Technobodies

To coincide with their individual exhibitions, the Munich-based institutions Museum Brandhorst, Lenbachhaus, and Haus der Kunst collaborate on a long weekend of public programs on July 28–31. Technobodies focuses on the impact of new technologies on the visual and sonic arts. Starting from discourses rooted in the 1960s–70s, Technobodies explores the relationship of human bodies to technologies today. What is the effect of technology on the hybridization of bodies? How do our bodies respond to the physical movements of analog and digital sounds in space? Can we understand expanding media environments through an ecological lens? To what extent is human creativity impacted by an information landscape? Are we even able to draw lines between technology and bodies? These and related questions will be addressed over three days of lectures, talks, screenings, performances, and events.

Program

DAF-Kollektiv, Dynamische Akustische Forschung
Performances / Algorave
Lenbachhaus @ Rote Sonne
Thursday, July 28, 8pm
Dynamic Acoustic Research (DAF), a collective formed out of Mouse on Mars member Jan St. Werner’s sound classes at the Nuremberg and Munich Art Academies, which explores sound art and the broad spectrum of acoustic perception, will play host to the “Rote Sonne” for one night of sound experiments, DJ sets and live performances.

Mouse on Mars, RDD—Robodynamic Diffusion
Performance
Friday, July 29, 7pm
Lenbachhaus
The audience moves freely through the Kunstbau while a mobile robotic speaker sends sounds out into the gallery. The custom-built speaker produces a tightly focused sonic beam that blends with the reverberant space. It feels like the sound originates in invisible moving sources throughout the room or in the walls, floor, and ceiling as such. Rationally, we associate the acoustic source with the robot’s position, but its sonic projections open up the possibility of filling the room’s entire volume with sound.

Robodynamic Diffusion (RDD) is a project by Michael Akstaller, Nele Jäger, Oliver Mayer and Jan St. Werner, funded by Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation Nürnberg.

Fujiko Nakaya: Multiverse
Symposium
Saturday, July 30, 10:30am—6:45pm
Haus der Kunst
Fujiko Nakaya. Nebel Leben survey exhibition concludes with a one-day symposium aiming to tackle, discuss and share her essential contribution to a renewed understanding of art history from an array of different perspectives. Nakaya's exploratory and collaborative approach to art, technology and ecology has created a multiverse of ideas that resonate today with urgent questions about our interconnectedness with the environment. The symposium features screenings, presentations and conversations with international scholars, museum curators and artists whose diverse contributions branch out into Nakaya’s multiverse and create new connections to her networked thinking and visionary art practice.

Participants include Dieter Daniels, Ariana Dongus, Anne-Marie Duguet, Haden Guest, Go Hirasawa, Michelle Kuo, Philippe Rahm, Jenna Sutela, Hiroko Tasaka, Takuya Tsunoda, Helmut Völter, Catherine Wood, Mi You.

The symposium is inaugurated by the sculpture HMO Nutrix (2022) co-commissioned to the artist Jenna Sutela, who will also premier her video work Milky Ways.

Becoming Technology
Artist talks and participatory interventions
Sunday, July 31, 12—10pm
Museum Brandhorst
To coincide with the major survey exhibition Future Bodies from a Recent Past—Sculpture, Technology, and the Body since the 1950s, Museum Brandhorst hosts a series of artist talks and interventions that address how bodies are perceived and redefined in the digital realm. Exploring histories of scientific research and addressing the possibilities, but also the pitfalls and glitches of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence or virtual reality, the invited artists will share their insights and different perspectives into our condition of “becoming technology.” Artist talks with Angela Stiegler and Shila Rastizadeh, Aleksandra Domanović, and a conversation between Stephanie Dinkins and Alex Estorick.

Throughout the day, the installation Motion Sickness Exercise (2022) by Angela Stiegler is open for visitor participation. The project is supported by LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation Nürnberg.

Exhibitions on view during Technobodies:

Museum Brandhorst
Future Bodies from a Recent Past: Sculpture, Technology, and the Body since the 1950s
June 2, 2022–January 15, 2023

Lenbachhaus
Mouse on Mars: Spatial Jitter
April 9–September 18, 2022

Haus der Kunst
Fujiko Nakaya. Nebel Leben
April 8–July 31, 2022

Dumb Type
May 6–September 11, 2022

Carsten Nicolai: transmitter / receiver
the machine and the gardener
June 3–August 21, 2022

Tony Cokes: Fragments, or just Moments
June 9–October 23, 2022

Jenna Sutela: HMO Nutrix
July 27–August 29, 2022