KASSIA & the Convent(ion) A Performative Archive

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KASSIA & the Convent(ion) A Performative Archive

KAINKOLLEKTIV | SPUTNIC | MIREVI (HOCHSCHULE DÜSSELDORF) U. A.

Media Art FundResearch

The composer, poet & Byzantine abbess KASSIA is considered the first European composer whose works have survived and still play an important role in European (music) history. Kassia was born in Constantinople in 810. KASSIA is not only an enigmatic personality as a musician. She is also a writer of astonishing radicalism, composing not only sacred poetry but also secular texts, of which more than 250 have survived in the form of epigrams. Last but not least, she appears as a political figure who rhetorically opposes the emperor Theophilos in his search for a bride.

Kassia is a kind of early feminist and cosmopolitan role model. Her work was taken by kainkollektiv and various artists, scholars and institutions from Germany, Poland and Turkey as the starting point for a multi-dimensional and multidimensional project consisting of the KASSIA opera performance and the (digital) KASSIA conference. Finally, the KASSIA online exhibition/archive is now being created, which will make these project parts visible in a bundled form and link them interactively.

The online exhibition/archive KASSIA will make the Kassia cosmos accessible, with all media developed in the previous parts of the project – music, texts, performance, lectures, images, portraits etc. – becoming part of this digital space. – will become components of this digital space

In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Media Art Fund and by the City of Bochum.
More information about the project here: kassia-archive.org

Hear more about the project in the new podcast episode with Mirjam Schmuck and Olga Felker here

Illustrations: © Malte Jehmlich & Verena Herbst

Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl | Kollektiv 42 | cityscaper | Folkwang Universität der Künste: “Augmented Art Advertising”

Augmented Art Advertising
Augmented Art Advertising

Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl | Kollektiv 42 | cityscaper | Folkwang Universität der Künste: “Augmented Art Advertising”

Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl | cityscaper | Folkwang Universität der Künste

Media Art FundProject

Duration: July and August 2022

adARt – Augmented Art Advertising is an interdisciplinary media art project and a design experiment to communicate cultural content using contemporary technologies. The Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, the Essen-based media art duo Kollektiv 42, the Aachen-based cityscaper GmbH and the Folkwang University of the Arts are planning an innovative augmented reality project to virtually extend the museum space to the exhibition architecture of advertising in public spaces. The interest here is not only in the critical examination of the structural omnipresence of product marketing. Equally decisive is the intensive, cross-sector discourse on the technical possibilities and medial difficulties of mixed reality systems.

With a freely available app, interested people all over NRW will be able to experience the advertising posters in their neighbourhood as exhibition spaces of an augmented reality, create collections of their favourite artworks and learn more about the artists. In August 2022, the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl will then invite visitors to a special highlight: the virtualised collection and the temporary adARt exhibition with artworks specially developed for the AR space. Visitors can explore the exhibition on their own with the app or take part in curated guided tours in the city centre equipped with tablets.

With a symposium in the SANAA building at the Zollverein World Heritage Site, Kollektiv 42 and Folkwang University of the Arts will offer a platform for cross-sector discourse on mixed reality systems on 11 November 2022 in Essen. Project results will be presented publicly and reflected in various contexts through exhibition elements, guest lectures and a panel discussion.

EVENTS FOR THE PROJECT AUGMENTED ART ADVERTISING

Expanded Worlds – urban media art in marl
Opening on Friday, August 12th at 6 pm


More Information about ERWEITERTE WELTEN


The Expanded Worlds, a free translation of the English technical term Augmented Reality, describe a reality that is expanded with the help of a technical device, a smartphone or a tablet. The Expanded Worlds are an interdisciplinary media art project and a creative experiment in conveying museum content through the use of contemporary technologies. In this project, the large advertising posters placed at central locations throughout cities are recognized by a specially developed app and replaced with new content on the display: All you have to do this, you hold a smartphone in the direction of the poster and a work of art appears on the screen instead of the advertisement.

The Expanded Worlds consist of two parts, with the first part being location-based and only available to experience in Marl starting August 12th. This urban media art exhibition follows a route in Marl-Hüls, which starts at the new location of the museum at the Martin Luther King School. Students from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and other young artists from North Rhine-Westphalia have created ten new media art works for this project – videos, animations or acoustic-visual experiments – which are assigned to specific advertising posters and take part in a walk of about an hour. This format is similar to a classic outdoor exhibition, where the works of art are communicated using small technical devices that have become indispensable in our everyday lives: this art is virtual, it does not need picture frames or concrete bases.

In the second part, those interested from all over North Rhine-Westphalia can experience the advertising posters in their neighborhood as exhibition areas of an augmented reality. The Skulpturenmuseum Marl owns around 700 works on canvas as well as drawings and graphics on paper, which have not been on view for a long time because the museum focuses mainly on sculpture, video and sound art. A selection of around 200 works of art is now being made accessible in this technically advanced form. They are landscape paintings, still lifes or depictions of people that were bought by the city of Marl in the late 1960s as decoration for representative locations in the then new town hall, long before the museum existed.
The Extended Worlds are a joint project by Anastasija Delidova and Philip Popien of the Essen media art duo Kollektiv 42, Robin Römer and the programmers from cityscaper GmbH from Aachen and the Skulpturenmuseum Marl.

Expanded worlds – urban media art in Marl opens on Friday, August 12, 2022 at 6 p.m. at Georg-Herwegh-Straße 67. Museum director Georg Elben and the head of the cultural department of the city of Marl, Claudia Schwidrik-Grebe, will speak.

During the exhibition period of the exhibition Erweiterte Welten – urbane Medienkunst in Marl from 12 August to 28 August 2022, the Sculpture Museum offers two additional special guided tours of the outdoor exhibition every week in addition to the usual neighbourhood tours (always Sundays 11h30, start at Creiler Platz, with registration // 15h30, start at the museum, without registration). Together with an art mediator, the tour explores the district of Marl-Hüls and discovers a total of 10 media artworks, some of which were created site-specifically for the exhibition in Marl.
For the tour, visitors can bring their own mobile device with a stable internet connection on which the app adARt is installed. This is available free of charge from the Google Play Store and the AppStore. Alternatively, a device can be borrowed for the tour of the museum. The tour is free of charge and will be offered every Wednesday at 5 pm for the next two weeks. The tour starts at the Sculpture Museum and ends there again. It lasts about 90 minutes and is free of charge.

Participating artists:
Lotta Bauer, Thiemo Frömberg, Hamidreza Ghasemi, Huong Huynh, Elena Kruglova, Donja Nasseri, Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Julia Unkel
The texts for the media art works were written by students at the Ruhr University Bochum within the seminar “Artistic Interventions in the Smart City” by Professor Dr. Annette Urban.

Image.: © Stephan Wolters

Rottstr5-Kunsthallen | Women In New Media Art (WINMA): “WOMEN IN MEDIA ART LAB BEEP”

Women in New Media
Women in New Media

Rottstr5-Kunsthallen | Women In New Media Art (WINMA): “WOMEN IN MEDIA ART LAB BEEP”

Women In New Media Art (WINMA) | Rottstr5-Kunsthallen

Media Art FundWorkshop

Duration: October 2022
Women in New Media Art and Rottstr5-Kunsthallen are organising a one-week media art lab by women artists for women artists in NRW for the first time. Six female media artists will have the opportunity to exchange their working methods, get to know each other and work artistically and technically together. Female media artists can apply for an open call.

When selecting the artists, the diversity of the applicants’ artistic genres will be taken into account in order to stimulate an interdisciplinary creative process on the one hand and to be able to investigate different conceptual and technical approaches within media art on the other. Applications from artists from the fields of video and sound art, virtual reality, robotics, artificial intelligence and coding as well as colleagues who conceive hybrid or purely digital performance formats are welcome.

The aim of the project is to bring together women media artists in a free environment to create collaborative works. In terms of content, the lab focuses on examining one’s own identity as a media artist. What particular challenges must be overcome? How can specific media skills be acquired? What presentation spaces and discourses exist and where do women media artists find their position?

The lab will be accompanied by a series of interviews with other media artists. The aim of this is to find out the needs and potentials and will be documented on film. The results will be published on a project website. In addition, the artists will be introduced.

These results are a first step towards establishing a platform for women media artists. In the long term, it is planned to establish an interactive network for women in media art.

The Media Artists’ Lab will take place from 10-15 October 2022. The lab participants will be provided with infrastructure to develop one or more joint interdisciplinary media art projects. On 15 October 2022, the lab’s work will be presented at the Rottstr5 Kunsthallen. This presentation will be accompanied by a discussion event.

The jury consists of the organisers Christine Bödeker, Anastasija Delidova and Roberta de Lacerda Medina (Women in New Media Art) and Seta Guetsoyan (Rottstr5 Kunsthallen).

Women In New Media Art (WINMA) was founded in 2020 by female media artists from the North Rhine-Westphalia area to develop and promote contemporary art with new media by female artists. The intention is to build a network for women in media art.
More information about Women in New Media Art (WINMA)

The Rottstr5 Kunsthallen are a presentation venue for transdisciplinary art and cultural-political discourse. In addition to presenting professionals, the Rottstr5-Kunsthallen promote young artists.
More information about Rottstr5 Kunsthallen

Abb.: © Anastasija Delidova | © Dr. Martin Bluma

LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur | Westfälischer Kunstverein with Nina Fischer & Maroan el sani: “Cloud Alchemy – Art, Activism and splitting Communities”

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LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur | Westfälischer Kunstverein with Nina Fischer & Maroan el sani: “Cloud Alchemy – Art, Activism and splitting Communities”

ARTISTS: Nina Fischer, Maroan el sani

Media Art FundExhibition

A 6-channel-video-installation exhibited in LWL-Museum of Art and Culture within the scope of the cooperation exhibition „Nimmersatt? Thinking society without growth“ (November 27th 2021-February 27th 2022)

Nina Fischer (*1965, Emden)  & Maroan el Sani (*1966, Duisburg) frequently develop their video projects in workshops and employing performative scenes with actresses and actors. For the “Cloud Al­chemy” project, the artists have staged a simulation game in the rainwater collec­tion basin at Berlin’s abandoned Tempelhof Airport. Like the venue itself, the pro­tagonists find themselves in a transitional situation. Using texts by Japanese writer Toshiki Okada, a glowing cloud hovering over a village becomes the catalyst for an ominous social divide. This cloud forces people to decide whether they want to try radically new ways of living and types of housing and drastically curtail their con­sumption, or whether everything should remain as it is. The natural phenomenon is illustrative of a global problem, and represents differences and tensions. Fischer & el Sani pose key questions about the non-historical occurrence of division that pa­ralyses and undermines societies around the world: Do we feel called to immediate action? Or do we want to limit our perception to one of a mere natural phenomenon and not draw any consequences?

Co-produced by the LWL-Museum of Art and Culture.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW.


About the cooperative exhibition “Nimmersatt? Thinking society without growth” (November 27th 2021-February 27th 2022) of the Kunsthalle Münster, the LWL-Museum of Art and Culture and the Westfälischer Kunstverein:

At three venues in Münster a total of 25 international artists will present works in different media and raise the question of what might take the place of the existing economic and social models in the future. In three rounds of talks on the opening day (26.11.), experts and artists will speak about themes such as responsibility, abundance or capital. The almost 30 works of art on show make reference to current crises, social inequality, climate change, illness, war, refugee movements, xenophobia and the attendant developments. The works ask which other options exist apart from growth.
The exhibition will include video installations, drawings, photographs and sculptures, along with works in the public domain. In addition to a series of works on loan, the venues will feature several new productions that emerged in dialogue with the curators and are being shown here for the first time.
More information about the exhibition here.

Photography: Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani
Die Alchemie der Wolken -Art, ActivismandSplitting Communities, 6-Kanal-Videoinstallation, Trichterförmige-Holzkonstruktion, 2021 Production Still, 2021 © Fischer & elSani und VG Bild Kunst, Bonn 2021
Koproduziert durch das LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur.Gefördert durch das Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW.