banquete_nodos y redes.
Net Culture in Spain
March 14 – June 28, 2009
An exhibition at ZKM |
Museum of Contemporary Art
Lorenzstrasse 19
76135 Karlsruhe, Germany
phone: +49 (0) 721/8100 1200
info [at] zkm.de
The exhibition “banquete_nodos y redes” guides us from neural micro worlds to global dynamics of digital networking. Showing current positions in Spanish media art that deal with networked systems, it thus meaningfully complements the previous exhibition “The Discreet Charm of Technology”, that was shown in the ZKM until February 15th.
The works in the exhibition visualize connections of biological, social, and cultural networks, inviting visitors to participate and experience them. At issue is the perception and construction of life as a system of networks – ranging from water molecules through to the global ecosystem. It is about the examination of human existence as part of this complex, self-organizing and self-maintaining web of life; as interface between the micro and macroscopic levels, between life’s endo-somatic and exosomatic phenomena as well as the interface between the biological, techno-cultural and socioeconomic conditions and developments of human existence. The relationships and tensions between local and global dynamics are subjected to critical examination and reformulation. Based on more than thirty digital and interactive projects, the complexity of the network structure as a common matrix can be experienced. In the course of this, new cross links arise that lead from Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s late nineteenth century neuronal net theory to Manuel Castell’s net-based theory of information society of the 90s.
Cajal was the first to recognize that nerve cells function in the brain as independent, elementary signal units. In addition, the neuronal network as a whole is a structure capable of developing and changing, in which not the cells themselves, but the respective connection between the cells is decisive in the kind of perception, thought, or behavior. The idea of a decentralized and dispersed information system has thereby been an important aspect of research since the birth of modern neurosciences. In the 1990s, also at issue in the information society that Manuel Castell examines is the phenomenon of net-based information architecture: He positions this architecture in interconnected urban areas and the global Internet structure, which currently define economic productivity, cultural hegemony, and political-military power. It becomes evident that thought and practice have found an enlarged field of action in the developing communication technologies, which re-articulate the architecture of neuronal information in global communication networks and urban living spaces.
Idea and concept: Karin Ohlenschläger and Luis Rico.
Curator: Karin Ohlenschläger.
Project management: Andreas F. Beitin.
Exhibition production: LABoral, Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, Spain; Fundación Telefónica; SEACEX, State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad.
Organization of the traveling exhibition: SEACEX, State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad.
Artists in Exhibition:
Antoni Abad, Aetherbits, Eugenio Ampudia, Marcel.lí Antúnez, Pablo Armesto, José Manuel Berenguer, Clara Boj/Diego Díaz, Daniel Canogar, Álvaro Castro, Alfredo Colunga, Escoitar, Evru, Joan Fontcuberta, Dora García, Marta de Gonzalo/Publio Pérez Prieto, Hackitectura, Ricardo Iglesias, Influenza, Concha Jerez/José Iges, Kònic Thtr, Laboratorio de Luz, Joan Leandre, Neokinok TV, Marina Núñez, Pedro Ortuño, Raquel Paricio/J. Manuel Moreno, Platoniq, Francisco Ruiz de Infante, Águeda Simó.
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Opening hours:
Wed-Fri 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Sat, Sun 11 a. m. – 6 p.m.
Mon, Tue closed
Guided tours:
Sun 1 p.m. (till March 31st)
Sun 3 p.m. (from April 1st)
Press contact:
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Press department
Friederike C. Walter
phone: +49 (0) 721/8100 1220
fax: +49 (0) 721/8100 1139
e-mail: presse@zkm.de
