META.MORF 2010 – New.Brave.World!
Biennial for art and technology
Trondheim October 7 – November 7, 2010
TEKS has since 2006 been working on establishing a new biennial for arts and technology in Norway.
We are happy to tell that we´re close to realizing the event for the very first time!
At October 7, 2010, the new biennial will open in Trondheim!
The development and use of new technologies happens at an increasingly rapid pace, and bio technology, nano technology and new communications- and computer technologies entails examples of new tools for artists, tools that can open new worlds of ideas as well as making previously not manageable ideas realizable.
New scientific insights often implies philosophical and existential problems and questions. Artistic and scientific research are continuously part of challenging and changing our perspectives. The artist as a directly and an indirectly conveyor and interpreter of new knowledge and research, plays a crucial role for society’s abilty for both having a proper insight, as well as being able to maintain an adequate discourse, regarding the use of new technologies and scientific advancements.
Meta.Morf will for a broader audience, present artists, musicians, writers and researchers with projects and performances that in different ways reflects humankind’s position and possibilities in our globalized time.
The biennial includes art exhibitions at Trondheim Art Museum, Trøndelag Centre for Contemporary Art and Babel – Showroom for art, as well as several conferences, workshops, film screenings and concerts through out the whole month!
TEKS has for eight years in a row, since 2002, arranged an annual festival for arts and technology called Trondheim Matchmaking. The festival acted as an arena for presentations of innovative ideas, music- and art projects, a place to share and develop technological and artistic competence and resources. Meta.Morf is the festival’s successor and the new biennial will continue and further develop the traditions build during the Trondheim Matchmaking festival series.
Trondheim 2010
Espen Gangvik
Director TEKS
Meta.Morf 2010 – New.Brave.World!
Humankind has left almost nothing on this planet untouched. Sometimes as a side effect, but often as a conscious interference from trying to shape the world according to our dreams and fears. Mastering and designing all aspects of life is closely related to the development of science and technology. New technologies have become tools for trying to change nature from a state of randomness into a controllable world of perfection. Ideas we recognize amongst other from a Modernistic practice.
The logic and politics of the pure as a basic principle for understanding and shaping life has been at work on all levels of society over the last century, and it has had amazing, world changing consequences. New models for perceiving and understanding the world and ourselves has been introduced, giving possibilities for new specialized knowledge domains to emerge. However, we are today experiencing how limited some of these ideas and their according lifestyles can be. We just have to look at the many examples of mistakenly bio politics and the devastating effects it has had on the environment whether it applies to natural resources, urban planning, population control, agricultural and refined food production, or the issue of diversity in general.
The experiences we´ve made from these experiments has taught us that the processes that sustain and shape our lives cannot be controlled top down: they work bottom up, continuously becoming more complex. Even modest activities on a micro scale interacts and coalesce into the macro systems governing our tangible world.
We have during the last decade, within different creative practices, the sciences and the educational sector, seen several initiatives that foster trans- and interdisciplinary collaborations. New alliances and new ways of collaborations between the arts and the science field have created new areas of research and a new ‘practice’. This explorative playfulness is characterized by hybridity and cross-fertilization that as a result constitute qualitative factors for creating and understanding interactivity in its widest sense.
The need to understand how humans and objects interact with one another (and thus recreate each other) is critical with regards to the dire issues of our age, such as the question of sustainability, the environment, material resources, food production, energy resources, migration problematics and so forth. Contemporary artistic practice has seeped into all these aspects of our modern life, and this biennial seeks to further reflect and explore this practice.
Meta.Morf 2010 acknowledges the bankruptcy of our exploitive lifestyle. There is an urgent need to create new concepts and models that can cope with the contemporary world, a world which is based on contradictions, instability and disorder. These factors has given us the impression of an uncontrollable, fuzzy and incomprehensible world since we’re not used to look for coherence in what as first sight can be seen as chaotically behaving patterns.
Meta.Morf 2010 wishes to explore the contradictory and unstable features of Life and Art and make use of them as productive impulses and tools for artistic and scientific projects.
Meta.Morf 2010 positions itself as a trans-disciplinary platform for artistic practices that presents, debate and investigates new models and concepts for how sustainable structures can emerge from complex and ‘messy’ interactions. New, brave and global perspectives; New.Brave.World!
Trondheim 2009
Alex Adriaansens
Espen Gangvik
Main curators:
Alex Adriaansens, director V2_, Rotterdam
Espen Gangvik, director TEKS
Co-curators:
Conferences
Angela Schmitt, media theorist, Berlin,
Jeremy Welsh, professor Bergen Art Academy
Roy Ascott, president Planetary Collegium
Concerts
Arnfinn Killingtveit, producer TEKS
Film
Svein Inge Sæter, director Cinemateket
Jan Wilhelm Andersen, independent
Torbjørn Grav, independent
Ola Renolen, director Kosmorama
Gisle Frøysland, director PIKSEL
Reference Board,
(established 2007)
Jeremy Welsh, professor, Bergen Art Academy
Jemima Rellie, vise president, Comms & public progr. Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles
Clive Kellner, director, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
Alex Adriaansens, director, V2 and DEAF, Rotterdam
Zhang Ga, curator, Media Art China, The National Museum of Modern Art, Beijing
Trondheim Kunstmuseum – Gråmølna
Merete Hovdenakk, Dep. director
Babel – Visningsrom for Kunst
Marit Flåtter, Director
Trøndelag Senter for Samtidskunst
Madeleine Park, Director
Dokkhuset, concert venue
Rockheim
Arvid Esperø, Director
Ivar Håkon Eikje, Project manager museum, exhibition and music disciplines
Lars Gunnar Eggen, Project manager information technologies
Kosmorama
Ola Renolen, Director
Cinemateket
Svein Inge Sæter, Director
PNEK – Production Network for Electronic Arts
Per Platou, Coordinator
PIKSEL
Gisle Frøysland, Director
V2_
Alex Adriaansens, Director
Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth
Roy Ascott, President
- The City of Trondheim
- Arts Council Norway
- Sør-Trøndelag County Council
- KORO
- Torstein Erbos Gavefond
- Stiftelsen Fritt Ord
- NTNU
Espen Gangvik, Director/ Curator
Catherine Kahn, Event manager
Wilhelm Andersen, Booking manager
Arnfinn Killingtveit, Producer
Daniel Richards, Producer
TEKS
PB 2227 Sentrum
7412 Trondheim
Norway
Phone: +47 73 48 80 30
E-mail: teks[AT]teks.no
