Reweaving Ourselves, Part Two: Technology for a Disoriented Humanity

Wed, Nov 18, 5:00–6:00 pm (EST)
moma.org

Registration required

Organized by the Cisneros Institute at MoMA, in this event artist Eduardo Kac will present his explorations of Bio Art and his work in the context of an expanded conception of ecology. Architectural historian Felicity Scott will speak about the impact of cybernetics on the artistic production of the 1960s and 1970s, and her particular research on the work of Juan Downey and Les Levine. They will engage in a conversation on the present-day relations between art, architecture, technology, and ecology, moderated by curator and researcher Julieta González.

Reweaving Ourselves is the second online conference organized by the Cisneros Institute at MoMA and conceived by guest curator Julieta González as part of a three-year research initiative on the relationships between art and the environment in Latin America. The conference will generate a discussion on the way artists, theoreticians, feminist thinkers, ecologists, and climate change activists, among many others, are rethinking Latin America at the present.

Excerpted from moma.org

Eduardo Kac at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 2019.

Reweaving Ourselves coincides with the ongoing presentation of Kac’s work in the recently expanded permanent collection galleries at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, including Reabracadabra (1985) and various works from the Porn Art Movement (1980–82).

Reabracadabra is one of four animated digital poems that Kac created specifically for the minitel network, the precursor of the Internet in the 1980s. Each of Kac’s minitel pieces challenges the inner logic of the minitel network with unexpected shapes and movements. Reabracadabra was acquired by MoMA in 2018 and artworks from the series are included in the permanent collections of the Tate, London and the Thoma Art Foundation, Chicago, among others.

Created by Kac and a core group of collaborators in early 1980, The Porn Art Movement (Movimento de Arte Pornô) contested the stifiling conservatism of Brazil’s military dictatorship through interventions, poetry, performances, and publications, often with a liberating sense of humor. Exemplary of recent institutional engagement with the Porn Art Movement, eleven objects from MoMA’s permanent collection are on view, including Kac’s artist’s book Escracho (1983).

Eduardo Kac, Escracho (cover), 1983. Artist’s book, 8.5″ x 12″

Current Exhibitions

Order and Rhythm
Austin Desmond Fine Art, London, United Kingdom
September 16–November 27, 2020
austindesmond.com

The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics (organized by Rhizome)
The Gund Gallery, Gambier, Ohio
September 11–December 13, 2020
thegundgallery.org

Moon Gallery: Close Cosmos
Old Observatory, Leiden, Holland
September 12–December 20, 2020
moongallery.eu