China

Swissnex x BATB: Visions for the Planet

Swissnex in China is supporting the Critical Media Lab from the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW at the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale (BATB), along with two artworks curated by Adrian Notz, AI+Art curator and lecturer at ETH.

BATB will run from October 25, 2024, to February 23, 2025. This year’s theme, “Earthwise,” invites a collaborative exploration of intelligence, highlighting the wisdom of animals, plants, and machines in the context of planetary intelligence.

The Critical Media Lab will present three compelling video installations by Tekla Aslanishvili, Ifor Duncan, and Solveig Qu Suess and text contributions by Aleksandra Aroshvili, Johannes Bruder, Ifor Duncan, Evelina Gambino, and Ishita Sharma that examine water and energy infrastructures, focusing on how the logistics of renewable energy give birth to the turbulent reformatting of nature and social life.

The two artworks curated by Adrian Notz, AI and Art curator and lecturer at ETH include “The Stack” by Janiv Oron, an audiovisual installation inspired by megastructure theory connected to the ETH Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring lead by Prof. Eleni Chatzi. The second exhibit is “Superpositions” by Nolan Oswald Dennis, a geosonic installation that transforms geoacoustic data from South Africa, China, and Switzerland into sound.

Beyond the exhibition, Swissnex in China is also planning an event in Shanghai, featuring Adrian Notz who serves as the academic advisor for BATB this year. Swissnex in China plays a key role in fostering critical dialogue on planetary thinking. By connecting Swiss researchers and artists with Chinese counterparts, Swissnex in China supports dialogue to address global issues with creative solutions.

Critical Media Lab

  • Critical Media Lab

The Critical Media Lab (CML) is one of the two central labs of the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW. The CML is an idea, a set of activities and a community of students & researchers working at the intersections of design, media, arts & technology. It is a space of possibility where a plurality of processes, practices, and resistances are channeled towards collective projects. CML practices depart from feminisms, queer theory, computation, intersectionality, anti-coloniality, disability studies, historical materialism and artistic practice to generate currently inexistent vocabularies, imaginaries and methodologies. “Critical” in this sense refers not to critique, but to articulating, imagining, altering, and configuring media and infrastructures for collectivity, solidarity, and abolition. We aspire to do critical work to strengthen the struggle against extraction, oppression, and exploitation, pursuing an agenda of justice and material equality.

Head of Critical Media Lab

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    Dr. Johannes Bruder

    Dr. Johannes Bruder

    Head of Critical Media Lab

    The head of CML and the senior researcher Dr. Johannes Bruder studies the speculative and imaginary aspects of infrastructures – sociological models, psychological mechanisms, and affective potentials encoded in infrastructural designs ranging from algorithmic systems to financial markets to pipelines. He is currently most interested in imaginaries of energy, the physical realities that these imaginaries install, and the management of energies, physical and affective. The latter involves an interest in structures of feeling and tactics of disaffection. He has contributed to Transmediale, the Anthropocene Curriculum, the Energy Show at Het Nieuwe Instituut, among others, and his writing has been published by Routledge, MIT Press, Open Humanities Press, Valiz, and MQUP. Johannes has a strong interest in experimenting with research methods, knowledge practices, alternative pedagogies and publication formats that unsettle disciplinary paradigms and render research in the humanities operational in real-world contexts.

Artists of Critical Media Lab

    Solveig Qu Suess

    Evelina Gambino

    Ishita Sharma

    Dr Ifor Duncan

    Tekla Aslanishvili

    Alexandra Aroshvili

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AI+Art Curator from ETH

  • Adrian Notz

    Adrian Notz

    AI+Art Curator from ETH

    Adrian Notz (*1977 in Zurich) is a curator. At the ETH Zurich he is currently lecturer and AI+Art curator, where he was also running the AI+Art Program at ETH AI Center from 2021 to 2024. In 2023 he was curator of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara and from 2020 – 2022 he was curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation in Zürich. From 2012-2019 he led Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich as artistic director. He worked there first as a curatorial assistant (2004-2006) and as co-director (2006 -2012). From 2010 to 2015 he was head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen. Adrian has organised and curated numerous exhibitions, events, conferences, actions and interventions with international artists, activists and thinkers in Cabaret Voltaire as well as internationally around the globe.

Artists

    Janiv Oron

    Nolan Oswald Dennis

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Partners