Luke's practice incorporates an eclectic collage approach to film, experimental writing, photography, installation and performance. Phone: http://www.lukependrell.com/ Address: Royal College of Art, Garden House, Dorando Cl, White City, London, W12 7FN
Audio piece for Clouds & Tracks based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard.
... more Audio piece for Clouds & Tracks based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard.
“Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.”
Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations.
Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of pro... more Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of promised, online utopias has been subsumed by sprawling, banal, online malls populated by bored and angry ghosts, omnipresent, omniscient, so it would seem, yet dislocated and trapped. Trapped by the sheer mundanity of it all, trapped by the repetitive micro tasks we must perform daily, hourly, on trains, on buses, as we eat, before we sleep, when we wake,toxic click bait, cat memes, selfies and ‘fake’ news,likers, haters, unexpected items in the bagging area, do not reply. To protect your privacy some pictures in this message were not downloaded. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Edited by James Trafford, Robin Mackay, and Luke Pendrell. Documenting a roundtable on the ramifi... more Edited by James Trafford, Robin Mackay, and Luke Pendrell. Documenting a roundtable on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics, this discussion ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design
In this project, Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven have banded together to create thi... more In this project, Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven have banded together to create this booklet that dissects a collection of damaged and questionable artefacts around this disappearing land and suggests the possibility of spaces both real and metaphoric. The clean layout and minimal text allows room for these examinations to really sink in and be considered by the viewer. This booklet is the first in a series of three
Fantome Dansant, an audio collage, percolates through the dank ether that connects the clamour of... more Fantome Dansant, an audio collage, percolates through the dank ether that connects the clamour of Derrida's spectral Paris with mid-century EVP experiments in Croydon and the fractured noise of Living with the Archive. Time slips in and out of phenomena
Commissioned art work for Open Sky Gallery. Moving image installation situated on the LED public ... more Commissioned art work for Open Sky Gallery. Moving image installation situated on the LED public screen facia of the ICC tower in Hong Kong. May-December 2016 Video, 2015, 2’00”, ISEA2016 HONG KONG OPEN SKY PROJECT “Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity.” Cuboniks, Laboria, Xenofeminism: A politics for alienation, 2015. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present new modalities, ruptures in our understanding of time, new paradigms, variant ontologies, recursive action, indefinite progression, endless reiteration. High frequency trading algorithms, twitter feeds, data flow, meme generators, click streams; modernity hums with relentless aetheric data coursing through the veins of our cities
Digital film 4:15, colour. Collage film Collaboration with Creepshow ( Stephen Mallinder, Benge, ... more Digital film 4:15, colour. Collage film Collaboration with Creepshow ( Stephen Mallinder, Benge, Phil Winter) & and John Grant "a high-speed chase through a busted cathode ray tube, a bullet train ride along the rails of pop art's underbelly..." Stephen Mallinder A hyper collage of machinic desires. A collision of technology and the supernatural. An AI attempting to assimilate and reconcile Crowley, Anger and Kubelka. A dromological stichomancy, seeking and making configurations and invocations from the haunted detritus of an accelerated culture
Submerged TerritoriesexploresDoggerlanda once inhabited stretch of land connecting Britain and co... more Submerged TerritoriesexploresDoggerlanda once inhabited stretch of land connecting Britain and continental Europe that now lies beneath the North Sea. A long lost, inaccessible, undersea realm for many years thought to be mythical, which, due to advances in submarine technology, is beginning once more to be explored and interrogated. A disembodied voice describes our attempts to explore and interpret this lost prehistoric territory accompanied by a slideshow of images that seem at first to propose scenes of the occupants, their culture and environs. As the narration progresses the slides relentlessly recombine and reconfigure and the account appears to fragment and digress, ranging across subjects as diverse as archeology, cosmology, technology and superstition. In the tensions and serendipity that ensue, we begin to glimpse the fragility, inconsistency and at times dark comedy that our attempts to make sense of the world expose
Audio collage, The Concrete acid echo tapes resurface buried signals, emitted by spectres now cas... more Audio collage, The Concrete acid echo tapes resurface buried signals, emitted by spectres now cast out. The brutal dance echoes like sonic plattenbau. Undergirds the Real with a fluid solvent
This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges fr... more This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges from contemporary art’s relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design. From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices. Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is inseparable from its sociotechnica...
A series of live performances, moving image and audio works based on the text above. The evening ... more A series of live performances, moving image and audio works based on the text above. The evening was a curated event live streamed across the internet featuring various artists. The event orientated around the winter solstice, ran form sundown on the night of the 20th to sunrise on the 21st of December 2020
Audio piece derived based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard. “Aleister... more Audio piece derived based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard. “Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.” Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations. Clouds and Tracks’ first iteration collates sound works conceived and realised since the spring of 2020. Contributions chart participants’ thoughts, feelings, driftings and wanderings since the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, providing a sonic snapshot of the strange and unsettling times we are living through
At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. ... more At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. This sunken realm of salt marshes and rivers became a site of myth and legend for the fisherman who dredged up the debris of distant eras from the seabed below. Today, despite analysis of this residue and the development of new technologies to map and chart the terrain, any picture of the world that existed there remains fragmented. Derived from a kind of bastard archaeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts, Doggerland, considers the possibilities presented by such a space. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured; territories that simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps the future. Doggerland is the first part of the Submerged Territories series, a project by Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven
Moving image installation derived from a bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable... more Moving image installation derived from a bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts. Submerged Territories is the second iteration of the Doggerland project. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured. The project was presented as part of the ‘Possible/Probable Worlds’ exhibition, a curated part of the London College of Communication's London Design Festival show - Uncertainty Playground
"The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the 'bad' infinity of the animated GIF... more "The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the 'bad' infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap." – Mark Fisher We live our lives in a duality of speed and stasis. One in which our working lives seem to be ever more dominated by micro-tasks and feverish networked bureaucracies, counterpointed with a cultural gridlock akin to the frozen time of the animated gif. In neoliberal consumer capitalism the future has stalled in the pastiche of retromania. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and the harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present a new modality. This is a rupture in our understanding of time, a new paradigm, a variant ontology, and a recursive action that is unlike Hegel’s indefinite progression as indefinite reiteration. In Bad Infinity, Pendrell and Trafford juxtapose a jarring imaginary of the underlying temporalities of the neo-liberal unconscious. Weaving together the just out-of-reach, yet that which is constructive of contemporary subjectivity; from the fantasies of data farms and psychotically impassioned global artificial intelligence structures, to the fractures ghosting through our navigation of the confederacy of phantoms stuck in time.
To celebrate 40 years since the revolution of Punk in 1976, we are excited to announce that this ... more To celebrate 40 years since the revolution of Punk in 1976, we are excited to announce that this year’s Lavish Big Screen will be curated by some iconic legends of the Punk and Post-Punk era. Friday will include a selection of conversations, video clips, and music byViv Albertine (Slits) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols). Saturday night will include a selection of inspired video and music by Stephen Mallinder(Caberet Voltaire), with an appearance by his new band:Wrangler. Sunday will be hosted by the Rebel Dread Don Lettsto including some preview clips from his most recent films and a DJ set from Jet Letts. All intertwined with the sounds of our resident DJ Harry Kand put together by the programmer Louise Colbourne. Join us for an exquisitely cultivated collection of films, visual art and live performances that embody the icons and ideologies of the Punk subculture.
If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative tim... more If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative times. Our rational, technological world is populated with more phantoms than ever. We are paralysed in a frozen now, smothered by the massed murmurings of the past, stalked by the angry revenants of forgotten radicals and the awful twins of a future, that is at once inconceivable and yetinevitable. In this, final, session of the current Speculative Tate seminars, we take a spectral turn to explore haunting, the figure of the ghost and hyperstitional forms of temporality. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. From avatars and chatbots to bump maps and page curls, the digital world is populated with a host of skeuomorphic phantoms clothed in shroud sails of the dust scratches and imperfections of lost surface patination and the process noise of unfulfilled modernism. Whether these persistent incursions are under...
Time and Space died yesterday. There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and... more Time and Space died yesterday. There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and unverifiable artefacts. A large quantity of faded 35mm slides. Careful examination of this debris began to suggest to us the possibility of notional, obscured territories, spaces both real and imaginary. Previously unimaginable topographies that seemed to simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps even the future. What we discovered is neither linear in its historical mapping, nor ordered. ABOVE US THE WAVES Beneath the North Sea, about 60 or 70 miles from the nearest land, lies the Dogger Bank. This large, underwater plateau, a region larger than the United Kingdom, was lost to the sea over a period of 11,000 years. It has been described as one of the most enigmatic archaeological landscapes of northwestern Europe. How are we to investigate or interpret this extraordinary, but largely inaccessible landscape? Stories of a mythical and submerged land have long been told in ...
Audio piece for Clouds & Tracks based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard.
... more Audio piece for Clouds & Tracks based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard.
“Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.”
Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations.
Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of pro... more Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of promised, online utopias has been subsumed by sprawling, banal, online malls populated by bored and angry ghosts, omnipresent, omniscient, so it would seem, yet dislocated and trapped. Trapped by the sheer mundanity of it all, trapped by the repetitive micro tasks we must perform daily, hourly, on trains, on buses, as we eat, before we sleep, when we wake,toxic click bait, cat memes, selfies and ‘fake’ news,likers, haters, unexpected items in the bagging area, do not reply. To protect your privacy some pictures in this message were not downloaded. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Edited by James Trafford, Robin Mackay, and Luke Pendrell. Documenting a roundtable on the ramifi... more Edited by James Trafford, Robin Mackay, and Luke Pendrell. Documenting a roundtable on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics, this discussion ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design
In this project, Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven have banded together to create thi... more In this project, Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven have banded together to create this booklet that dissects a collection of damaged and questionable artefacts around this disappearing land and suggests the possibility of spaces both real and metaphoric. The clean layout and minimal text allows room for these examinations to really sink in and be considered by the viewer. This booklet is the first in a series of three
Fantome Dansant, an audio collage, percolates through the dank ether that connects the clamour of... more Fantome Dansant, an audio collage, percolates through the dank ether that connects the clamour of Derrida's spectral Paris with mid-century EVP experiments in Croydon and the fractured noise of Living with the Archive. Time slips in and out of phenomena
Commissioned art work for Open Sky Gallery. Moving image installation situated on the LED public ... more Commissioned art work for Open Sky Gallery. Moving image installation situated on the LED public screen facia of the ICC tower in Hong Kong. May-December 2016 Video, 2015, 2’00”, ISEA2016 HONG KONG OPEN SKY PROJECT “Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity.” Cuboniks, Laboria, Xenofeminism: A politics for alienation, 2015. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present new modalities, ruptures in our understanding of time, new paradigms, variant ontologies, recursive action, indefinite progression, endless reiteration. High frequency trading algorithms, twitter feeds, data flow, meme generators, click streams; modernity hums with relentless aetheric data coursing through the veins of our cities
Digital film 4:15, colour. Collage film Collaboration with Creepshow ( Stephen Mallinder, Benge, ... more Digital film 4:15, colour. Collage film Collaboration with Creepshow ( Stephen Mallinder, Benge, Phil Winter) & and John Grant "a high-speed chase through a busted cathode ray tube, a bullet train ride along the rails of pop art's underbelly..." Stephen Mallinder A hyper collage of machinic desires. A collision of technology and the supernatural. An AI attempting to assimilate and reconcile Crowley, Anger and Kubelka. A dromological stichomancy, seeking and making configurations and invocations from the haunted detritus of an accelerated culture
Submerged TerritoriesexploresDoggerlanda once inhabited stretch of land connecting Britain and co... more Submerged TerritoriesexploresDoggerlanda once inhabited stretch of land connecting Britain and continental Europe that now lies beneath the North Sea. A long lost, inaccessible, undersea realm for many years thought to be mythical, which, due to advances in submarine technology, is beginning once more to be explored and interrogated. A disembodied voice describes our attempts to explore and interpret this lost prehistoric territory accompanied by a slideshow of images that seem at first to propose scenes of the occupants, their culture and environs. As the narration progresses the slides relentlessly recombine and reconfigure and the account appears to fragment and digress, ranging across subjects as diverse as archeology, cosmology, technology and superstition. In the tensions and serendipity that ensue, we begin to glimpse the fragility, inconsistency and at times dark comedy that our attempts to make sense of the world expose
Audio collage, The Concrete acid echo tapes resurface buried signals, emitted by spectres now cas... more Audio collage, The Concrete acid echo tapes resurface buried signals, emitted by spectres now cast out. The brutal dance echoes like sonic plattenbau. Undergirds the Real with a fluid solvent
This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges fr... more This series of interventions on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics ranges from contemporary art’s relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design. From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices. Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is inseparable from its sociotechnica...
A series of live performances, moving image and audio works based on the text above. The evening ... more A series of live performances, moving image and audio works based on the text above. The evening was a curated event live streamed across the internet featuring various artists. The event orientated around the winter solstice, ran form sundown on the night of the 20th to sunrise on the 21st of December 2020
Audio piece derived based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard. “Aleister... more Audio piece derived based on the collaborative collage works of Pendrell & Pollard. “Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.” Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations. Clouds and Tracks’ first iteration collates sound works conceived and realised since the spring of 2020. Contributions chart participants’ thoughts, feelings, driftings and wanderings since the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, providing a sonic snapshot of the strange and unsettling times we are living through
At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. ... more At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. This sunken realm of salt marshes and rivers became a site of myth and legend for the fisherman who dredged up the debris of distant eras from the seabed below. Today, despite analysis of this residue and the development of new technologies to map and chart the terrain, any picture of the world that existed there remains fragmented. Derived from a kind of bastard archaeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts, Doggerland, considers the possibilities presented by such a space. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured; territories that simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps the future. Doggerland is the first part of the Submerged Territories series, a project by Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven
Moving image installation derived from a bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable... more Moving image installation derived from a bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts. Submerged Territories is the second iteration of the Doggerland project. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured. The project was presented as part of the ‘Possible/Probable Worlds’ exhibition, a curated part of the London College of Communication's London Design Festival show - Uncertainty Playground
"The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the 'bad' infinity of the animated GIF... more "The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the 'bad' infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap." – Mark Fisher We live our lives in a duality of speed and stasis. One in which our working lives seem to be ever more dominated by micro-tasks and feverish networked bureaucracies, counterpointed with a cultural gridlock akin to the frozen time of the animated gif. In neoliberal consumer capitalism the future has stalled in the pastiche of retromania. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and the harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present a new modality. This is a rupture in our understanding of time, a new paradigm, a variant ontology, and a recursive action that is unlike Hegel’s indefinite progression as indefinite reiteration. In Bad Infinity, Pendrell and Trafford juxtapose a jarring imaginary of the underlying temporalities of the neo-liberal unconscious. Weaving together the just out-of-reach, yet that which is constructive of contemporary subjectivity; from the fantasies of data farms and psychotically impassioned global artificial intelligence structures, to the fractures ghosting through our navigation of the confederacy of phantoms stuck in time.
To celebrate 40 years since the revolution of Punk in 1976, we are excited to announce that this ... more To celebrate 40 years since the revolution of Punk in 1976, we are excited to announce that this year’s Lavish Big Screen will be curated by some iconic legends of the Punk and Post-Punk era. Friday will include a selection of conversations, video clips, and music byViv Albertine (Slits) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols). Saturday night will include a selection of inspired video and music by Stephen Mallinder(Caberet Voltaire), with an appearance by his new band:Wrangler. Sunday will be hosted by the Rebel Dread Don Lettsto including some preview clips from his most recent films and a DJ set from Jet Letts. All intertwined with the sounds of our resident DJ Harry Kand put together by the programmer Louise Colbourne. Join us for an exquisitely cultivated collection of films, visual art and live performances that embody the icons and ideologies of the Punk subculture.
If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative tim... more If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative times. Our rational, technological world is populated with more phantoms than ever. We are paralysed in a frozen now, smothered by the massed murmurings of the past, stalked by the angry revenants of forgotten radicals and the awful twins of a future, that is at once inconceivable and yetinevitable. In this, final, session of the current Speculative Tate seminars, we take a spectral turn to explore haunting, the figure of the ghost and hyperstitional forms of temporality. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. From avatars and chatbots to bump maps and page curls, the digital world is populated with a host of skeuomorphic phantoms clothed in shroud sails of the dust scratches and imperfections of lost surface patination and the process noise of unfulfilled modernism. Whether these persistent incursions are under...
Time and Space died yesterday. There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and... more Time and Space died yesterday. There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and unverifiable artefacts. A large quantity of faded 35mm slides. Careful examination of this debris began to suggest to us the possibility of notional, obscured territories, spaces both real and imaginary. Previously unimaginable topographies that seemed to simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps even the future. What we discovered is neither linear in its historical mapping, nor ordered. ABOVE US THE WAVES Beneath the North Sea, about 60 or 70 miles from the nearest land, lies the Dogger Bank. This large, underwater plateau, a region larger than the United Kingdom, was lost to the sea over a period of 11,000 years. It has been described as one of the most enigmatic archaeological landscapes of northwestern Europe. How are we to investigate or interpret this extraordinary, but largely inaccessible landscape? Stories of a mythical and submerged land have long been told in ...
Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of pro... more Fugue States: The universe is permeated with the odour of kerosene. The euphoric hyperbole of promised, online utopias has been subsumed by sprawling, banal, online malls populated by bored and angry ghosts, omnipresent, omniscient, so it would seem, yet dislocated and trapped. Trapped by the sheer mundanity of it all, trapped by the repetitive micro tasks we must perform daily, hourly, on trains, on buses, as we eat, before we sleep, when we wake,toxic click bait, cat memes, selfies and ‘fake’ news,likers, haters, unexpected items in the bagging area, do not reply. To protect your privacy some pictures in this message were not downloaded. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realis... more Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics, this discussion ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design. From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices. Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a recon gured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realis... more Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics, this discussion ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a recon gured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
CONTENTS
Introduction
AMANDA BEECH
Art and its 'Science'
BENEDICT SINGLETON
Speculative Design
TOM TREVATT
The Cosmic Address
Discussion
NICK SRNICEK
Accelerationism - Epistemic, Economic, Political
JAMES TRAFFORD
Towards a Speculative Rationalism
ALEX WILLIAMS
The Politics of Abstraction
RAY BRASSIER
Prometheanism and Real Abstraction
Discussion
MARK FISHER
Practical Eliminativism: Getting Out of the Face, Again
ROBIN MACKAY
Neo-Thalassa: A Fantasia on a Fantasia
BEN WOODARD
Uncomfortable Aesthetics
Discussion
SPECULATIVE AESTHETICS
Eds. Robin Mackay, Luke Pendrell, James Trafford
20 October 2014 Paperback 148x210mm, 140pp.
ISBN 978-0-9575295-7-1
Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realis... more Documenting and expanding upon a ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on the ramifications of Speculative Realism for aesthetics, this discussion ranges from contemporary art's relation to the aesthetic, to accelerationism and abstraction, logic and design.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. ... more At the bottom of the North Sea lies a vast plain that once connected Britain to mainland Europe. This sunken realm of salt marshes and rivers became a site of myth and legend for the fisherman who dredged up the debris of distant eras from the seabed below. Today, despite analysis of this residue and the development of new technologies to map and chart the terrain, any picture of the world that existed there remains fragmented.
Derived from a kind of bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts, Doggerland considers the possibilities presented by such a space. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured; territories that simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps the future.
Doggerland is the first part of the Submerged Territories series, a project by Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven.
Dogs and Dice is Martin’s first book and is the product of a collaboration between Cut It Out and... more Dogs and Dice is Martin’s first book and is the product of a collaboration between Cut It Out and JohnFrumPress.
Paperback 36 pages with fold out poster. Dimensions B5 / 175mm x 250mm. Limited Edition of 1200.
Design Ben Branagan.
Words Luke Pendrell
& Martin O’Neill.
Photography John Reynolds.
Published by Cut It Out Publishing.
ISBN 9780955316821
Review by John L. Walters in Eye magazine (eye69).
Review by Adrian Shaughnessy
in Varoom No 8.
Shortlisted for the V&A’s Illustrated book Award. London 2008.
Shortlisted for the Book Art Award. Illustrative Berlin 2009.
THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE – A RATHER LARGE WEAPON, ISSUE 4
Edited by Maria Fusco (2009)
£8.00
The ... more THE HAPPY HYPOCRITE – A RATHER LARGE WEAPON, ISSUE 4
Edited by Maria Fusco (2009)
£8.00
The Happy Hypocrite is a biannual journal led by artists’ writings. Informed by a lineage of modern experimental and avant-garde magazines, such as: Bananas, Documents, The Fox, Merlin and Tracks, this journal aspires to unpack the methodology of such key journals, whilst providing a brand new approach to art writing. It will provide a greatly needed testing ground for new writing and research-based projects, somewhere for artists, writers and theorists to express experimental ideas that might not otherwise be realised or published.
In this issue new writing, text and images, a blackboard, an interview, surveillance photographs, heroes, and a blasted copy of the Canadian Indian Act of 1867.
The Happy Hypocrite – A Rather Large Weapon, issue 4; Fusco, Maria (ed.); 2009; Contributors: Von Schlegall, Mark; Thurston, Nick; Soobramanien, Natasha; Sawatsky, Rachelle; Pendrell, Luke; Oldfield Ford, Laura; Lynch, Sean; Longo, Robert; Lomax, Yve; Kane, Daniel; Iles, Anthony; Hopkins, Candice; Derkson, Jeff; Buckley, Bernadette; The Happy Hypocrite; Artworks/hybrid ephemera; Assemblage; Offset printing; Full colour; 96 pages; Soft cover; Design: APFEL (A Practice for Everyday Life); 167 x 230 mm; Edition of 2,000 copies; ISBN: 978 1 906012 15 1
This is the blurb from the Speculative Aesthetics Roundtable organised by myself and James Traffo... more This is the blurb from the Speculative Aesthetics Roundtable organised by myself and James Trafford that forms the basis of the Speculative Aesthetics book published by Urbanomic
Opening a research project designed for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics (broadly construed), and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’).
Participants: Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Robin Mackay, Reza Negerastani, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek. James Trafford, Alex Williams, Ben Woodard, Tom Trevatt, Amanda Beech.
As space is limited, attendance is by invitation only. Proceedings of the round table discussion will be transcribed and made available on-site, and will form a part of a future publication. Contact office@urbanomic.com for further information.
We think that it is necessary to develop a serious understanding of the ramifications for aesthetics that bypasses the cultural faddishness of OOO, whilst also facing up squarely to arguments that such realism indexes a kind of scientism that may ultimately come undone, because it leaves open no space for aesthetics (or, potentially, politics). Given that much of this emerging strand of realism is concerned with the impugning, and potential displacement, of human experience, we appear to require novel modes of thinking aesthetics that refuse to hypostatize human experience as the master-category through which the world is to be interpreted.
To this end, the speculative dimension regarding aesthetic thought may well involve a productive tension between the levels of phenomenal experience, metaphysical speculation and scientific description, whilst, nonetheless, refusing a return to naive realism, reified subjectivity, or (new) materialisms. For example, in terms of the aesthetic dimension of politics, we take it that hype, hyperstition, SF, cosmism and so on, are as important as the critical-analytical dimension of scientific rationality.
Speculative Tate
Tate Britain
Wednesday 15 October 2014 – Friday 6 February 2015.
This semina... more Speculative Tate
Tate Britain
Wednesday 15 October 2014 – Friday 6 February 2015.
This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Shaw and is a follow up to Late at Tate:The Real Thing 2010(Urbanomics)
All seminars will be held in the Duffield Room at Tate Britain 16.00-18.00.
These will be FREE to attend but booking is essential and will be available online soon
Speculative Realism is a term that is used to describe an approach that attempts to consider art, politics, nature and thought beyond the confines of human finitude. The term is often ascribed both to a conference of the same name held at Goldsmiths in 2007, and a disparate set of thinkers. This centered on the work of philosophers Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and Graham Harman.
Often referred to as a movement, Speculative Realism is perhaps best used to describe an ongoing, disparate, attempt to construct radical and emancipatory trajectories of thought, art, and political praxis. These include accelerationist politics; reconsidering the role of art and design; the disruption of human experience and access to the “real”; innovative engagement with mathematics, logic, neuroscience and technology.
These emerging positions, still in a state flux can be seen rapidly evolving on-line in heavily viewed and active discussion forums. The resultant work has been rapidly taken up in cultural theory and contemporary art and curation.
The Speculative Tate research series is a collaboration between Tate Britain and Speculative Aesthetics Research Project to explore the question “What bearing does Speculative Realism have upon aesthetics in theory and practice?”
It is an attempt to further investigate and develop the emergent field of Speculative Aesthetics, with particular attention to: the socio-historical relationship between art and design; the relationship between speculative aesthetics and design; the conceptual and pragmatic role of artistic experience; the navigational potential of aesthetics. To explore the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today.
In order to explore and represent the dynamic flux and fluidity of these contemporary discussions and introduce them to a wider audience without compromising them
this series will be in the format of open informal ‘curated’ discussion forums lead by internationally recognised leaders in the field including Mark Fisher, Amy Ireland, Reza Negarastani, Luke Pendrell, Patricia Reed, Benedict Singleton, Alex Williams, James Trafford and Pete Wolfendale. Findings and works generated during the series will form the basis of special Speculative Aesthetics Late at Tate event on Friday 6 February.
Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with
the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with 'Speculative Realism')
Events in this series
Research Seminars
Exit or Escape?
Seminar with Patricia Reed, Benedict Singleton & Alex Williams
Wednesday 15 October 15 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Freedom and Re-engineering Creativity
Seminar with Helen Hester, Pete Wolfendale & Robin Mackay
Wednesday 12 November 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Radical Geometries
Seminar with Reza Negarastani, & James Trafford (further speakers t.b.c)
Wednesday 10 December 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Haunters and the Haunted
Seminar with Mark Fisher, Amy Ireland & Luke Pendrell.
Wednesday 14 January 2015, 16.00 – 18.00
Event
Late at Tate Britain: Speculative Tate
Event: A night of audio Visual experimentation that expands the findings generated
during the Speculative Tate research series
Friday 6 February 2015, 18.00-21.30
This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Sha... more This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Shaw and is a follow up to Late at Tate: The Real Thing 2010 (Urbanomics) Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’)
This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Sha... more This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Shaw and is a follow up to Late at Tate: The Real Thing 2010 (Urbanomic).
Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’).
There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and unverifiable artefacts. A lar... more There came into our possession a jumbled collection of damaged and unverifiable artefacts. A large quantity of faded 35mm slides.
Careful examination of this debris began to suggest to us the possibility of notional, obscured territories, spaces both real and imaginary. Previously unimaginable topographies that seemed to simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps even the future.
(vimeo password: ghostlight)
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close... more (vimeo password: ghostlight)
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one. Détournement is the opposite of quotation...” 1
"The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap.” (Fisher)
‘The flat eclecticism of the New Aesthetic and the Post-Internet generation—an endlessly multifarious universe that comes prequantified into discrete and isomorphic tumblr thumbnails.’ 2
Ignis Fatuus conjures ghostly echoes and disturbing undercurrents in contemporary life, a dark parallax to the perception of social media as a benign creative space of opportunity and friendship.
Text is collaged with a staccato montage of subliminal images and cinematic fragments; the hyper-detritus of consumer capitalism over scored with an unsettling soundtrack of glitch and rupture.
The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. Immateriality and spectrality are axiomatic to the digital realms we inhabit. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
Ignis Fatuus was developed as research for The Haunters and the Haunted segment of
Speculative Tate series at Tate Britain.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/eventseries/speculative-tate
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-and-lectures/haunters-and-haunted
First screened in the UK at Late at Tate in the Clore auditorium on May 1st 2015.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/performance-and-music/late-tate-may-2015
First shown in the US as part of the 'Co-locating the Material and the Immaterial' panel at
&Now 2015: Blast Radius! at CalArts, Los Angeles on March 27th 2015.
andnow2015a.sched.org/event/fd54944b9fb94cc40d4827066eae52b0#.VUj3R2RViko
1The Society of the Spectacle, Debord, G, 1967
2Speculative Aesthetics, (Mackay, Pendrell and Trafford), 2014
If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative tim... more If, as Derrida supposes, each era creates its own ghosts, we live in extraordinarily creative times. Our rational, technological world is populated with more phantoms than ever. We are paralysed in a frozen now, smothered by the massed murmurings of the past, stalked by the angry revenants of forgotten radicals and the awful twins of a future, that is at once inconceivable and yet inevitable. In this, final, session of the current Speculative Tate seminars, we take a spectral turn to explore haunting, the figure of the ghost and hyperstitional forms of temporality. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. From avatars and chatbots to bump maps and page curls, the digital world is populated with a host of skeuomorphic phantoms clothed in shroud sails of the dust scratches and imperfections of lost surface patination and the process noise of unfulfilled modernism. Whether these persistent incursions are understood in religious, ontological, scientific or epistemological terms, they taunt us by flouting our schemata. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
The session will consist of three short papers leaving ample time for discussion and debate. Speakers Amy Ireland (via Skype), Anastrophic Modernism: Occult Time and the Production of Radical Novelty Mark Fisher, Spectres of Lost Futures Luke Pendrell: Ignis Fatuus
Ghost Light : Ignis Fatuus
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to ... more Ghost Light : Ignis Fatuus
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one. Détournement is the opposite of quotation...” 1 "The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap.” (Fisher) ‘The flat eclecticism of the New Aesthetic and the Post-Internet generation—an endlessly multifarious universe that comes prequantified into discrete and isomorphic tumblr thumbnails.’ 2 Ignis Fatuus conjures ghostly echoes and disturbing undercurrents in contemporary life, a dark parallax to the perception of social media as a benign creative space of opportunity and friendship. Text is collaged with a staccato montage of subliminal images and cinematic fragments; the hyper-detritus of consumer capitalism over scored with an unsettling soundtrack of glitch and rupture. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. Immateriality and spectrality are axiomatic to the digital realms we inhabit. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself. 1The Society of the Spectacle, Debord, G, 1967 2Speculative Aesthetics, (Mackay, Pendrell and Trafford), 2014 Ignis Fatuus was developed as part of the 'Haunters and the Haunted' segment of Speculative Tate series at Tate Britain. tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/eventseries/speculative-tate tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-and-lectures/haunters-and-haunted First screened in the UK at Late at Tate Britain in the Clore auditorium on May 1st 2015 as part of the 'DISRUPT' evening in the SPECULATE series. tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/performance-and-music/late-tate-may-2015 First shown in the US as part of the 'Co-locating the Material and the Immaterial' panel at &Now 2015: Blast Radius! at CalArts, Los Angeles on March 27th 2015. andnow2015a.sched.org/event/fd54944b9fb94cc40d4827066eae52b0#.VUj3R2RViko Ghost light will be showing at ISEA2015: The 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art isea2015.org/schedule/ from the 9th to the 18th of August, in the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Vancouver.
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploi... more “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one. Détournement is the opposite of quotation...” (Debord 1967) Ignis Fatuus takes Debord’s imperative at its word by appropriating and reworking the text of his seminal 1967 text ‘The society of The Spectacle’. The reconfigured text is collaged with a staccato monochromatic montage of subliminal images and cinematic fragments; the hyper-detritus of consumer capitalism over scored with an unsettling soundtrack of glitch and rupture. “The flat eclecticism of the New Aesthetic and the Post-Internet generation—an endlessly multifarious universe that comes prequantified into discrete and isomorphic tumblr thumbnails.” (Mackay, Pendrell and Trafford, Speculative Aesthetics, 2014) The uncannily prescient spectre of Debord haunts the footage throughout. A malign revenant, its scabrous critique as caustically damning of contemporary interactive media as it once was of film and television. More than just Derridean word games or mournful ‘Hauntological’ nostalgia for lost radicalism, Ignis Fatuus conjures ghostly echoes and disturbing undercurrents in contemporary life, a dark parallax to the perception of social media as a benign creative space of opportunity and friendship. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. Immateriality and spectrality are axiomatic to the digital realms we inhabit. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
25th May - 10th June
Featuring:
Luke Pendrell: 25th – 27th May 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 25th M... more 25th May - 10th June Featuring:
Luke Pendrell: 25th – 27th May 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 25th May) Daisy Parris: 1st – 3rd June 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 1st June) Ben Branagan: 8th – 10th June 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 8th June)
In an unconstrained and site specific approach, The Chopping Block has invited three artists to independently inhabit the gallery – being given three days to produce a short term, immersive & site specific display.
Through our proposed model in which time becomes limited, artists are asked to respond to the physicality of the space with complete freedom and autonomy. Exploring models of practice in a time constrained format, the resulting exhibitions will look towards the experimental and unpredictable through a temporary format.
The Chopping Block is therefore using ‘Vacant Seasons’ as an open source model, in which artists will not be limited to work in any specific format or media. The short shows will encourage a flexible and adaptive nature, whilst also leaning towards more alternative approaches of display.
“Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing ... more “Ours is a world in vertigo. It is a world that swarms with technological mediation, interlacing our daily lives with abstraction, virtuality, and complexity.”*
The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present new modalities, ruptures in our understanding of time, new paradigms, variant ontologies, recursive action, indefinite progression, endless reiteration. High frequency trading algorithms, twitter feeds, data flow, meme generators, click streams; modernity hums with relentless aetheric data coursing through the veins of our cities.
* Cuboniks, Laboria, “Xenofeminism: A politics for alienation”
The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap. – Mark Fisher
We live our lives in a duality of speed and stasis. One in which our working lives seem to be ever more dominated by micro-tasks and feverish networked bureaucracies, counterpointed with a cultural gridlock akin to the frozen time of the animated gif. In neoliberal consumer capitalism the future has stalled in the pastiche of retromania. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and the harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present a new modality. This is a rupture in our understanding of time, a new paradigm, a variant ontology, and a recursive action that is unlike Hegel’s indefinite progression as indefinite reiteration.
In Bad Infinity, Pendrell and Trafford juxtapose a jarring imaginary of the underlying temporalities of the neo-liberal unconscious. Weaving together the just out-of-reach, yet that which is constructive of contemporary subjectivity; from the fantasies of data farms and psychotically impassioned global artificial intelligence structures, to the fractures ghosting through our navigation of the confederacy of phantoms stuck in time.
"Digital Revolution is the most comprehensive presentation of digital creativity ever to be stage... more "Digital Revolution is the most comprehensive presentation of digital creativity ever to be staged in the UK
This immersive and interactive exhibition brings together for the first time a range of artists, filmmakers, architects, designers, musicians and game developers, all pushing the boundaries of their fields using digital media. It also looks at the dynamic developments in the areas of creative coding and DIY culture and the exciting creative possibilities offered by augmented reality, artificial intelligence, wearable technologies and 3-D printing."
Organized by Jason Eppink, Associate Curator of Digital Media
For this new commissioned work, ... more Organized by Jason Eppink, Associate Curator of Digital Media
For this new commissioned work, artist Aram Bartholl (Berlin, b. 1972) has embedded an inconspicuous, slot-loading DVD burner into the side of the Museum, available to the public 24 hours a day. Visitors who find the Dead Drop and insert a blank DVD-R will receive a digital art exhibition, a collection of media, or other featured content curated by Bartholl or selected artists. DVD Dead Drop imbues the act of data transfer with a tangibility left behind in a world of cloud computing and appstores, using a medium—the digital versatile disc—that is quickly becoming another artifact of the past.
DVD Dead Drop is a continuation of Bartholl’s series of offline file-sharing networks in public spaces. The original Dead Drops cemented unauthorized USB thumb drives into walls, buildings, and curbs, encouraging a “read-write” information ecosystem. Here the “read-only” DVD Dead Drop serves as an automated platform for dispensing digital culture to the public at any time, day or night.
Because the installation consists of fragile hardware with moving parts exposed to the elements, regular technology failure is inevitable. The Museum works to keep the hardware operational, but it makes no guarantee for a successful DVD burn.
Made possible by the Harpo Foundation, with support from the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, New York.
VOLUMES
HOT (August 16–September 21, 2012) »
INSERT DISC (September 22–October 29, 2012) »
Selected CD-ROM art of the 90s on DVD
Curated by Aram Bartholl & Robert Sakrowski (curatingyoutube.net)
The second DVD Dead Drop show, INSERT DISC, features several classic art CD-ROMs from the mid-1990s on DVD. While the web was still in its infancy, artists from a wide range of fields explored the possibilities of interactivity and multimedia on CD-ROMs, fancy new silver discs that held an unbelievable 650 megabytes of data. Today most of these pre-web multimedia works are no longer accessible because they require legacy operating systems and software to run. INSERT DISC offers the full experience of a cutting edge, mid-90s operating system packed with stunning multimedia art. Each DVD comes with a safe-to-install virtualized Ubuntu Linux operating system running an emulated Mac OS 7.6. In addition to the historic CD-ROM art, special features include historic browsers, link lists, and more, guaranteeing a true 1995 computer experience!
Selected works:
Anti Rom (1995)
SASS Collective: Andy Allenson, Joel Baumann, Andy Cameron, Rob LeQuesne, Luke Pendrell, Sophie Pendrell, Andy Polaine, Anthony Rogers, Nik Roope, Tom Roope, Joe Stephenson, Jason Tame
Cyberflesh Girlmonster (1995)
Linda Dement
Manuscript (1994)
Eric Lanz
User Unfriendly Interface (1997)
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski
Special Features:
Period browsers and bookmarks, ‘Einblicke ins Internet’ offline Internet CD-ROM, and more
Credits:
Andreas Broeckmann, Sandra Fauconnier, nbk Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe, Transmediale archive
Let's Play Max Payne (October 30–December 6, 2012) »
Home Entertainment (December 7, 2012–February 7, 2013) »
BEST OF Fach & Asendorf Gallery (February 8–March 18, 2013) »
Vertical Video (March 19–May 14, 2013) »
KATSU.DATA.BOMBING (May 15–June 25, 2013) »
VIRII (June 26–August 15, 2013) »
The Flux Priority (August 16–October 8, 2013) »
The Last DVD (October 9–November 26, 2013) »
An exhibition inspired by the mission of the original community of visionaries at CAT (the Centre... more An exhibition inspired by the mission of the original community of visionaries at CAT (the Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynlleth) to create and test radical models for the future.
Please join us for the opening of Future Postcards, curated by Joanna Wright and Melanie Carvalho, at Oriel Davies, Saturday 3rd August, 3-5pm.
There will be a short talk "Human beings and energy" by Paul Allen FRSA from the Centre of Alternative Technology, research director of the Zero Carbon Britain report, at 3.30pm.
The original community of visionaries at CAT set out to create and test radical models for the future. Inspired by their mission, Wright and Carvalho invited a group of artists to send their postcards from the future.
Joanna Wright is Zero Carbon Britain artist-in-residence at CAT, supported by Arts Council of Wales; Melanie Carvalho is an artist based in London
Contributing artists are:
Alex Ashcroft, Nick Bartoletti, Gareth Bell-Jones, Michelle Bhatia, Melanie Carvalho, Wendy Chapple, Maria Chevska, Lenka Clayton, Otto Clayton, Andrew Cranston, Alex Cook, Jane Cook, Alexandra Cook, Tara Darby, Rhonda Drakeford, Howard Dyke, Ashley Elliott, Nilbar Gures, Ellie Greig, Mike Fleming, Anna Louise Hale, Phil Hession, Andrew Humber, Alice Ibsen, Jill, Philip Jones, Margarete Kerfoote, Izzie Klingels, Andrew Kotting, Eden Kotting, John Maclean, Duncan Marquiss, Ian McMillan, Martin McGrath, Henna Nadeem, Christian Petersen, Playpaint, Luke Pendrell, Conny Prantera, Amanda Prantera, Clare Price, Toby Shuall, Cat Stevens, Ben Sansbury, Mark Titchner, Maya Wild, Helen Woolston, Joanna Wright
Gillian Ayres, Simon Bill, Melanie Carvalho, Clem Crosby, Ian Davenport, Howard Dyke, Sophie Eade... more Gillian Ayres, Simon Bill, Melanie Carvalho, Clem Crosby, Ian Davenport, Howard Dyke, Sophie Eade, Russell Eade, Katrine Hjelde, JohnFrumPress, Neil Kilby, Scott King, Peter Lanyon, Rich Littler, Yo Okada, Daniel Pasteiner, Clare Price, Ben Sansbury, Peter Saville.
“I use words to demolish the status of words… to that extent verbal consciousness about painting will float right out of your mind.” Patrick Heron.
“I might work on a painting for a month, but it has to look like I painted it in a minute.” Wilhelm De Kooning.
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” Edgar Degas.
‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ is curated by painter Clare Price and brings together work by 20 different artists. Much of the work is unapologetically expressive in its aesthetic or attitude. It has an explosive almost ‘punk’ feel characterized by its energy and spontaneity.
The works of Peter Lanyon exemplify an enviable freedom and almost careless brilliance that is a model in stance for the rest of the show.
The exhibition includes well-established practitioners and some who are less well known. Each artist makes work that is infused with an uninhibited looseness of expression, in which the individuality of the mark-making is of paramount importance. From the clean subversive images of Scott King to the exuberant and colourful painting by Gillian Ayres, each of the works is visceral and highly charged.
The exhibition is sponsored by Smoke&Mirrors and is accompanied by a catalogue designed by Ben Branagan with an introductory essay by Jonathan Griffin.
The inaugural exhibition, publish and be damned is a public library consisting of over 300 intern... more The inaugural exhibition, publish and be damned is a public library consisting of over 300 international publications, assembled since 2004 by the British curators Emily Pethick (Director The Showroom, London), Kit Hammonds (Curator, South London Gallery), and Sarah McCrory (curator).
This archive of contemporary DIY fanzines is probably the largest of its kind in the world, containing fanzines such as: Ziggy, Zowie, Blondiak, Dark Star, Useless; magazines such as Control, Pablo internacional, Inventory; critical journals like Dot Dot Dot, Copenhagen Free University/Infopool, Metronome, Anarchitektur, Fucking Good Art; plus glossy periodicals such as CRASH!, Re-Magazine and video and cassette editions including Audio Theory and Audio Arts; radio plays and Independent Record Labels such as Another Album and Junior Aspirin.
These fanzines, all of which operate more or less outside the commercial and institutional mainstream, have been brought together in this archive to document their individual and experimental approach in production and distribution. The library comprises self-published works by authors, musicians and theorists as well as artists such as Jeremy Deller, Scott King, Pablo Bronstein, Raymond Pettibon, Spartacus Chetwynd, Nils Norman, Stephan Dillemuth, Stephan Willats, Cathy Lomax, Eleanor Brown, Aline Bouvy, Sonia Dermience, Meeuw Muzak and many others. publish and be damned is also the title of this year’s 4th international fair of self-publishers happening in London this summer.
The Antirom CD-rom was presented as a protest against "ill-conceived point-and-click 3D interface... more The Antirom CD-rom was presented as a protest against "ill-conceived point-and-click 3D interfaces" grafted onto re-purposed old content - video, text, images, audio and so on - and repackaged as multimedia. The CD-ROM was self-published and funded by the New Collaborations grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain. 1,000 CDs were pressed and given away free at a gallery launch at the Cameraworks Gallery in Bethnal Green London in March 1994
Anti-rom was intended as a critique of the poverty of contemporary multimedia. In particular it w... more Anti-rom was intended as a critique of the poverty of contemporary multimedia. In particular it was intended as a critique of those CD-ROMs which failed to go beyond traditional linear form. London, October 1994 - February 1995
Uploads
Videos by Luke Pendrell
https://cloudsandtracks.net/
“Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.”
Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations.
Papers by Luke Pendrell
https://cloudsandtracks.net/
“Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson: The Order of the Dawn Man is a theory-fiction narrative and series of fictioned collaborative collages/paintings “authored” by Aleister Crowley and Charles Dawson (creator of Piltdown Man) but realised or “fictioned” by Pendrell and Pollard. The collaborative collages/paintings the duo have produced imagine the Piltdown Man skull as a hyperstitional portal which activates a supersensible realm “unthought”. Significantly the text was written after the paintings were produced, allowing for the materials and process to guide the text into intuitive and unchartered new worlds.”
Clouds and Tracks is an audio project initiated by John Hughes, Volker Eichelmann and Jenna Collins that invites artists and writers to share sonic works and experiments highlighting joint preoccupations.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a recon gured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a recon gured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
CONTENTS
Introduction
AMANDA BEECH
Art and its 'Science'
BENEDICT SINGLETON
Speculative Design
TOM TREVATT
The Cosmic Address
Discussion
NICK SRNICEK
Accelerationism - Epistemic, Economic, Political
JAMES TRAFFORD
Towards a Speculative Rationalism
ALEX WILLIAMS
The Politics of Abstraction
RAY BRASSIER
Prometheanism and Real Abstraction
Discussion
MARK FISHER
Practical Eliminativism: Getting Out of the Face, Again
ROBIN MACKAY
Neo-Thalassa: A Fantasia on a Fantasia
BEN WOODARD
Uncomfortable Aesthetics
Discussion
SPECULATIVE AESTHETICS
Eds. Robin Mackay, Luke Pendrell, James Trafford
20 October 2014 Paperback 148x210mm, 140pp.
ISBN 978-0-9575295-7-1
http://www.urbanomic.com/pub_speculativeaesthetics.php
From varied perspectives of philosophy, art and design, participants examine the new technological mediations between the human sensorium and the massive planetary media network within which it now exists, and consider how the aesthetic enables new modes of knowledge by processing sensory data through symbolic formalisms and technological devices.
Speculative Aesthetics anticipates the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today, experimentally employing techniques of modelling, formalisation, and presentation so as to simultaneously engineer new domains of experience and map them through a reconfigured aesthetics that is indissociable from sociotechnical conditions.
Derived from a kind of bastard archeology of damaged, unwanted and unverifiable artefacts, Doggerland considers the possibilities presented by such a space. An examination of the liminal, the notional and the obscured; territories that simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps the future.
Doggerland is the first part of the Submerged Territories series, a project by Ben Branagan, Luke Pendrell and Eva Verhoeven.
(2012; 32 pages; ISBN 978-0-9562286-2-8)
Paperback 36 pages with fold out poster. Dimensions B5 / 175mm x 250mm. Limited Edition of 1200.
Design Ben Branagan.
Words Luke Pendrell
& Martin O’Neill.
Photography John Reynolds.
Published by Cut It Out Publishing.
ISBN 9780955316821
Review by John L. Walters in Eye magazine (eye69).
Review by Adrian Shaughnessy
in Varoom No 8.
Shortlisted for the V&A’s Illustrated book Award. London 2008.
Shortlisted for the Book Art Award. Illustrative Berlin 2009.
Edited by Maria Fusco (2009)
£8.00
The Happy Hypocrite is a biannual journal led by artists’ writings. Informed by a lineage of modern experimental and avant-garde magazines, such as: Bananas, Documents, The Fox, Merlin and Tracks, this journal aspires to unpack the methodology of such key journals, whilst providing a brand new approach to art writing. It will provide a greatly needed testing ground for new writing and research-based projects, somewhere for artists, writers and theorists to express experimental ideas that might not otherwise be realised or published.
In this issue new writing, text and images, a blackboard, an interview, surveillance photographs, heroes, and a blasted copy of the Canadian Indian Act of 1867.
The Happy Hypocrite – A Rather Large Weapon, issue 4; Fusco, Maria (ed.); 2009; Contributors: Von Schlegall, Mark; Thurston, Nick; Soobramanien, Natasha; Sawatsky, Rachelle; Pendrell, Luke; Oldfield Ford, Laura; Lynch, Sean; Longo, Robert; Lomax, Yve; Kane, Daniel; Iles, Anthony; Hopkins, Candice; Derkson, Jeff; Buckley, Bernadette; The Happy Hypocrite; Artworks/hybrid ephemera; Assemblage; Offset printing; Full colour; 96 pages; Soft cover; Design: APFEL (A Practice for Everyday Life); 167 x 230 mm; Edition of 2,000 copies; ISBN: 978 1 906012 15 1
Opening a research project designed for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics (broadly construed), and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’).
Participants: Ray Brassier, Mark Fisher, Robin Mackay, Reza Negerastani, Benedict Singleton, Nick Srnicek. James Trafford, Alex Williams, Ben Woodard, Tom Trevatt, Amanda Beech.
As space is limited, attendance is by invitation only. Proceedings of the round table discussion will be transcribed and made available on-site, and will form a part of a future publication. Contact office@urbanomic.com for further information.
We think that it is necessary to develop a serious understanding of the ramifications for aesthetics that bypasses the cultural faddishness of OOO, whilst also facing up squarely to arguments that such realism indexes a kind of scientism that may ultimately come undone, because it leaves open no space for aesthetics (or, potentially, politics). Given that much of this emerging strand of realism is concerned with the impugning, and potential displacement, of human experience, we appear to require novel modes of thinking aesthetics that refuse to hypostatize human experience as the master-category through which the world is to be interpreted.
To this end, the speculative dimension regarding aesthetic thought may well involve a productive tension between the levels of phenomenal experience, metaphysical speculation and scientific description, whilst, nonetheless, refusing a return to naive realism, reified subjectivity, or (new) materialisms. For example, in terms of the aesthetic dimension of politics, we take it that hype, hyperstition, SF, cosmism and so on, are as important as the critical-analytical dimension of scientific rationality.
March 4, 2013, 1-5.30pm
Artworkers Guild, London
Tate Britain
Wednesday 15 October 2014 – Friday 6 February 2015.
This seminar series was curated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell. Initiated by Adrian Shaw and is a follow up to Late at Tate:The Real Thing 2010(Urbanomics)
All seminars will be held in the Duffield Room at Tate Britain 16.00-18.00.
These will be FREE to attend but booking is essential and will be available online soon
Speculative Realism is a term that is used to describe an approach that attempts to consider art, politics, nature and thought beyond the confines of human finitude. The term is often ascribed both to a conference of the same name held at Goldsmiths in 2007, and a disparate set of thinkers. This centered on the work of philosophers Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and Graham Harman.
Often referred to as a movement, Speculative Realism is perhaps best used to describe an ongoing, disparate, attempt to construct radical and emancipatory trajectories of thought, art, and political praxis. These include accelerationist politics; reconsidering the role of art and design; the disruption of human experience and access to the “real”; innovative engagement with mathematics, logic, neuroscience and technology.
These emerging positions, still in a state flux can be seen rapidly evolving on-line in heavily viewed and active discussion forums. The resultant work has been rapidly taken up in cultural theory and contemporary art and curation.
The Speculative Tate research series is a collaboration between Tate Britain and Speculative Aesthetics Research Project to explore the question “What bearing does Speculative Realism have upon aesthetics in theory and practice?”
It is an attempt to further investigate and develop the emergent field of Speculative Aesthetics, with particular attention to: the socio-historical relationship between art and design; the relationship between speculative aesthetics and design; the conceptual and pragmatic role of artistic experience; the navigational potential of aesthetics. To explore the possibility of a theory and practice no longer invested in the otherworldly promise of the aesthetic, but acknowledging the real force and traction of images in the world today.
In order to explore and represent the dynamic flux and fluidity of these contemporary discussions and introduce them to a wider audience without compromising them
this series will be in the format of open informal ‘curated’ discussion forums lead by internationally recognised leaders in the field including Mark Fisher, Amy Ireland, Reza Negarastani, Luke Pendrell, Patricia Reed, Benedict Singleton, Alex Williams, James Trafford and Pete Wolfendale. Findings and works generated during the series will form the basis of special Speculative Aesthetics Late at Tate event on Friday 6 February.
Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with
the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with 'Speculative Realism')
Events in this series
Research Seminars
Exit or Escape?
Seminar with Patricia Reed, Benedict Singleton & Alex Williams
Wednesday 15 October 15 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Freedom and Re-engineering Creativity
Seminar with Helen Hester, Pete Wolfendale & Robin Mackay
Wednesday 12 November 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Radical Geometries
Seminar with Reza Negarastani, & James Trafford (further speakers t.b.c)
Wednesday 10 December 2014, 16.00 – 18.00
Haunters and the Haunted
Seminar with Mark Fisher, Amy Ireland & Luke Pendrell.
Wednesday 14 January 2015, 16.00 – 18.00
Event
Late at Tate Britain: Speculative Tate
Event: A night of audio Visual experimentation that expands the findings generated
during the Speculative Tate research series
Friday 6 February 2015, 18.00-21.30
Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’)
Speculative Tate is a research project developed at Tate Britain in collaboration with the Speculative Aesthetics Research Project ,a project which was initiated by Dr. James Trafford and Luke Pendrell for the consideration of open questions regarding the relation between aesthetics and new forms of realism within post-Continental philosophy (influenced by, though not limited to positions identified with ‘Speculative Realism’).
Careful examination of this debris began to suggest to us the possibility of notional, obscured territories, spaces both real and imaginary. Previously unimaginable topographies that seemed to simultaneously inhabit the past, the present and perhaps even the future.
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one. Détournement is the opposite of quotation...” 1
"The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap.” (Fisher)
‘The flat eclecticism of the New Aesthetic and the Post-Internet generation—an endlessly multifarious universe that comes prequantified into discrete and isomorphic tumblr thumbnails.’ 2
Ignis Fatuus conjures ghostly echoes and disturbing undercurrents in contemporary life, a dark parallax to the perception of social media as a benign creative space of opportunity and friendship.
Text is collaged with a staccato montage of subliminal images and cinematic fragments; the hyper-detritus of consumer capitalism over scored with an unsettling soundtrack of glitch and rupture.
The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. Immateriality and spectrality are axiomatic to the digital realms we inhabit. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
Ignis Fatuus was developed as research for The Haunters and the Haunted segment of
Speculative Tate series at Tate Britain.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/eventseries/speculative-tate
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-and-lectures/haunters-and-haunted
First screened in the UK at Late at Tate in the Clore auditorium on May 1st 2015.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/performance-and-music/late-tate-may-2015
First shown in the US as part of the 'Co-locating the Material and the Immaterial' panel at
&Now 2015: Blast Radius! at CalArts, Los Angeles on March 27th 2015.
andnow2015a.sched.org/event/fd54944b9fb94cc40d4827066eae52b0#.VUj3R2RViko
1The Society of the Spectacle, Debord, G, 1967
2Speculative Aesthetics, (Mackay, Pendrell and Trafford), 2014
In this, final, session of the current Speculative Tate seminars, we take a spectral turn to explore haunting, the figure of the ghost and hyperstitional forms of temporality. The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. From avatars and chatbots to bump maps and page curls, the digital world is populated with a host of skeuomorphic phantoms clothed in shroud sails of the dust scratches and imperfections of lost surface patination and the process noise of unfulfilled modernism. Whether these persistent incursions are understood in religious, ontological, scientific or epistemological terms, they taunt us by flouting our schemata. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
The session will consist of three short papers leaving ample time for discussion and debate.
Speakers
Amy Ireland (via Skype), Anastrophic Modernism: Occult Time and the Production of Radical Novelty
Mark Fisher, Spectres of Lost Futures
Luke Pendrell: Ignis Fatuus
“Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one. Détournement is the opposite of quotation...” 1
"The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap.” (Fisher)
‘The flat eclecticism of the New Aesthetic and the Post-Internet generation—an endlessly multifarious universe that comes prequantified into discrete and isomorphic tumblr thumbnails.’ 2
Ignis Fatuus conjures ghostly echoes and disturbing undercurrents in contemporary life, a dark parallax to the perception of social media as a benign creative space of opportunity and friendship.
Text is collaged with a staccato montage of subliminal images and cinematic fragments; the hyper-detritus of consumer capitalism over scored with an unsettling soundtrack of glitch and rupture.
The ghost, rather than supernatural relic of a primitive age, is an increasingly prevalent aspect of the modern world. Immateriality and spectrality are axiomatic to the digital realms we inhabit. Life has become an immense accumulation of ghosts. Everything that was once directly lived is now haunted by itself.
1The Society of the Spectacle, Debord, G, 1967
2Speculative Aesthetics, (Mackay, Pendrell and Trafford), 2014
Ignis Fatuus was developed as part of the 'Haunters and the Haunted' segment of Speculative Tate series at Tate Britain.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/eventseries/speculative-tate
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-and-lectures/haunters-and-haunted
First screened in the UK at Late at Tate Britain in the Clore auditorium on May 1st 2015 as part of the 'DISRUPT' evening in the SPECULATE series.
tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/performance-and-music/late-tate-may-2015
First shown in the US as part of the 'Co-locating the Material and the Immaterial' panel at
&Now 2015: Blast Radius! at CalArts, Los Angeles on March 27th 2015.
andnow2015a.sched.org/event/fd54944b9fb94cc40d4827066eae52b0#.VUj3R2RViko
Ghost light will be showing at ISEA2015: The 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art isea2015.org/schedule/ from the 9th to the 18th of August, in the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, Vancouver.
Featuring:
Luke Pendrell: 25th – 27th May 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 25th May)
Daisy Parris: 1st – 3rd June 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 1st June)
Ben Branagan: 8th – 10th June 2017 (Private View 6.30pm 8th June)
In an unconstrained and site specific approach, The Chopping Block has invited three artists to independently inhabit the gallery – being given three days to produce a short term, immersive & site specific display.
Through our proposed model in which time becomes limited, artists are asked to respond to the physicality of the space with complete freedom and autonomy. Exploring models of practice in a time constrained format, the resulting exhibitions will look towards the experimental and unpredictable through a temporary format.
The Chopping Block is therefore using ‘Vacant Seasons’ as an open source model, in which artists will not be limited to work in any specific format or media. The short shows will encourage a flexible and adaptive nature, whilst also leaning towards more alternative approaches of display.
The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present new modalities, ruptures in our understanding of time, new paradigms, variant ontologies, recursive action, indefinite progression, endless reiteration. High frequency trading algorithms, twitter feeds, data flow, meme generators, click streams; modernity hums with relentless aetheric data coursing through the veins of our cities.
* Cuboniks, Laboria, “Xenofeminism: A politics for alienation”
30.4.16 – 22.5.16
Sat. – Sun. 12:00 – 18:00
Private view:
Thursday April 28th, 19:00 – 21:00
The 21st century is perhaps best captured in the ‘bad’ infinity of the animated GIF, with its stuttering, frustrated temporality, its eerie sense of being caught in a time-trap. – Mark Fisher
We live our lives in a duality of speed and stasis. One in which our working lives seem to be ever more dominated by micro-tasks and feverish networked bureaucracies, counterpointed with a cultural gridlock akin to the frozen time of the animated gif. In neoliberal consumer capitalism the future has stalled in the pastiche of retromania. The fractured drift of the perpetual loop and the harsh regression of the gif animation with its belligerent stutter both in their own way present a new modality. This is a rupture in our understanding of time, a new paradigm, a variant ontology, and a recursive action that is unlike Hegel’s indefinite progression as indefinite reiteration.
In Bad Infinity, Pendrell and Trafford juxtapose a jarring imaginary of the underlying temporalities of the neo-liberal unconscious. Weaving together the just out-of-reach, yet that which is constructive of contemporary subjectivity; from the fantasies of data farms and psychotically impassioned global artificial intelligence structures, to the fractures ghosting through our navigation of the confederacy of phantoms stuck in time.
This immersive and interactive exhibition brings together for the first time a range of artists, filmmakers, architects, designers, musicians and game developers, all pushing the boundaries of their fields using digital media. It also looks at the dynamic developments in the areas of creative coding and DIY culture and the exciting creative possibilities offered by augmented reality, artificial intelligence, wearable technologies and 3-D printing."
For this new commissioned work, artist Aram Bartholl (Berlin, b. 1972) has embedded an inconspicuous, slot-loading DVD burner into the side of the Museum, available to the public 24 hours a day. Visitors who find the Dead Drop and insert a blank DVD-R will receive a digital art exhibition, a collection of media, or other featured content curated by Bartholl or selected artists. DVD Dead Drop imbues the act of data transfer with a tangibility left behind in a world of cloud computing and appstores, using a medium—the digital versatile disc—that is quickly becoming another artifact of the past.
DVD Dead Drop is a continuation of Bartholl’s series of offline file-sharing networks in public spaces. The original Dead Drops cemented unauthorized USB thumb drives into walls, buildings, and curbs, encouraging a “read-write” information ecosystem. Here the “read-only” DVD Dead Drop serves as an automated platform for dispensing digital culture to the public at any time, day or night.
Because the installation consists of fragile hardware with moving parts exposed to the elements, regular technology failure is inevitable. The Museum works to keep the hardware operational, but it makes no guarantee for a successful DVD burn.
Made possible by the Harpo Foundation, with support from the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, New York.
VOLUMES
HOT (August 16–September 21, 2012) »
INSERT DISC (September 22–October 29, 2012) »
Selected CD-ROM art of the 90s on DVD
Curated by Aram Bartholl & Robert Sakrowski (curatingyoutube.net)
The second DVD Dead Drop show, INSERT DISC, features several classic art CD-ROMs from the mid-1990s on DVD. While the web was still in its infancy, artists from a wide range of fields explored the possibilities of interactivity and multimedia on CD-ROMs, fancy new silver discs that held an unbelievable 650 megabytes of data. Today most of these pre-web multimedia works are no longer accessible because they require legacy operating systems and software to run. INSERT DISC offers the full experience of a cutting edge, mid-90s operating system packed with stunning multimedia art. Each DVD comes with a safe-to-install virtualized Ubuntu Linux operating system running an emulated Mac OS 7.6. In addition to the historic CD-ROM art, special features include historic browsers, link lists, and more, guaranteeing a true 1995 computer experience!
Selected works:
Anti Rom (1995)
SASS Collective: Andy Allenson, Joel Baumann, Andy Cameron, Rob LeQuesne, Luke Pendrell, Sophie Pendrell, Andy Polaine, Anthony Rogers, Nik Roope, Tom Roope, Joe Stephenson, Jason Tame
Cyberflesh Girlmonster (1995)
Linda Dement
Manuscript (1994)
Eric Lanz
User Unfriendly Interface (1997)
Josephine Starrs & Leon Cmielewski
Special Features:
Period browsers and bookmarks, ‘Einblicke ins Internet’ offline Internet CD-ROM, and more
Credits:
Andreas Broeckmann, Sandra Fauconnier, nbk Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe, Transmediale archive
Let's Play Max Payne (October 30–December 6, 2012) »
Home Entertainment (December 7, 2012–February 7, 2013) »
BEST OF Fach & Asendorf Gallery (February 8–March 18, 2013) »
Vertical Video (March 19–May 14, 2013) »
KATSU.DATA.BOMBING (May 15–June 25, 2013) »
VIRII (June 26–August 15, 2013) »
The Flux Priority (August 16–October 8, 2013) »
The Last DVD (October 9–November 26, 2013) »
Please join us for the opening of Future Postcards, curated by Joanna Wright and Melanie Carvalho, at Oriel Davies, Saturday 3rd August, 3-5pm.
There will be a short talk "Human beings and energy" by Paul Allen FRSA from the Centre of Alternative Technology, research director of the Zero Carbon Britain report, at 3.30pm.
The original community of visionaries at CAT set out to create and test radical models for the future. Inspired by their mission, Wright and Carvalho invited a group of artists to send their postcards from the future.
Joanna Wright is Zero Carbon Britain artist-in-residence at CAT, supported by Arts Council of Wales; Melanie Carvalho is an artist based in London
Contributing artists are:
Alex Ashcroft, Nick Bartoletti, Gareth Bell-Jones, Michelle Bhatia, Melanie Carvalho, Wendy Chapple, Maria Chevska, Lenka Clayton, Otto Clayton, Andrew Cranston, Alex Cook, Jane Cook, Alexandra Cook, Tara Darby, Rhonda Drakeford, Howard Dyke, Ashley Elliott, Nilbar Gures, Ellie Greig, Mike Fleming, Anna Louise Hale, Phil Hession, Andrew Humber, Alice Ibsen, Jill, Philip Jones, Margarete Kerfoote, Izzie Klingels, Andrew Kotting, Eden Kotting, John Maclean, Duncan Marquiss, Ian McMillan, Martin McGrath, Henna Nadeem, Christian Petersen, Playpaint, Luke Pendrell, Conny Prantera, Amanda Prantera, Clare Price, Toby Shuall, Cat Stevens, Ben Sansbury, Mark Titchner, Maya Wild, Helen Woolston, Joanna Wright
“I use words to demolish the status of words… to that extent verbal consciousness about painting will float right out of your mind.” Patrick Heron.
“I might work on a painting for a month, but it has to look like I painted it in a minute.” Wilhelm De Kooning.
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” Edgar Degas.
‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ is curated by painter Clare Price and brings together work by 20 different artists. Much of the work is unapologetically expressive in its aesthetic or attitude. It has an explosive almost ‘punk’ feel characterized by its energy and spontaneity.
The works of Peter Lanyon exemplify an enviable freedom and almost careless brilliance that is a model in stance for the rest of the show.
The exhibition includes well-established practitioners and some who are less well known. Each artist makes work that is infused with an uninhibited looseness of expression, in which the individuality of the mark-making is of paramount importance. From the clean subversive images of Scott King to the exuberant and colourful painting by Gillian Ayres, each of the works is visceral and highly charged.
The exhibition is sponsored by Smoke&Mirrors and is accompanied by a catalogue designed by Ben Branagan with an introductory essay by Jonathan Griffin.
This archive of contemporary DIY fanzines is probably the largest of its kind in the world, containing fanzines such as: Ziggy, Zowie, Blondiak, Dark Star, Useless; magazines such as Control, Pablo internacional, Inventory; critical journals like Dot Dot Dot, Copenhagen Free University/Infopool, Metronome, Anarchitektur, Fucking Good Art; plus glossy periodicals such as CRASH!, Re-Magazine and video and cassette editions including Audio Theory and Audio Arts; radio plays and Independent Record Labels such as Another Album and Junior Aspirin.
These fanzines, all of which operate more or less outside the commercial and institutional mainstream, have been brought together in this archive to document their individual and experimental approach in production and distribution. The library comprises self-published works by authors, musicians and theorists as well as artists such as Jeremy Deller, Scott King, Pablo Bronstein, Raymond Pettibon, Spartacus Chetwynd, Nils Norman, Stephan Dillemuth, Stephan Willats, Cathy Lomax, Eleanor Brown, Aline Bouvy, Sonia Dermience, Meeuw Muzak and many others. publish and be damned is also the title of this year’s 4th international fair of self-publishers happening in London this summer.