World of Matter

Please join us tonight Tuesday, September 9th from 6 to 8pm for the opening reception of the exhibition World of Matter in the James Gallery. The exhibition will be open until November 1st.

Following the opening, join us tomorrow Wednesday, September 10th for an all-day conference (9:30am-6pm) Radical Materialism: Making the World Matter in The Skylight Room, 9100.

We hope to see you there! These events are free and open to the public.

World of Matter
Tue, Sep 9, 6-8pm Exhibition Reception with artists

The world we inhabit is expanding. Global population growth, increased mobility, accelerated contacts, rising levels of production and consumption, and the expansion of natural resource extraction have had a significant impact in environmental, social and psychological terms. What forms of interaction with the material world acknowledge that there are limits to what we, as humans, might know and control?

 

Participants in World of Matterdraw upon methodologies from the social and natural sciences, journalism, and also poetics and aesthetics, to scrutinize zones of geopolitical-ecological upheaval. The research conducted by the artists, journalists and theorists in World of Matter coheres around a sensitive reconsideration of the planet’s “resources.” Their projects adopt a variety of formats and strategies to delve into relations between humans and the world, in some cases by way of historical narratives, in others, through scientific laboratory research, community collaboration, visualization technologies, or activist organization. These experiments animate an emerging notion of artistic global citizenship, breaking up well-worn patterns of representation by embracing a plethora of aesthetic, conceptual and interventionist engagements with “matter.”An accompanying book will be published in October 2014 by Sternberg Press.


World of Matter
artists are Mabe Bethônico, Ursula Biemann, Uwe H. Martin & Frauke Huber, Helge Mooshammer & Peter Mörtenböck, Emily Eliza Scott, Paulo Tavares, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan. This exhibition is made possible in part by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the PhD Program in English, Pro Helvetia, and the Speculative Realism and Accelerationism Seminar in the Humanities. Exhibition continues until Nov 1st.More information here: http://centerforthehumanities.org/james-gallery/world-matter
Wed, Sep 10, 9:30am-6pmRadical Materialism: Making the World Matter

Images and words can be reportage, witness, representation, and simultaneously also constructive, connective, material reality. How does the particular ability of images and words to hold all of these qualities act in a reconsideration of the earth’s resources? Continuing the James Gallery’s ongoing investigations into “things” and “objects,” this conference will open discussion on fossil fuel imaginaries, embodied research, postcolonial ecologies and eco-aesthetics and the material/non-human turn with visual artists, literary scholars, art historians, designers, geographers, activists, and writers of literature and philosophy. Held in tandem with the exhibition “World of Matter,” the conference examines the creation of political worlds of words and images by approaching environmental crisis as a material question with deep roots and profound opportunities for the changing life of the earth.

Speakers include Stacey Balkan, Ursula Biemann, D. Graham Burnett, Morgan Buck, Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, T.J. Demos, Elizabeth Ellsworth, David Joselit, Sean M. Kennedy, Jamie Kruse, Uwe H. Martin, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Rafael Mutis, Kate Orff, Micheal Rumore, Emily Eliza Scott, Elizabeth Sibilia, Lonnie van Brummelen, Jennifer Wenzel. This conference is made possible in part by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, the PhD Program in English, Pro Helvetia, and the Speculative Realism and Accelerationism Seminar in the Humanities. Further information and schedule here: http://centerforthehumanities.org/program/radical-materialism-making-world-matter

Free and open to the public.

The James Gallery & The Center for the Humanities

 

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