Digital discussion Weather Glass or Crystal Ball? - Discussion
A talk and discussion with Laura Beloff and Jens Hauser
Online
Microperformativity and Biomediality: From the Storm in a Glass to the Blueness of Data-Skies
Within the scope of the project "Weather Glass or Crystal Ball? Mapping the Weather in Arts and Science" the Goethe-Institute promotes interdisciplinary research on how weather and climate change are experienced and how we communicate about them. For this reason, the Goethe-Institute Norway organises this digital event with author and curator Jens Hauser and artist and researcher Laura Beloff.
First, Jens Hauser will emphasize the importance to consider non-human "microperformativity" and "biomediality": Both notions destabilize human scales (both spatial and temporal) as the dominant plane of reference and point to the interconnectedness of biological and technological micro-agencies that, beyond the mesoscopic human body, relate the invisibility of the microscopic to the incomprehensibility of the macroscopic.
Then, Laura Beloff will take an art practitioner’s perspective observing the world and phenomena with a focus on environment, organisms, and climate. With the historical instruments one could observe the weather as a phenomenon directly in time and location, but today’s weather is mediated as data through digital devices. What is the impact of this type of mediated distancing and how it is reflected in the arts?
The exchange will be enriched by many examples from the arts engaged in laboratory and field studies. After the conversation there will be space for questions from the audience.
Jens Hauser, PhD, is a Paris and Copenhagen-based media scholar, writer and curator who focuses on the interactions between art and technology at the intersection of art history and epistemology. He is an Associate Researcher at the Medical Museion of the University of Copenhagen after holding a double postdoctoral research position in the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. He teaches at numerous universities and art academies around the world and is a respected faculty member at the Michigan State University, where he directs the BRIDGE Artist-in-Residency programme and coordinates the (OU)VERT Network for Greenness Studies. His most recent curated exhibitions, performances and media art festivals include WETWARE (LA, 2016), Devenir Immobile (Nantes, 2018), {un][split} (Munich, 2018), MATTER/S matter/s (Lansing, 2018), UN/GREEN (Riga, 2019), OU \ / ERT (Bourges, 2019) and Holobiont. Life is Other (Bregenz, 2021).
Laura Beloff, PhD, is an internationally acclaimed artist and a researcher in the cross section of art, science and technology. Additionally, to research papers and book chapters, the outcome of her artistic research is in a form of experimental art projects, which deal with the encounters of the technological and biological matter. The research engages with the areas such as human enhancement, biosemiotics, biological matter, artificial life, artificial intelligence, robotics, and information technology in affiliation with art, humans, environment and society. Previously she has been a Professor at the Art Academy in Oslo 2002-2006, a visiting Professor at The University of Applied Arts in Vienna 2009-2011. She has been a recipient of a prestigious 5-year artist grant from the Finnish State 2007-2011. From 2012 until 2019 she was Associate Professor, Head of Section 2012-2016 and Head of PhD School 2017-2019 at the IT-University in Copenhagen. Currently, she is Associate Professor and Head of ViCCA-program in Aalto University, Finland.
