Tipping point at Biennale EXPERIMENTA
08.02.2025 - 01.03.2025 La Bastille – Salle Dutrievoz,
Grenoble (F)
The installation Tipping Point by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh.
Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity.
Luminous Ether - Prototype in Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI
23.01.2025 - 29.03.2025 SWPK Gallery
New York (USA)
Luminous Ether by Aernoudt Jacobs is a work that renders the inaudible electromagnetic fields around and beyond Earth perceptible through voices generated by AI algorithms. It combines ancient methods and novel techniques to visualize electromagnetic waves through an installation of luminous foil speakers enhanced with robotics and AI. A prototype will be showcased at the SWPK Art Foundation in New York during the expo Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI.
The exhibition Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI is a platform for dialogue and exploration. Through this show, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines, and demonstrate the wide range of possibilities for using AI in art. As opposed to only focusing on the currently popular type of AI technology (i.e., “generative AI”), we want to present a more broad conceptual and aesthetic landscape of AI arts.
The exhibition features works by Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants, Petermfriess, Aernoudt Jacobs, Eunsu Kang, William Latham, Lev Manovich, and Koen Theys.
Lecture par Nature - Disqualifier l'univers
15.01.2025 Organised by Chroniques
Bibliothèque de Berre l'’Étang (F)
Disqualifier l'univers by Barthélémy Antoine-Loeff & Vanessa Bell is an immersive performance combining light, ice and magma, exploring the states of matter in the universe. Inspired by the demotion of Pluto into a dwarf planet, it questions the way we categorise and limit the world. Through ice volcanoes and floating mountains discovered on Pluto, Barthélémy Antoine Loeff and Vanessa Bell weave a narrative about New Worlds and exoplanets, echoing our own environmental disqualification.
Lecture par Nature - Nous entrons dans l’heure bleue comme en nous-mêmes
14.01.2025 - 01.02.2025 Organised by Chroniques
Médiathèque Berre-L'Étang (F)
This exhibition takes a unique look at water, highlighting its fragility: the birth of an artificial glacier to symbolise the fight against its disappearance, and an interactive experience based on the geopolitical issues surrounding Antarctica... A sensitive experience to help you grasp contemporary environmental issues. Three installations to see and experience: Tipping Point, La Manufacture poétique d'icebergs artificiels and Unités d'iceberg.
Exhibition by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff in collaboration with Vanessa Bell.
Aquaphoneia at 798 Art, Science Technology Biennale 2025: SYMPTOMATICA | HORIZON
11.01.2025 - 30.04.2025 798 CUBE
Beijing (ROC)
Aquaphoneia (2016) by Navid Navab
This alchemical installation features a floating horn that echoes the ghost of Edison’s machine. But unlike early recording, herding sound energy to etch pressure patterns in solid matter, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air.
Disembodied voices abandon their sources to cross the event horizon of the horn. Estranged, the schizo-phone falls into the narrow depths of the bell, squeezed into spatiotemporal infinity, calcinated, liquified and released. The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.
The Physical Mind at Chroniques Biennale
07.11.2024 - 19.01.2025 Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)
During a residency in Shanghai, Teun Vonk discovered by chance that it eased his stressed body and mind to apply physical pressure to his body. Contrary to what one may expect, the registration of sensory input does not improve in a heightened state of sensitivity, such as stress. Such a state serves the evolutionary purpose by filtering out irrelevant information, only focusing on the accurate response: fight or flight. When experiencing such a state, applying pressure to the body has a strong stress-relieving effect. Participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states
With The Physical Mind, Vonk seeks to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects. The participant lays down in between, is lifted up and gently squeezed between the two inflatable objects. The lifting creates an unstable feeling, a slightly stressful sensation that is directly contrasted with a secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects
Paradoxically, this forced physical stimulus reduces feelings anxiety and paradoxically stress and the flight- or fight-response disappear. The participant experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli, normalized alertness and a calm state of mind. The positive effects of this increased receptivity can continue for a few hours after the experience. The installation evokes empathy in bystanders who witness a participant undergo the experience.
1 Drop 1000 Years at Chroniques Biennale
07.11.2024 Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)
Homeostasis is a fundamental process for the balance of life. By allowing an organism to maintain an appropriate temperature according to the conditions in which it evolves, it is both a symbol of adaptation and durability.
The Global Conveyor Belt is a huge ocean stream called the thermohaline loop, it stirs up the waters of the five oceans and conveys heat on a global scale. Carried by the currents of this deep circulation loop, a drop of water crosses the globe in less than a thousand years and, in so doing, sculpts the world: with it travels nutrients, heat and animals, thus regulating the entire climate and ecosystems of our planet. We know for sure that this current has been slowing down abnormally for more than 200 years because of human activity, and if this deregulation keeps on going it could lead to a worldwide collapse of life through climate change. Water is the matter of life.
Seeking to highlight the finesse of our homeostatic system and the fragility of its balance, the artist proposes an artistic interpretation of these intimate and global currents that happens to be essential to the survival of our species and its environment.
Ad Hominem in Fin et début / Einde en begin
06.11.2024 - 30.03.2025 iMAL
Brussels (B)
Alex Verhaest’s work is focused on story, she is influenced by cinema expanded and a youth of video games. With each new story, Verhaest dives into what it means to make films in a multi-screen post-Nintendo society. Her narrative work speaks to the beautifully perverse paradox of the human incapability of connection in the age of communication. The basis of each project is a highly narrative script, existing or newly written, that she unfolds into a body of work. Verhaest’s highly pictorial style operates on the juxtaposition of film, animation and video art, threaded into a poetically uncanny world.
Ad Hominem, is an interactive philosophical choose-your-own-adventure film, based on Sofie Verraest’s doctoral thesis Eutopia Unbound, in which the player is cast in the role of Change. The player is invited to pick an answer to questions proposed by four different characters representing four distinct utopic ideas. Through a maze of historical quotes on collectivism, individualism, progressive thinking and conservatism, the player is guided towards an event, organized in honor of Change's arrival.
Threnody by I Solisti & Spectra
20.10.2024 Festival 20.21
STUK, Leuven (B)
With the death of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho the music world lost one of the great figureheads of her generation. Threnody -as the name suggests- is about this farewell. It originally started as a tribute to Saariaho who was also for Annelies Van Parys an important example as a leading lady composer. The piece thus inscribes itself is in a long tradition of Déplorations like the very famous “Nymphes des bois” (Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem) by Josquin Desprez. Van Parys used several quotes from his Déploration that on some instances in the piece is shimmering through like a distant and fragile echo of the past. While writing the piece, she got confronted with another, much closer loss, which reflects in the echo of the quote “vous avez perdu votre bon père”.
Next to Threnody of Van Parys, there is music of Saariaho, Venegas and Jacobs.
Co-production November Music
As part of Sounds Now
SHRINK 01995 - The Presence of Absence at Frankfurter Kunstverein
11.10.2024 - 02.03.2025 Frankfurter Kunstverein
Frankfurt (DE)
The exhibition The Presence of Absence will occupy the entire exhibition space of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, covering 1,000 square meters. Thematically, the exhibition revolves around humanity’s timeless engagement with the idea of transience and its forms of representation in art. The title refers to matter as a presence where traces of the living are inscribed. Vital energy is powerful yet fleeting. It leaves a mark, a trace that, captured in matter, can endure over time.
The exhibition will juxtapose exhibits spatially, presenting the abstract idea of a “presence of the absent” from both artistic and scientific perspectives within an expanded conceptual space. The curatorial narrative will venture as far as the astrophysical phenomenon of the black hole. Thoughts on the expanse and time, and the infinity of the universe lie beyond our human imagination, yet simultaneously raise the question of who we are. Our planet hovers somewhere between immensity and eternity. And for a fleeting moment, our own lives open a window.
The self experiences the wonder of reality through the senses of our bodies. These consist of the elements of exploded stars in the cosmos: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, or the carbon in our cells. In fleeting moments, we connect with eternity and give traces of being a material form. Art is one way to do that.
Curated by Franziska Nori, with scientific support from Anita Lavorano and Laura Perrone
SHRINK 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.