one-off exhibition, The Last Museum will ‘tour’ as a pop-up window on the start pages of partner institutions for fixed periods. In line with the project’s rejection of an ‘anywhere, anytime’ web imaginary, each touring iteration will acquire a new chapter—with an additional artist/site from the host institution’s country added to the navigable chain. As long as our colleagues’ are interested, it is possible that The Last Museum may tour and grow indefinitely—like the content of the web itself. -

-

- This project was conceived during the first wave of COVID-19, amid heightened tensions between the conditions of physical lockdown and globe-spanning telecommunication. Although utterly international, its production required no travel for persons or artworks. When the exhibition opens, audiences will not have to travel to view it. While the development of such a format is not supposed to replace gallery experience, it is at least suggestive for how to approach a growing question in the museum sector: namely, how do analog artworks and digital space can come together a meaningful way? In fact, this is only half of the question: We must also explore how digital artworks can relate to analog space. The Last Museum attempts to work on both problems at the same time, creatively, playing with the issue of translation and re-representation in a bi-directional manner. -

-

- At its core, The Last Museum explores how tangibility and distance interact, how things that seem fixed in place might (or do) escape in various forms. In a sense, then, it it clear that we are dealing with an issue as old as art itself (albeit, employing contemporary tools). At least one of the exhibition’s artists, Zohra Opoko, explicitly takes up an art-historical precursor for the crossing of spatial and metaphysical thresholds. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is her inspiration for a series of interventions in a half-built mortuary in Accra, Ghana. Draped with screen-printed fabric, the unfinished site is (literally) shrouded in images that stimulate reflection on how stillness and passage come together. In this work and more, the The Last Museum hovers somewhere between life and death, lockdown and escape. -

-

- The Last Museum launches 30 April and runs until 6 June 6, 2021, at www.kw-berlin.de. -

+
+
+
TEXTS
+ {ESSAY_ORDER.map((key, index) => { + const essay = ESSAYS[key] + return ( +
this.showEssay(index)}> + {essay.title} +
+ ) + })} +
+
+ {ESSAY_ORDER.map((key, index) => ( + + ))} + {detail && ( +
{ESSAYS[ESSAY_ORDER[currentIndex]].title}
+ )} +
{ArrowLeft}
+
{ArrowRight}
) } } +const EssayDetail = props => { + switch (props.essayId) { + case 'nadim': + return + } +} + +const NadimEssay = ({ essayId, index, isCurrent, onClose }) => ( +
+
The Last Museum
+
By Nadim Samman
+
+

+ The Last Museum is an exhibition that explores productive tensions between the putative ‘anywhere’ of the digital and its relation to local particulars. Deploying a hybrid offline-online format, the project invites an international group of artists to reimagine site-specificity, through a sequence of interventions that cut across both real and virtual domains. The artists are Nora Al-Badri (Germany/Iraq), Juliana Cerqueira Leite (Brazil), Nicole Foreshew (Wiradjuri Nation/Australia), Jakrawal Nilthamrong (Thailand), Zohra Opoko (Ghana), and Charles Stankievech (Canada). +

+ +

+ The Last Museum connects disparate sites, spanning six continents and the virtual sphere. It is an experiment that deploys a unique exhibition design—embracing the overlapping analog and digital dimensions of a given location while, additionally, exploiting the unique potentials of each for dramatic effect. Altogether, The Last Museum comprises an epic para-site that is most accessible through a web interface. +

+

+ Each artist was commissioned to author a sculptural group, to be installed at an outdoor site of their own choosing. The choice was only limited by a request that it be associated with communication and connectivity. Final choices ended up highlighting both technical and more esoteric forms of transmission—and included a notorious hacker hangout (Berlin’s C-base), ancestral land in rural Australia, a down-at-heel electronics mall in downtown Sao Paolo, a neutrino observatory in the Rocky Mountains, and more. +

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+ Each sculptural intervention was videoed by the artists, and the resulting clips (from all over the world) were handed over to a digital artist, Jules LaPlace, who brought them together through a digital way-finding protocol; the exhibition’s ‘hang’. The public outcome, debuting as a pop-up window on the KW start page, is a website experience that unfolds as an interactive sequence of objects and places, navigable using bespoke tools. At times, these tools amount to additional (digital) artworks. Visitors will have a sense that that the exhibition is a wormhole, of sorts. +

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+ Some of the featured locations are associated with infrastructure and the World Wide Web, others include waterways and climate. Uniting these seemingly disparate aspects, a conceptual leitmotif of visually grounding planetary networks and other globe-spanning systems will be evident. Call it a web-site-specific project—in the sense that both art and exhibition design re-imagines the stakes of ‘site-specificity’ for digital times. What this means is that The Last Museum’s ‘site’ is a layered reality or (to borrow a term from computational engineering) a ‘Stack’. Our exhibition-stack encompasses material facts on the ground, digital code, and softer site specificities—including those previously outlined by the art historian Miwon Kwon, such as ‘cultural debates, a theoretical concept, a historical condition, even particular formations of desire’. Each artwork in The Last Museum is a kind of a vector that intersects with all of the stack’s layers. +

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+ For visitors, The Last Museum will offer a blurring between cinema and website interactivity. The ability to stay with a moving image for as long as you want, pushing the edit along at your own pace, is not normally available as a filmic experience. In fact, it is more a province of gaming. Other interactions will include releasing files for download, accessing texts, switching soundtrack variations and more. All of these things will be artist directed and thus in no way interpretive or secondary materials. +

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+ Rather than being a one-off exhibition, The Last Museum will ‘tour’ as a pop-up window on the start pages of partner institutions for fixed periods. In line with the project’s rejection of an ‘anywhere, anytime’ web imaginary, each touring iteration will acquire a new chapter—with an additional artist/site from the host institution’s country added to the navigable chain. As long as our colleagues’ are interested, it is possible that The Last Museum may tour and grow indefinitely—like the content of the web itself. +

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+ This project was conceived during the first wave of COVID-19, amid heightened tensions between the conditions of physical lockdown and globe-spanning telecommunication. Although utterly international, its production required no travel for persons or artworks. When the exhibition opens, audiences will not have to travel to view it. While the development of such a format is not supposed to replace gallery experience, it is at least suggestive for how to approach a growing question in the museum sector: namely, how do analog artworks and digital space can come together a meaningful way? In fact, this is only half of the question: We must also explore how digital artworks can relate to analog space. The Last Museum attempts to work on both problems at the same time, creatively, playing with the issue of translation and re-representation in a bi-directional manner. +

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+ At its core, The Last Museum explores how tangibility and distance interact, how things that seem fixed in place might (or do) escape in various forms. In a sense, then, it it clear that we are dealing with an issue as old as art itself (albeit, employing contemporary tools). At least one of the exhibition’s artists, Zohra Opoko, explicitly takes up an art-historical precursor for the crossing of spatial and metaphysical thresholds. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is her inspiration for a series of interventions in a half-built mortuary in Accra, Ghana. Draped with screen-printed fabric, the unfinished site is (literally) shrouded in images that stimulate reflection on how stillness and passage come together. In this work and more, the The Last Museum hovers somewhere between life and death, lockdown and escape. +

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+ The Last Museum launches 30 April and runs until 6 June 6, 2021, at www.kw-berlin.de. +

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+) + const ArtistGlobe = () => (
{Globe} {ARTIST_ORDER.map((key, index) => { const artist = ARTISTS[key] - console.log(artist.name) return (
history.push(`/last-museum/${artist.start}`)}> {index + 1} -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2