fabric | rblg

Note: 

fabric | ch had the pleasure to present our recent works at the invitation of Swissnex China, during an online panel along with Ms. Xi Li, curator and director of the Aiiiii Art Center in Shanghai.

This was in particular the occasion to introduce Platform of Future-Past, a new installation and environmental device realized for the exhibition at How Art Center (Shanghai) 

The panel was moderated by Cissy Sun, Head of Art-Science, Swissnex in China.

Via Swissnex China

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Art x Science Dialogues: Curation In The Context of Artificial Intelligence

Join the upcoming Art x Science Dialogue, exploring the topic of curation and artificial intelligence with Mr. Patrick Keller, Architect and Co-founder of fabric | ch and Ms. Xi Li, Curator and Director of Aiiiii Art Center.

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When

Atomized (curatorial) Functioning, by fabric | ch

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PROGRAM

ART X SCIENCE DIALOGUES

Note:

The exhibition Beneath the Skin, Between the Machines just opened at HOW Art Museum (Hao Art Gallery) and fabric | ch was keen to be invited to create a large installation for the show, also intented to be used during a symposium that will be entirely part of the exhibition (panels and talks as part of the installation therefore). The exhibition will be open between January 15 - April 24 2022 in Shanghai.

Along with a selection of chinese and international artists, curator Liaoliao Fu asked us to develop a proposal based on a former architectural device, Public Platform of Future-Past, which in itself was inspired by an older installation of ours... Heterochrony.

This new work, entitled Platform of Future-Past, deals with the temporal oddity that can be produced and induced by the recording, accumulation and storage of monitoring data, which contributes to leaving partial traces of "reality", functioning as spectres of the past.

We are proud to present this work along artists such as Hito Steyerl, Geumhyung Jeong, Lu Yang, Jon Rafman, Forensic Architecture, Lynn Hershman Leeson and Harun Farocki.

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Last but not least and somehow a "sign of the times", this is the first exhibition in which we are participating and whose main financial backers are a blockchain and crypto-finance company, as well as a NFT platform. Both based in China.

More information about the symposium will be published.

Via Pro Helvetia

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Curatorial Statement

By Fu Liaoliao and the curatorial team

"Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.” When Paul Valéry wrote this down, he might not foresee that human beings – a biological organism – would indeed be incorporated into machinery at such a profound level in a highly informationized and computerized time and space. In a sense, it is just as what Marx predicted: a conscious connection of machine^[1]. Today, machine is no longer confined to any material form; instead, it presents itself in the forms of data, coding and algorithm – virtually everything that is “operable”, “calculable” and “thinkable”. Ever since the idea of cyborg emerges, the man-machine relation has always been intertwined with our imagination, vision and fear of the past, present and future.

In a sense, machine represents a projection of human beings. We human beings transfer ideas of slavery and freedom to other beings, namely a machine that could replace human beings as technical entities or tools. Opposite (and similar, in a sense,) to the “embodiment” of machine, organic beings such as human beings are hurrying to move towards “disembodiment”. Everything pertinent to our body and behavior can be captured and calculated as data. In the meantime, the social system that human beings have created never stops absorbing new technologies. During the process of trial and error, the difference and fortuity accompanying the “new” are taken in and internalized by the system. “Every accident, every impulse, every error is productive (of the social system),”^[2] and hence is predictable and calculable. Within such a system, differences tend to be obfuscated and erased, but meanwhile due to highly professional complexities embedded in different disciplines/fields, genuine interdisciplinary communication is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible.

As a result, technologies today are highly centralized, homogenized, sophisticated and commonized. They penetrate deeply into our skin, but beyond knowing, sensing and thinking. On the one hand, the exhibition probes into the reconfiguration of man by technologies through what’s “beneath the skin”; and on the other, encourages people to rethink the position and situation we’re in under this context through what’s “between the machines”. As an art institute located at Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, one of the most important hi-tech parks in China, HOW Art Museum intends to carve out an open rather than enclosed field through the exhibition, inviting the public to immerse themselves and ponder upon the questions such as “How people touch machines?”, “What the machines think of us?” and “Where to position art and its practice in the face of the overwhelming presence of technology and the intricate technological reality?”

Departing from these issues, the exhibition presents a selection of recent works of Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Simon Denny, Harun Farocki, Nicolás Lamas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lu Yang, Lam Pok Yin, David OReilly, Pakui Hardware, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Shi Zheng and Geumhyung Jeong. In the meantime, it intends to set up a “panel installation”, specially created by fabric | ch for this exhibition, trying to offer a space and occasion for decentralized observation and participation in the above discussions. Conversations and actions are to be activated as well as captured, observed and archived at the same time.

^[1] Karl Marx, “Fragment on Machines”, Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy

^[2] Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems

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Schedule

Duration: January 15-April 24, 2022
Artists: Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Simon Denny, fabric | ch, Harun Farocki, Geumhyung Jeong, Nicolás Lamas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lu Yang, Lam Pok Yin, David OReilly, Pakui Hardware, Jon Rafman, Hito Steyerl, Shi Zheng
Curator: Fu Liaoliao
Organizer: HOW Art Museum, Shanghai
Lead Sponsor: APENFT Foundation
Swiss participation is supported by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council.
(Swiss speakers and performers appearing in the educational events will be updated soon.)

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Work by fabric | ch

HOW Art Museum has invited Lausanne-based artist group fabric | ch to set up a “panel installation” based on their former project “Public Platform of Future Past” and adapted to the museum space, fostering insightful communication among practitioners from different fields and the audiences.

“Platform of Future-Past” is a temporary environmental device that consists in a twenty meters long walkway, or rather an observation deck, almost archaeological: a platform that overlooks an exhibition space and that, paradoxically, directly links its entrance to its exit. It thus offers the possibility of crossing this space without really entering it and of becoming its observer, as from archaeological observation decks. The platform opens- up contrasting atmospheres and offers affordances or potential uses on the ground.

The peculiarity of the work consists thus in the fact that it generates a dual perception and a potential temporal disruption, which leads to the title of the work, Platform of Future-Past: if the present time of the exhibition space and its visitors is, in fact, the “archeology” to be observed from the platform, and hence a potential “past,” then the present time of the walkway could be understood as a possible “future” viewed from the ground…

“Platform of Future-Past” is equipped in three zones with environmental monitoring devices. The sensors record as much data as possible over time, generated by the continuously changing conditions, presences and uses in the exhibition space. The data is then stored on Platform Future-Past’s servers and replayed in a loop on its computers. It is a “recorded moment”, “frozen” on the data servers, that could potentially replay itself forever or is waiting for someone to reactivate it. A “data center” on the deck, with its set of interfaces and visualizations screens, lets the visitors-observers follow the ongoing process of recording.

The work could be seen as an architectural proposal built on the idea of massive data production from our environment. Every second, our world produces massive amounts of data, stored “forever” in remote data centers, like old gas bubbles trapped in millennial ice.

As such, the project is attempting to introduce doubt about its true nature: would it be possible, in fact, that what is observed from the platform is already a present recorded from the past? A phantom situation? A present regenerated from the data recorded during a scientific experiment that was left abandoned? Or perhaps replayed by the machine itself ? Could it already, in fact, be running on a loop for years?

Platform of Future-Past, Scaffolding, projection screens, sensors, data storage, data flows, plywood panels, textile partitions

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Platform of Future-Past (2022)

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Beneath the Skin, Between the Machines (exhibition, 01.22 - 04.22)

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Platform of Future-Past was realized with the support of Pro Helvetia.

Note: We had the chance at fabric | ch to initiate a new research / project last Spring, in collaboration with the Nam June Paik Art Center (warning: long loading time!) in South Korea and ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne (HES-SO).

In this context, we're having the opportunity to work with some of the amazing material of the museum's collection and archive. It contains some of Paik's major works (single & multi-channel video in particular), that have been difficult to see since the passing of the artist, and most of its archives.

The museum indeed has the largest collection Paik's video, as well as some important installations and a large primary and secondary material about the production of the artworks themselves. The research undertaken is looking to give access to this material in new ways and forms, out of the physical museum and through digital means. For this task, we're planning to further dig into the archives and look at works that were realized, or not, during the Fluxus period ("Symphony for 20 Rooms", "Exhibition of Music, Electronic Television").

The aim of this research is to work on automated curating and digital display (likely AR) of exhibitions at anybody's place (home, appartment, office, warehouse, "garage", etc.), resonating with the concept of "Viewing Rooms" and therefore the title of this first phase of the research: (Re-)Viewing Paik. We are seeking forms of personal exhibitions, for specific spatial configurations and in which the artworks organize their presence themselves, according to an objective understanding of the space.  

To achieve these research objectives, we'll work with fabric | ch's software and ongoing project that allows us to automate the creation of environments, based on sensors inputs: Atomized (*) Functioning (pdf), which is based on customizable/scriptable algorithmic and AI procedures. In the specific case of (Re-)Viewing Paik, it is used for curation and exhibition design purposes, therefore Atomized (curatorial) Functioning (pdf). Like we already did for this exhibition at HeK, in 2019.

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By fabric | ch

Below are early tests with a digital transposition/reconstruction of TV Buddha (literally), the zen media buddha in between a glitched and mirrored digital environment containing other artworks (video and photographies of the famous 1963 exhibition: Exposition of Music - Electronic Television).

This early phase of the work will see us work with the pieces selected by Nam June Paik Art Center curator and archivst Sans Ae Park. These pieces were selected mainly to test different artwork types and durations into their new display setup.

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Note: an interview about the implications of AI in art and the work of fabric | ch in particular, between Nathalie Bachand (writer & independant curator), Christophe Guignard and myself (both fabric | ch). The exchange happened in the context of a publication in the art magazine Espace, it was fruitful and we had the opportunity to develop on recent projects, like the "Atomized" serie of architectural works that will continue to evolve, as well as our monographic exhibition at Kunshalle Éphémère, entitled Environmental Devices (1997 - 2017).

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By fabric | ch

Note: it is with great pleasure and interest that I read recently one of Philippe Rahm's last publication, "Essais climatiques" (published in French, by Editions B2), which consists in fact in a collection of articles published in the past 10+ years in various magazines, journals and exhibition catalogs. It is certainly less developed than the even more recent book, "L'histoire naturelle de l'architecture" (ed. Pavillon de l'Arsenal, 2020), but nonetheless an excellent and brief introduction to his thinking and work.

Philippe Rahm's call for the "return" of an "objective architecture", climatic and free of narrative issues, is of great interest. Especially at a time when we need to reduce our CO2 emissions and will need to reach energy objectives of slenderness. The historical reading of the postmodern era (in architecture), in relation to oil, vaccines and antibiotics is also really valuable in this context, when we are all looking to move forward this time in cultural history.

I also had the good surprise, and joy, to see the text "L'âge de la deuxième augmentation" finally published! It was written by Philippe back in 2009 probably, about the works of fabric | ch at the time, when we were preparing a publication that finally never came out... Though this text will also be part of a monographic publication that is expected to be finalized and self-published in 2022.

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By Patrick Keller