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Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art

Book, tour launch, performance at Scandinavia House, NYC

Jana Winderen, "Jana Winderen" (2014), Krisuvik, Iceland. Photo by Finnbogi Pétursson, courtesy of the artist.

“Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art” book talk with Tanya Toft Ag and Lundahl & Seitl performance

The program at Scandinavia House, New York City, launched the touring program

On February 23, 2019 at Scandinavia House in New York City, “Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art” book talk with Tanya Toft Ag and participatory performance by artists Lundahl & Seitl, launched an internationally touring program that explores the topic “Art’s New Nature.” It is developed in collaboration with Streaming Museum in New York City and partners around the world.

Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2019) recasts the Nordic art context in an expanding digital condition and reveals horizontal ways to write its histories.

Order the book here: digitaldynamics.art/order-book


SCANDINAVIA HOUSE EVENT


Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art book launch and performance by Lundahl & Seitl digitaldynamics.art

Saturday 23 February 2019 Scandinavia House, 2nd floor, 58 Park Ave, New York City scandinaviahouse.org

1.30 pm welcome and artist introduction 2.00 pm participatory performance (please read instructions below) 3.00 pm book lecture by Tanya Toft Ag Reception

RSVP here Free admission

Offering an in-depth exploration of art’s contingent evolution with technology and digital culture, this book goes far beyond familiar depictions of ‘Nordic aesthetics’ in art.

Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art examines how digital technology and culture profoundly changes contemporary art because it changes the life worlds, imaginations and tools of artists, the conditions for art’s production and distribution, and artists’ sense of agency and capacity to affect the world and tackle current urgencies. It explores art’s role and inquiries especially in response to changing conditions of the welfare state – affected by technology, globalization, and current shifts in international outlook. First-hand perspectives of pioneering and pivotal artists form the basis of chapters penned by leading scholars and curators of Nordic art. The book offers an embracive, multi-perspective tour through and beyond artistic experiments, conceptual reconfigurations, and new modes of artistic agency in the Nordic context(s), and in the wider world.

The book launch will begin with a participatory performance by Swedish artists Lundahl & Seitl followed by a book lecture by Tanya Toft Ag.

Tanya Toft Ag (editor) is a curator and scholar specializing in media and digital art and its urban implications. tanyatoft.com

The book launch, performance and continuing dissemination and exhibition program in New York City, Digital Dynamics: Art’s New Natures, is presented in collaboration with Streaming Museum.

LUNDAHL & SEITL PERFORMANCE

Unknown Cloud On Its Way To… by Lundahl & Seitl

A nomadic, immersive, and connective audio experience.

Programmed to exist globally until 2057, the Cloud travels across national borders, large cities, remote villages, islands, mountains, and across the sea. Immersed in a connective experience in the cloud, audiences will explore participation, trust, and compassion – the cornerstones of an engaged and humane society.

Unknown Cloud On Its Way To… is a participatory performance. Central to the work is the audience-participants’ own being in time and their ability to create relations with the lifeworlds of others. Synchronized via Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and a downloadable APP to participants’ own smartphones, the Unknown Cloud creates an unusual situation of a global ritual that connects us to our own and other bodies, far and near.

The work is featured in the book Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2019).

To participate, download the free app: Unknown Cloud Caretaker This uses a tool called Nagoon consisting of a three-dimensional soundscape. It is connected to existing environments on location and follows the movements of the planets in real-time. At simultaneous events, the immersive experience will be shared between audience-participants in New York City and in various locations in the Nordic region.

Time and place in New York City: Saturday 23 February 2019 – book launch of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art Scandinavia House, 2nd floor, 58 Park Ave, New York City scandinaviahouse.org 1.30 pm – welcome and artist introduction 2.00 pm – participatory performance (followed by book lecture and reception)

PLEASE NOTE: Audiences are advised to download the Unknown Cloud Caretaker app in advance and bring their own smartphone and (non-Bluetooth) headphones in order to participate. A few devices can be lent at Scandinavia House upon pre-registration.

This event is free, but please RSVP here

Unknown Cloud On Its Way To… (2015-2019) is developed by the Swedish artist duo Lundahl & Seitl in collaboration with Liquid Media Application, iOS and Android developed by Nagoon.

The book launch, performance and continuing dissemination and exhibition program in New York City, Digital Dynamics: Art’s New Natures is presented in collaboration with Streaming Museum. digitaldynamics.art/arts-new-ways


CONTINUING PROGRAM


Digital Dynamics: Art’s New Natures

The book Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2019) launches a program of talks, texts and exhibitions throughout 2019. This will discuss, disseminate and show how contemporary (Nordic) art changes with digital culture and technology.

Program activities in New York City will explore a core theme of the book: Art’s New Natures. This announces how, rather than a romanticized idea, contemporary artists return to nature as an experimental and living laboratory, engaging methods across a broadened and interdisciplinary artistic landscape. Influenced by environmental aesthetics of biological organisms in combination with technology, artists employ scientific, ethnographic, sociological and other world excavating methods to extract new imaginaries and presentations of nature. They combine scientific technologies with social networking and political actionism to remodel ‘natural’ environments. Art’s New Natures questions how, in these and more ways, art invokes closer connections with nature’s global ecosystems, deeper human relationships with the environment, living matter, planetary phenomena, and with the Anthropocene itself.

The program is developed in collaboration with Streaming Museum


PARTNERS


The book launch, performance and continuing dissemination and exhibition program in New York City, Digital Dynamics: Art’s New Natures, is presented in collaboration with Streaming Museum.


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