Okayama Art Summit

Okayama Art Summit 2019
IF THE SNAKE
September 27–November 24, 2019

www.okayamaartsummit.jp

IF THE SNAKE is a living entity through which navigate a heterogeneity of chemical, biological and algorithmic processes, as well as different types of intelligent life forms. Each feature within this situated entity have inherently dynamic qualities that, due to the conditions of their co-presence, endlessly grow as particular and contingent modes of continuity.

This infant complex system is prompt to spontaneous order, self- generating, material with consciousness, shifting meaning, constantly modifying its plasticity in total indifference to any potential witness. The exhibition appears as merely one hypothesis of its existence amidst many.

IF THE SNAKE is not a portrait, comprised of various facets. Nor is it a ghost in the machine, an animism whose sensible presence relies exclusively on human attribution or values. It is self-presenting and still eschews representation. A naturalization of odd, artificial otherness: a morphogenesis of a weirding subject.

To depart consensual reality, bound by the “known,” requires the speculative aspect of fiction to reach worlds thought as impossible, to playfully imagine what they could be, then concretely actualize them. This pointless topology is an overflow of porous fictions, a crossfade in a state of uncertainty, a continuum of unstable formalizations of possibilities.

Artistic Director
Pierre Huyghe

Artists
Tarek Atoui / Matthew Barney / Etienne Chambaud / Paul Chan / Ian Cheng / Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson / John Gerrard / Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni / Glass Bead / Elizabeth Hénaff / Eva L'Hoest / Pierre Huyghe / Fernando Ortega / Sean Raspet / Lili Reynaud-Dewar / Pamela Rosenkranz / Tino Sehgal / Mika Tajima

Hours
Friday, September 27 to Sunday, November 24, 2019 (51 days)
Closed: Mondays
[except for October 14 (Monday, holiday) and November 4 (Monday, holiday) in which the following Tuesdays will be closed]

Venues
Former Uchisange Elementary School
Tenjinyama Cultural Plaza of Okayama Prefecture
Okayama Orient Museum
Okayama Castle
Hayashibara Museum of Art
Among others