Fall 2014 Lecture Series

Since the millennial shift to C21 “the contemporary” has become a common topic in discussions of periodization, as well as a gauge used regarding how to perceive and think about what artists and thinkers are thinking about, doing, and producing in the present.

This fall semester, topics explored in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) events include: unmanned aircraft systems, their hundred-year history and rediscovery; cultural collaborations between artists and scientists from the United States and Middle East; discussion of an Islamic cemetery in Austria, and of the importance in Europe to recognize ways of co-existence with multiple cultures; performance work referencing photographer Ansel Adams’s invention, the Zone System; new approaches to citizen media, instigated by an intersection of modern social dynamics and rapid multi-screen content consumption; contemplations on extinction and auto-destructive/creative processes related to the work of Gustav Metzger; and a memorial for Otto Piene.

Lectures, discussions, workshops, projects, symposia, and events will engage or reflect upon forms of experimentation and crossings indicative of what takes place in ACT’s terrain, irrepressibly branching out into other dimensions, spaces, and constituencies.

Call it a condition of being alive at the same time, being contemporaneous and contemporary, sharing time, space, and contexts.

During the upcoming months we will continue to reflect on the significance of these relations, acknowledging previous moments and protagonists and recognizing overlapping resonances and transmutations in the present, as well as through time.