Audrey Samson, Goodnight Sweetheart (2015). Photo by Alexis Bellavance.
Unconscious Archives Festival will explore materiality and embodied liveness across sound art and electronic music, experimental new media and audiovisual art through three live events – Compositional Constructs, Haptic Somatic and Narrativize, as well as an exhibition Emotion + the Tech(no)body.
Hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the exhibition element of the programme, Emotion + the Tech(no)body, will run from 21st September to 17th November 2017 featuring work by Austrian and International artists. Its brief is to consider the cultural and emotional attachment to data such as the relationship of human bodies to technology through the physical resonance of memory and the evolution of both the archive and machine as an ephemeral site for self-imaging and self-construction.
Ulla Rauter, Sound Drawings. Image courtesy of the artist.
Artists exhibiting include Benedict Drew (UK), Graham Dunning (UK), Stephen Cornford (UK), Audrey Samson (CA), Christine Schörkhuber (AT), Ulla Rauter (AT), Reni Hofmüller (AT), Davide Bevilacqua & Veronika Krenn (AT/IT) and Theresa Schubert (DE). Their work at the show explores through diverse multimedia forms of practice and exploration including sound art, music, experimental film, software programming, laboratory culture, sculpture, ephemeral art, radio, instrument building and Post-Internet art.
Sally Golding, who has curated both this year’s Unconscious Archives Festival and accompanying exhibition, Emotion + the Tech(no)body, describes the show as ” a fresh take on what it means to us on an emotional and physical level to use and store our media and how we use these creative ideas to subvert standard conceptions that technological advances are ‘new’, as well as to consider the complexities of what it actually means to archive. Artists in the show are playing with the traces this focus brings – the ephemeral qualities of the human body in conversation with technology, disembodiment, enlivened spaces, and highlighting archiving as both an ancient and a future practice”.
Nikolaus Gansterer, Diagrams Translecture.
Accompanying the exhibition is a programme of events including two on-site at the Austrian Cultural forum with Conny Zenk presenting Self(ie) DREAMER on Thursday 19th October. This new solo work will seek to capture the essential qualities of our bodies in conversation with our smartphone devices and is followed on November 10th by a new Translecture collaboration between Nikolaus Gansterer (AT) and Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll (UK/AUS), devised as a response to the exhibition. Gansterer’s Translectures are performative translations between the lines of drawing, choreography and performance which bring into question how far a drawing can become a tool of communication.
Unconscious Archives Festival will reach out across London with a trio of live events with Compositional Constructs at Cafe OTO on September 24th exploring vibrant systems of artist made technology and performance interventions. It will feature performances by Myriam Bleau (CA), Mariska de Groot (NL), Leafcutter John (UK), and Dawid Liftinger (AT). September 28th sees Corsica Studios hosting Haptic Somatic, a multi-dimensional club night with artists innovating with electronic music and multi-media forms of presentation including live performance, noise, sound and light compositions. Narrativize explores the construction and de/construction of narrative at the Close Up Film Centre on 30th September as part of an evening of live film, digital art and performance.
Conny Zenk, Self(ie) DREAMER, 2017.
Unconscious Archives Festival
Exhibition: Emotion + the Tech(no)body
21 September – 17 November 2017 (Mon – Fri, 9am – 5pm)
Austrian Cultural Forum London, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ.
www.acflondon.org/exhibitions/emotion-technobody-autumn-exhibition
Curated by Sally Golding as part of Unconscious Archives Festival 2017
Festival tickets available here.
Supporting live events:
Compositional Constructs Sunday 24 September, 7:30pm
Cafe OTO, The Print House, 18-22 Ashwin St, London E8 3DL.
MYRIAM BLEAU (CA) / MARISKA DE GROOT (NL) / LEAFCUTTER JOHN (UK) / DAWID LIFTINGER (AT)
A live event showcasing the vibrant systems of artist made technology and performance interventions.
Haptic Somatic Thursday 28 September, 8:30pm-2am.
Corsica Studios, 4/5 Elephant Rd, London SE17 1LB
ZIÚR (DE) / EWA JUSTKA (PL/UK) / SPATIAL (UK) / YAXU (UK) / PHANTOM CHIPS (AU/UK) / LAURIE TOMPKINS (UK) / MARTA FORSBERG (SE) / BILLY ROISZ & DIEB13 (AT) / & DJS CHLOE FRIEDA (UK) & TRISTAN BATH (UK/AT)
An enlivened club night featuring artists working with electronic music as medium across an atypical trajectory mixing live performance, noise, sound and light compositions, and club music.
Narrativize Saturday 30th September, 7pm
Close-Up Film Centre, 97 Sclater St, London E1 6HR
JAMES HOLCOMBE & SECLUDED BRONTE (UK) / ESPERANZA COLLADO (ES) / FOXY MORON (UK) / JÖRG PIRINGER (AT)
An evening of live film, digital art and performative actions exploring de/construction of narrative.
