Please join us for an online talk organised in partnership with ART TAIPEI 2022. Bocheng Shen, curator of ART TAIPEI 2022 special exhibition ‘Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future’; artists Michael Wang and Tomás Saraceno; Caitlin Southwick, Founder and Executive Director of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation; and Helen Turner, founding member of Gallery Climate Coalition Berlin, will ask: can the medium fit the message? As issues relating to ecology and the environment take on an ever more prominent role in artworks and artworld discourse, there often remains a separation between preaching and practice. How can art and its institutions be more responsible? Will a greener artworld be a leaner artworld? Will the global circulation of art slow? And, alongside the rise of digital art, will the changing materiality of artmaking reinforce old destructive practices, or lead to lasting change?
Venue: Livestream at ARTTAIPEI Art Lecture sector and via Art Taipei Facebook Live
Date: Saturday 22 October 2022
Time: 16:00-17:30 CST; 09:00-10:30 BST
Speakers:
An introduction from Bocheng Shen, Curator ART TAIPEI 2022 special exhibition ‘Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future’
Moderated by Chris Fite-Wassilak, a London-based critic, Contributing Editor at ArtReview, and author of The Artist in Time (2020)
Tomás Saraceno, artist
Caitlin Southwick, Founder and Executive Director of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation
Helen Turner, Artistic Director of E-WERK Luckenwalde and founding member of Gallery Climate Coalition, Berlin
Michael Wang, artist
Bocheng Shen is curator of ART TAIPEI 2022 special exhibition ‘Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future’, an assistant professor at the Department of Sculpture at the National Taiwan University of the Arts, and a doctoral member at Tainan University of the Arts. He was previously full-time assistant at the Department of Media Communication and Design, Shih Hsin University, lecturer at the Department of Material Creation and Design at the Tainan National University of the Arts. Other previous research of his include ‘Human Resources Analysis of Cultural and Creative Industries’ and ‘Artist Identity Certification’. His work has long been concerned with cultural economics and changes in the contemporary art environment.
Tomás Saraceno is an artist informed by the worlds of art, architecture, natural sciences and engineering. Saraceno’s floating sculptures, community projects and interactive installations propose new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. In the past decade he has collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Max Planck Institute, the Nanyang Technological University, the Imperial College London and the Natural History Museum London. Solo exhibitions include Particular Matter(s) (The Shed, 2022); Inter+Play Season 2 (Towada Art Center, 2021); Algo-r(h)i(y)thms (Esther Schipper Gallery, 2019); and ON AIR (Palais de Tokyo, 2018).
Caitlin Southwick is the Founder and Executive Director of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation (SiC). She holds a Professional Doctorate in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the University of Amsterdam. Before founding Ki Culture, Caitlin worked in the conservation field for eight years in museums and sites around the world, including the Vatican Museums, The Getty Conservation Institute, The Uffizi Gallery, and Rapa Nui. She is the Secretary of the Working Group on Sustainability for the International Council of Museums (ICOM), a member of the Steering Committee on Climate for Europeana, and a Climate Reality Leader for the Climate Reality Project.
Helen Turner is the Co-Artistic Director and Chief Curator of E-WERK Luckenwalde, where she directs the contemporary art programme. Turner is a founding member of Gallery Climate Coalition, Berlin, has spoken internationally for Prada Frames: On Forest, a symposium curated by Forma Fantasma, Saatchi Gallery and World Art Foundations. She has published writing for Museums for Change and is a Jury member for VISIT Artist in residence programme and LAGI 2022 Mannheim. Turner was previously the Chief Curator at Cass Sculpture Foundation and has worked for Artangel.
Michael Wang uses systems that operate on a global scale as media for art: climate change, species distribution, resource allocation and the global economy. His works include Carbon Copies (Foxy Production, 2012), an exhibition linking the production of artworks to the release of greenhouse gases; Extinct in the Wild (Fondazione Prada, 2017), a project that engages species that no longer exist in nature but persist under human care; and World Trade (Foxy Production, 2017), a series tracing the trade in steel from the World Trade Center following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
