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ELEKTRA X PARADISE ART SPACE
FESTIVAL
< INSCAPE – Voyage to Hidden Landscape > : Media art festival
October 21 to 24, 2021
Paradise Art Space, Incheon, South Korea
ELEKTRA and Paradise City Art Space present the media art festival <INSCAPE - Voyage to Hidden Landscape> from October 21 to 24. Starting its ambitious journey from the first comprehensive solo show in Asia of Quebec artist Herman Kolgen, on view from September 17, 10 artists from Canada, Korea, Japan will then mark the live performances, Media Façade Premiere, and Artist Talk programming. To reach the widest audience possible and provide with the safest operation, each event will also accessible online only on YouTube for all viewers worldwide so that everyone can enjoy the festival anywhere. Herman Kolgen, Matthew Biederman, Lucas Paris, machìna and YEONO will show their creativity on the live performance stage at Paradise City’s club CHROMA on the 21st and 22nd. This will be followed by a Media Façade Premiere of spectacular scale by Herman Kolgen and Yiyun Kang on the 23rd alongside a live artists’ commentary session. On the 24th, an Artist Talk will be held with all the featured artists and also special guests: Shohei Fujimoto and KYOKA via video chat. Joined by Alain Thibault (Artistic director, ELEKTRA) and Jay Bang (Senior Curator, PAS) as curatorial panels, attendees will share a profound dialogue about their own practices for this program and its contextual connection to its theme: hidden landscape behind the post-pandemic reality.
ARTISTS' NOTES & ARTWORKS INFORMATION
HERMAN KOLGEN
BAKTERIUM
Installation
LED Panels, LED Array, Cube Frame, Audio 2 channels, Etc
3m x 3m x 3m
In collaboration with New York-based bio artist Tal Danino and Korean curator Jay Bang, Herman Kolgen explores an interweave of technological insight and social implication in the global pandemic with his artistic inspiration. The artist recontextualizes the swarming nature of Proteus Mirabilis bacteria that drives infection and transmission with the swarming intelligence algorithm and outbreak pattern of the Covid 19 pandemic.
LINK.C
1 ch video, String Quatet, Score: Philip Glass |
Link.c was commissioned by the Opéra de Bordeaux. Initially this Philip Glass score was written for a piece by Samuel Becket “Company” 1983. It tells the story of a man on the verge of death, alone in his apartment, thinking about all the important people in his life.
I had the idea to expand the subject and, contrary to what is said about large cities and social networks that make us individual, to evoke the invisible bonds that unite us all despite the appearance of isolation.
RETINA_NEW
Projection+Laser
LaserTracker, Video Projector, Audio 2 channels, Etc
2.5m x 1.5m
Using the human camera of our iris, traces of light are transmitted to our brain, where they are potentially encoded in our memory. We depend on light to interpret fragments of our world at every moment - how many images have our visual perception registered, processed, and compiled throughout our lives? What remains of these diffracted moments and ephemeral flashes that result from the constant bombing go photons and create a retinal amnesia filter of sight. Herman Kolgen explores the coexistence of the human and its intermediate territories - a double relationship that interrogates real, intimate, and exterior - in all of its fragility, permeability, and indeterminacy.
MATTHEW BIEDERMAN
INCERTITUDE
Performance
The term, Incertitude, is used as the title and a jumping-off point of multiple references for the conceptual underpinnings of an audio-visual performance work. From a variety of perspectives, the piece can be seen as a nod to the zeitgeist of our current (post) pandemic time, a direct reference to the tools and processes involved, and Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle. We are confronted today with uncertainty in almost every aspect of our lives in ways never before experienced, prompting a broad re-examination of how we interact and experience one another personally, communally and globally under ever shifting circumstances. From a physical perspective, initially utilizing analog processes and synthesizers, both visual and aural, and manipulated digitally, the work’s outcome takes the analog material (the signal or waveform) and translates it to the immaterial, the phenomenological, the experiential. Through the instability of the analog systems incorporated, each time the work is performed, it will be different.
LUCAS PARIS
Sustained Light Chain
Video, Stereo sound, digital synthesis network, game engine, stage lighting
10 minutes
The AV performance Sustained Light Chain is a digital environment of complexity fusing textures of morphing light, signal networks, chain reactions and virtual botany into a real time audiovisual instrument.
The technique behind the work was inspired by ecosystem activity, exponentiality, mycelium, permaculture, bio-design and the ways we are navigating contemporary choices in a context of climate change. It also stems from the efforts of creating a virtual environment and its rules with a conscious effort to move the use of game engines beyond adversity, conflict, attack, evaluation and reward, and towards care, reflection, attention and perception. The work embraces fluidity between virtual and real, and between human technicality and nature.
machìna
Mirror, the compass point
Quadraphonic, synthesizer, software, 30 minutes
machìna’s 3rd full release is an exploration in finding direction and finding solitude. The album was inspired by an emotional investigation into the notion of oneself. During times when the whole world is looking in on itself, music needs to provide a response. In electronic music, there is so much potential for finding direction, drawn out by sounds that have not been before, along paths not taken. Looking for direction, made me step back and ask the simple question of ‘why am I here?’ how does where I we are impact our emotional sensibility, how does our physical environment influence the directions we choose to follow?
YEONO
Real vs Unreal
Visual and sound performance, 30 minutes
Why are we so passionate about technological advancement? Is it the selfishness of humans who seek only convenience? Or is it for the sustainable happiness and development of humankind? The technological development of humankind is progressing exponentially, and we are seeing the emergence of AI that transcends human capabilities. Indeed, many creators have foreseen this era in various ways for quite some time through their work. Furthermore, even before the pandemic, in many parts of our real life, we are living or experiencing with AI. Even in areas, people may not be aware of. However, living in an era of transcendent AI, are we ready to embrace them as human beings? If they can think and act for themselves, what is the difference between them and us humans? Do we only want unilateral obedience? Can we be sure that it is a better human life? As an artist, I have been contemplating the process of simply using such technology and embracing it...that is, the process of creating works and works through AI technology and real-time communication. Of course, I myself have not yet been to... No, I will have to think endlessly about communicating with them in this world that has arrived sooner than I thought. However, I am convinced that the emergence of a new object is not just a fear, it can be the belief that if mutual understanding and trust are based on each other, it will always lead to a good way.
YIYUN KANG
NO MOTHER NATURE
Large-scale façade mapping
For our own sake, humans use metaphors to objectify reality and to condense complex concepts. In this process, we seek general and emotional metaphors to dramatise and popularise the concepts and these metaphors tend to conform to a wide range of cultures and mythical images. As Latour argued, fictive or speculative concepts are created through this process, and these rhetorical devices consciously and unconsciously influence our way of thinking. We should not overlook that the consequences of this can be more dangerous as these terms are not derived from empirical evidence or knowledge and thus they can distort reality.
My work aims to tackle the term 'Mother Nature'. Humanity has been anthropomorphizing nature by calling it "mother" for a myriad of times. The Western dichotomy further solidified this symbolic structure. Nature was forced into the dualistic model with notions of nature–culture, wilderness–civilisation, man-woman. As a result of the Cartesian separation and other dualisms associated with a patriarchal view, nature has been standardised as a gentle and loving female. ‘Gaia’, an example of inheriting this language of dominance, reinforces the hierarchical traditions of patriarchal dualism that continuously objectifies women and nature.
With the support of the Bureau du Québec à Séoul
