Art
2019
Neal White
Tiny Love Songs (All our futures are scalable)
The sounds of nature are often love songs of other species. Inspired by his own fascination with insects, White’s nocturnal light and sound installation draws our attention to the insect ecology on which we as humans depend. In this time-based work, which takes place every hour, you experience a growing chorus of sounds inspired by a very small love song: that of the mosquito. A few minutes before the whole hour, the sound and light work can be experienced. The silence that follows invites you to reflect on the fate of insects.
This work was created in collaboration with Erik Kearney (engineer).
About Neal White
Neal White has a background in art and technology. In 2004, he founded the Office of Experiment, through which he develops experimental forms of research in varying collaborations focused on our increasing techno-scientific society. His work is based on fieldwork and includes documentary forms of media, temporary interventions, and social and conceptual forms of experimentation. He has collaborated with various organizations, including the Centre for Land Use Interpretation (U.S.), Arts Catalyst (UK), and Max Planck Institute (Berlin). He was a co-founder of the art and technology group Sosa (1979-2002) and director of O+I (2007-9) (formerly Artist Placement Group). He is a Professor of Art/Science and Director of CREAM - Centre for research and education in Art & Media at the University of Westminster.
Neal White - https://nealwhite.org/Tiny-Love-Songs
Co-curator: Zone2Source
Zone2Source is an exhibition platform that develops projects exploring alternative representations of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. In exhibitions, workshops, expeditions, and discussions, they explore new representations around nature-culture relationships together with the public. Additionally, they develop long-term artistic research trajectories with various partners such as Machine Wilderness (on robotics and nature in collaboration with FoAM and Artis), Exploded View (on urban landscapes in collaboration with Clue+/Vrije Universiteit), and Land (Art) Making (a platform for land practices in collaboration with Land Art Contemporary). Initiator and artistic director Alice Smits is also involved as a researcher into contemporary art practices and anthropocene theory at the Lectorate of Art and Public Space/Rietveld Academy.
Possible Futures – Imagining Radical Assemblies -
With Imagining Radical Assemblies, Zone2Source explores what a more inclusive society in the future might look like, one where life, rather than humans, takes center stage. For centuries, we in the West have viewed ourselves as the only players, with nature serving as a backdrop for our actions. Now, as nature asserts itself onto the stage, it becomes clear that it partially determines our existence. How can we begin to see ourselves as intrinsically intertwined with everything around us? What senses do we need for this, and what do we learn from non-human knowledge? How does that change the image we have of ourselves? What if we think not from appropriation but from co-living and co-authorship? And what new values, institutions, and ethics accompany that, as we give non-human beings and things around us real agency? Art is particularly suited for experimenting with new ways of experiencing and being where the ecological crisis we find ourselves in challenges us. Zone2Source invites three artists with whom they have been working or in conversation to realize ITGWO projects that visualize the coexistence of human, animal, plant, and earth together with the public.
