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Framing, lines, points and planes are categories that render limits, focalization sites, barriers, and also moments when identities are determined. Together, they make up a certain field and delimit forms of representation and artworks, wrenching them from the experience of everyday life. FRAMELESS, this week’s instalment of the WRO online program, is driven by the dismissal of framing, by the (thematic) repudiation of vectors, and, consequently, by negotiations of meanings in active reception. This time, all the items have been selected from the resources of the 18th Media Art Biennale WRO, which celebrated its jubilee under the motto of CZYNNIK LUDZKI / HUMAN ASPECT.

Jerzy Nowosielski’s pixelated Nude, two people staring at it, and a smartphone that captures the scene. A white cube erected in the Four Domes Pavilion was where couch, i.e., the duet of Reiko and Hiroki Miyazaki, spent several days developing their site-specific installation in which pixels that form digital images were transferred into reality. In this way, the digitalization process was uniquely reversed, and its operative mode was woven into the framework of an artistic performance. At the same time, the whole was enframed by the gaze of the camera built into a smartphone. Consequently, Pixel Works played with various distributions of seeing – direct, quasi-mediated in Nowosielski’s pixelated painting, and mediated by the camera eye.

Emmanuel Tussore developed an installation that transports the audience to the war-ravaged Middle East with its Syrian city of Aleppo, famous for its history of soap production dating back to antiquity. The Study for a Soap is a powerful voice in the contemporary discourse on the center-periphery relations, in which dramas and death are treated as a performance watched by and through camera eyes. In Tussore’s piece, the totemically arranged screens every now and then show the viewers currently visiting the exhibit. In this way, the artist distributes the responsibility for what is going on in Aleppo among us all.

The Grass Smells so Sweet relies on the virtual reality technology, which is increasingly often used to distribute pleasure within experience-oriented economies with a view to producing the sense of anxiety and suspension. Building on the imaginations of death by shooting which proliferate on the internet, Dani Ploeger designs a realm in which we can experience a shot in the head amidst an Arcadian meadow. Ploeger’s goggles trigger intense affective responses to the experience of an event which would be lethal in real life. In the installation world, however, the shot, while momentarily terrifying and deafening, gradually fades away and ushers us back into the quotidian.

The dictionaries, correction features, and grammatical structures with which mobile devices are furnished are the resources behind Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos’s Oracle. The piece puts artificial intelligence to the test by incessantly, repeatedly clicking one of the options which the smartphone keeps updating based on the frequency of various linguistic usages. Produced in this way, the extraordinary constellation patently demonstrates that a software-powered device can uninterruptedly speak our language without any human input. At the same time, Oracle reveals an absolutely compelling point; namely, the most frequent usages are registered for phrases which concern people meeting each other in the future.

The cosmic installation of ARTSAT & SIAF LAB is a speculation on contacting an extraterrestrial civilization. A Platonic solid is used as an antenna to emit and receive radio signals of adjusted intensity, making it possible for the audience to bring their own radio devices and receive specific parameters from outer space. The Sculpture for All of the Intelligence no. 2 is founded on the sonic re-casting of the idea behind the Pioneer plaques. While the graphic letter from the 1970s was a symbolic expression and operated as a one-directional signal, the sculpture-antenna displayed at the Four Domes Pavilion is a communication medium that envisages more partnership.

An interest in biosemiotics, a discipline dedicated to the study of signs and codes produced in the biological realm, has observably been increasing in recent years. When under threat, the bacteria in our bodies may worsen our mood and disturb this symbiotic relationship. Olga Kisseleva’s EDEN works at the intersection of living organisms and Internet networks. Trees communicate with their environment by releasing micro-compounds which feed beings that coexist with them. The responses and moods of a plane tree used by Kisseleva during the 2019 WRO Biennale could be monitored by means of smartphones that received the digital signals of the tree. The EDEN plane tree can now be seen in the Szczytniki Park, and it also features in Paweł Janicki’s sound art project NOUMEN.

Frames by Nicolas Clauss is an installation that resembles boxes stacked upon each other, with quivering figures closed up in them. The eponymous frames refer to our ways of being in the world which are determined by socialization, historical conjunctures, class-related factors, and even one’s identification with one’s own figure. Collaboration could perhaps help the protagonists break out of the narrowly constraining walls, but their tiny gestures are incapable of breaching the frames at the moment. (CW)

 

 

MONDAY
couch /Reiko Miyazaki, Hiroki Miyazaki/ (JP)
Pixel Works, Monograph of the Nude
documentation of the installation
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

TUESDAY
Emmanuel Tussore (FR)
Study for a soap
documentation of the installation
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

WEDNESDAY
Dani Ploeger (NL)
The Grass Smells So Sweet
documentation of the installation
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

THURSDAY
Esmeralda Kosmatopoulos (US/FR)
Oracle
documentation of the installation
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

FRIDAY
Space-Moere Project by ARTSAT x SIAF Lab
/Akihiro Kubota, Katsuya Ishida, Daisuke Funato, Norimichi Hirakawa, Kei Komachiya/ (JP)
Sculpture for All of the Intelligence no.2 – Signals to be Discovered
documentation of the installation and an artist talk
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

SATURDAY
Olga Kisseleva (FR)
EDEN – Ethical Durable Ecology Nature
documentation of the installation
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

SUNDAY
Nicolas Clauss (FR)
Frames
documentation of the installation and an artist talk
Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT