Online Exhibition
For those interested in the body, digital technologies, space and art, Dyscopia 2.0 happens ths evening and tomorrow. Program: https://www.dyscorpia.com/home-2
We recall Lefebvre’s comment in Production of Space that art shows new, counterspaces. In Marliène Oliver’s work in Dyscorpia 1 these appeared in the body as seen through the slicing planes or MRI scans. Through VR, Oliver made them Habitable Spaces (recall Space and Culture 3 edited by Ian Roderick). In relation this, Barad demands that we think critically about the relations between planes and volumes that emerge in these technologies.
We also recall McLuhan’s notice to the arts that they displace existing relations with technologies in order to explore new technological dimensions of human experience and activity.
Dyscorpia stretches both the perceptual sensorium and provides new, provocative, erotic and desiring spaces in which new biotechnochnologies animate a populace of nanorobots, and nanoobjects. Operating beneath the scale of classical critique and politics, this space of experimentation and technofutures is also the site of the fabrication of new desires and chains.
However, Gallery 5, which is host to the LIVE DIGITAL section of Dyscorpia 2:1, has postponed the performances for this coming Thursday and Friday 18th and 19th June. The alternate date for the online event is now scheduled for Saturday, August 1st, 2020. The curators comment:
“This active moment of pause in our programming is in support of the Black Lives Matter protests and all other discussion around surveillance, police brutality, and supporting voices outside of our own. As social media platforms shift into a space to educate, activate and empower their users, it has never been more important to take a step back and give space for alternate narratives. Because the work was set to be viewed via Facebook and Instagram Live, the Dyscorpia 2:1 team would like to stand in solidarity and show support by not presenting work at this time on these platforms…”
As Arts and Culture workers it is our obligation to do better, so our voices can be used to create programming that better reflects the diversity of the people and perspectives of folks around us.”
In the context of not only Covid-19 but surveillance capitalism and agressive policing, an example of the works is ‘Untouchable Spaces‘ by Alicja Habisiak-Matczak:
In response to the question in the Dyscorpia 2.1 call “What does it mean to live with an invisible danger that we ourselves may unknowingly pass on to others?”, Alicja Habisiak-Matczak made a series of charcoal sketches entitled Untouchable Spaces in which she depicts spaces of airports, train stations, underground staircases which normally are extremely crowded and noisy, full of constant motion. Suddenly all these corridors, halls and staircases became still and empty. The rails, knobs, which we normally touched almost unconsciously, now more then ever become a symbol of invisible danger, in a way they became untouchable… Alicja set her drawings in motion to render the idea of constant movement, changing realities, the multiplicity of impulses, contradicting news coming to us from all directions.
2020 Dyscorpia 2.1 Program
REMOTE EXHIBITION
18TH JUNE 2020
LAUNCH OF
Gallery 1 Stilled Digital
Gallery 2 Animated Digital
Gallery 5 PART 1 Live Digital curated by Stephanie Patsula
19TH JUNE 2020
LAUNCH OF
Gallery 3 Interactive Digital
Gallery 4 3D Digital
Gallery 5 PART 2 Live Digital curated by Stephanie Patsula
Info: Marilène Oliver, Art and the Design, University of Alberta