The Age of Catastrophe

November 13 - December 12

Exhibition Reception: Friday, November 13, 2015 7pm-10pm

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Andrew John Milne, "Forgotten Futures," photographic emulsion of canvas, laser cut birch, beam-splitting mirrors

Andrew John Milne"Forgotten Futures"photographic emulsion of canvas, laser cut birch, beam-splitting mirrors

VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE & ACTUAL CONTEMPORARY PRESENT

"THE AGE OF CATASTROPHE" is an exploration of the insights art can provide in the face of the accelerating series of natural and manufactured catastrophes – environmental, technological, economic, social, political – that characterize the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As the natural and the technological become increasingly indistinguishable, does art provide a premonitory means of imagining/imaging the worst case scenario? Does art address itself to or embody an apparent will-to-catastrophe that expresses itself globally? Does art (re)capture a speculative opportunity for a (re)consideration of the relations between humanity, technology and the environment? Or does art provide a navigational affordance by which to plot a movement through a catastrophic topology?

Curated by Dr. Melentie Pandilovski (Director, Video Pool Media Arts Centre) and Tom Kohut, "THE AGE OF CATASTROPHE" brings together national and international new media artists to consider: the realization and analysis of dynamic systems; the cultural reverberations of historical trauma; spectrality and hyperstition as imaginative projection; biopower and biopolitics; the apocalyptic sublime; and artistic action in concrete political struggle. Using audiovisual installation, interactive electronics, robotics, 3D modeling, augmented reality and prototype quantum computing, the artists in this exhibition explore, embody and intervene in the before, during and after of the catastrophic event.

Artists include: Kelly Jaclynn Andres (Montreal); Rick Fisher & Don Rice (Winnipeg); Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Montreal); Andrew John Milne (Winnipeg); Catherine Richards (Ottawa); Kelly Richardson (Newcastle, UK); David Rokeby (Toronto); Michelle Teran (Berlin); Paul Thomas (Sydney); Jane Tingley (Waterloo); Bill Vorn (Montreal)