Ad Hominem is a video game that philosophically interrogates utopian thinking. In a first-person narrative, the player takes on the role of “Change”, an old revolutionary time-traveler who returns to their hometown seeking recognition for past achievements. There, Change encounters four individuals who embody the four types of utopias as theorized by scholar Sofie Verraest. In their doctoral dissertation, Eutopia Unbound: Imagining Good Places in Narratives from 1945 to the Present, Verraest defines four utopian tropes: communitarianism, futurism, isolationism and hedonism.

Going beyond the pure imagination of collective futures, Ad Hominem simulates a utopian ideal by actively inviting the public to discover their individual positioning within this maze of contrasting ideas and to envision their future selves by engaging with or challenging old ideas about the future. By confronting players with the inevitable connection between our past, present and future, Alex Verhaest encourages reflection on our present selves and an understanding of the deep responsibility our actions hold for collective futures.

We invite you to join us for the opening of the exhibition Fin et début / Einde en begin. Challenging long-held notions of human singularity, excessive progress and growth, Fin et début / Einde en begin redefines care and resilience as ecological and relational structures connecting humans, nature and technology.
On 6 November, iMAL will open its doors to the public offering a diverse and engaging program including guided tours, performances, studio visits and panel discussions and artists talks.

Opening 6 November 2024
Panel Discussion: 17:00 - 18:00
Official Opening: 19:00- 22:00
More info

iMAL
Alex Verhaest

During a residency in Shanghai, Teun Vonk discovered by chance that it eased his stressed body and mind to apply physical pressure to his body. Contrary to what one may expect, the registration of sensory input does not improve in a heightened state of sensitivity, such as stress. Such a state serves the evolutionary purpose by filtering out irrelevant information, only focusing on the accurate response: fight or flight. When experiencing such a state, applying pressure to the body has a strong stress-relieving effect. Participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states

With The Physical Mind, Vonk seeks to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects. The participant lays down in between, is lifted up and gently squeezed between the two inflatable objects. The lifting creates an unstable feeling, a slightly stressful sensation that is directly contrasted with a secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects

Paradoxically, this forced physical stimulus reduces feelings anxiety and paradoxically stress and the flight- or fight-response disappear. The participant experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli, normalized alertness and a calm state of mind. The positive effects of this increased receptivity can continue for a few hours after the experience. The installation evokes empathy in bystanders who witness a participant undergo the experience.

Teun Vonk
Chroniques Biennale

Chroniques Biennale 
Thursday 7 November 2024 - 19:00 & 21:30
Friche La Belle de Mai - Grand Plateau
Marseille (F)

Unidram Theaterfestival
Saturday 9 November 2024 - 20:15
Fabrik Potsdam (D)

1 drop 1000 years

Homeostasis is a fundamental process for the balance of life. By allowing an organism to maintain an appropriate temperature according to the conditions in which it evolves, it is both a symbol of adaptation and durability. 

The Global Conveyor Belt is a huge ocean stream called the thermohaline loop, it stirs up the waters of the five oceans and conveys heat on a global scale. Carried by the currents of this deep circulation loop, a drop of water crosses the globe in less than a thousand years and, in so doing, sculpts the world: with it travels nutrients, heat and animals, thus regulating the entire climate and ecosystems of our planet. We know for sure that this current has been slowing down abnormally for more than 200 years because of human activity, and if this deregulation keeps on going it could lead to a worldwide collapse of life through climate change. Water is the matter of life.

Seeking to highlight the finesse of our homeostatic system and the fragility of its balance, the artist proposes an artistic interpretation of these intimate and global currents that happens to be essential to the survival of our species and its environment.

Martin Messier
Chroniques Biennale
Unidram Theaterfestival

Cycles is an installation where everyone is invited to become aware of the relationships linking cyclical and unpredictable phenomena. These dialogues are also found in the sound space: the tuned engines envelop the music diffused with their elusive timbres and draw this landscape in which the harmony is built as much by its power as by its vulnerability. 

Martin Messier
Arts Korea Lab

With the death of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho the music world lost one of the great figureheads of her generation. Threnody - as the name suggests - is about this farewell. It originally started as a tribute to Saariaho who was also for Annelies Van Parys an important example as a leading lady composer. The piece thus inscribes itself is in a long tradition of Déplorations like the very famous “Nymphes des bois” (Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem) by Josquin Desprez. Van Parys used several quotes from his Déploration that on some instances in the piece is shimmering through like a distant and fragile echo of the past. While writing the piece, she got confronted with another, much closer loss, which reflects in the echo of the quote “vous avez perdu votre bon père”.

Next to Threnody of Van Parys, there is music of Saariaho, Venegas and Jacobs.

November Music - Tickets
Annelies Van Parys

Werktank is a production platform for media art. Their main mission is the realisation and distribution of installation art that investigates the relation between technology and perception. They are currently welcoming Navid Navab as their resident artist. Navid is working in Leuven on the postproduction of 'Organism' and 'Excitable Chaos'.

After an inspiring performance ar Ars Electronica, Navid Navab is bringing his mesmerising work to Werktank in Leuven (B).

On 15 November 2024 you can witness both installations live, with Navid performing a short version (25 min.) of 'Organism: In Turbulence' in person.
Studio visits are available from 13 to 17 November 2024.
If you wan to attend the performance or arrange a visit, please send us an e-mail: ischa@artoffice.be

Navid Navab is recognized as a media-alchemist and anti-disciplinary composer with a background in biomedical sonification. Navab’s work illuminates the intersection of investigative arts, media archeology, and philosophical biology and is characterized by sculpturous engagement with transductive structures of liveliness. His recent creations orchestrate sensory attunement to the dissipative formations and uncanny forms of order that flow from machinic engagement with excitable dynamics of matter.

Performance [Organism: In Turbulence]: solo concert with a century-old pipe organ prepared robotically to sound turbulent patterning. Organism destabilizes the socio-historical tonality of the pipe organ to liberate its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression. During the performance, shifting metastable states allow for energetic thresholds of the organ to rapidly fall into and out of compatibility with one another. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.

Installation showcase [Organism + Excitable Chaos]: the chaotic motion of Excitable Chaos, a robotically-steered triple pendulum, drives the aerodynamic thresholds of Organism, a robotically-prepared century-old pipe organ. Excitable Chaos produces chaotic patterns by modulating the mass/orbital relations between its 3 moving arms. The generative movement of Excitable Chaos conducts Organism’s sonic behavior. The resulting turbulent sonifications of chaos serve as meditations on the cascading sense of more-than-oneness that develops spontaneously in nature, at the brink of unfolding futures.

Credits:
Navid Navab: concept, composition, sculpture, programming, design, electronics, sonification, performance 
Garnet Willis: engineering, design, sculpture, electronics
Camille Desjardins: technical and fabrication assistance
Support: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Le Salon Richmond 1861

Navid Navab
Werktank

Challenges in classical music: they exist! In her project ‘Fast nur Luft’ (‘Almost Air Only’), renowned recorder player Tomma Wessel challenges contemporary composers to write a piece, each time focusing on a different aspect of the recorder: Annelies Van Parys breathes new life into the Baroque flattement technique, Frederik Neyrinck explores the rich possibilities of the glissando and Marta Gentilucci experiments with virtuoso Flatterzunge effects. In doing so, Wessel paves the way for an innovative and adventurous recorder repertoire.

Annelies Van Parys
Muziekcentrum De Bijloke

POLYGON 2 - Permanent installation commissioned by Tromsø County for Ishavsbyen skole.  
A network of aluminium pipes slowly stretches and contracts in the hall of a new high school in Tromsø, where students are following courses in mechanical design, industrial production, maritime navigation and more. 

Lawrence Malstaf

Two large kittiwake hotels are under construction for Tromsø municipality and will be installed in the museum park of Tromsø Kunstforeningen in January 20225. They will host up to 1000 nests for this  endangered species of seagulls that are seeking shelter in coastal cities in the arctic due to climate change. 

Lawrence Malstaf

The exhibition The Presence of Absence occupies the entire exhibition space of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, covering 1,000 square meters. Thematically, the exhibition revolves around humanity’s timeless engagement with the idea of transience and its forms of representation in art. The title refers to matter as a presence where traces of the living are inscribed. Vital energy is powerful yet fleeting. It leaves a mark, a trace that, captured in matter, can endure over time.

The exhibition juxtaposes exhibits spatially, presenting the abstract idea of a “presence of the absent” from both artistic and scientific perspectives within an expanded conceptual space. The curatorial narrative ventures as far as the astrophysical phenomenon of the black hole. Thoughts on the expanse and time, and the infinity of the universe lie beyond our human imagination, yet simultaneously raise the question of who we are. Our planet hovers somewhere between immensity and eternity. And for a fleeting moment, our own lives open a window.

The self experiences the wonder of reality through the senses of our bodies. These consist of the elements of exploded stars in the cosmos: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, or the carbon in our cells. In fleeting moments, we connect with eternity and give traces of being a material form. Art is one way to do that.

Curated by Franziska Nori, with scientific support from Anita Lavorano and Laura Perrone

SHRINK 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.

Lawrence Malstaf
Frankfurter Kunstverein

tele-present wind (Mars version) 2024 is a collaboration between David Bowen and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This installation consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed like a field of grass in a gallery. The mechanisms will tilt, move and sway based on data collected from the wind sensor on the Perseverance Mars rover.

Dr. José A Rodríguez-Manfredi the lead scientist on the wind sensors on Perseverance assisted in collecting the wind data for the project. That data will be mapped to the movement of the mechanisms. Thus, the individual components of the installation here on earth will move in unison as they mimic the direction and intensity of the wind from another planet. As it monitors data from this remote and distant location, the system will relay a physical representation of the dynamic and fluid environmental conditions on Mars.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
PST ART
New York Times

Phantom Vision uses the latest advances in science and technology to provide insights into brainwave patterns, dreams visualized by artificial intelligence, nature's hidden communication networks, and layers of our reality that go beyond the limits of everyday perception through the works, interactive installations and ever-changing projections of more than 35 international and Hungarian artists.

"If we can capture the rippling of a lake, can we also capture howling wind and billowing fog using digital art? David Bowen’s sculptures capture a fleeting moment in the ever-changing pulse of water waves, freezing it in space and time. Using a CNC router, the artist transforms the dynamic, fluid movement of water into a static, three-dimensional form, paradoxically capturing the constant flux of nature. The works encourage the viewer to reflect on the futility of artistic efforts to capture the essence of ephemeral natural phenomena and transform them into an artistic experience by digitally capturing a single moment of infinite wave motion. The intricate, minute details and undulating surface of the sculpture serve as a tangible imprint of the power of water and the complexity of wave motion, juxtaposing the ephemeral with the permanent. The precise geographical coordinates in the title refer to Lake Superior in North America and associate these frozen waves with a specific location, further emphasizing the tension between the universal nature of water movement and the singularity of a single moment in time and space. The sculptures exemplify the artist’s broader artistic practice, which offers unique perspectives on the relationship between nature, technology and human perception." Barnabás Bencsik

46°41'58.365" lat. -91°59'49.0128" long. @ 30m refers to the source location where the water surface data was collected for this series. An autonomous aerial vehicle hovering 30 meters above Lake Superior captured still images of the water’s surface. 
For this series of five, the vehicle was deployed to the same location on different days and in different weather conditions. The collected images were converted into three-dimensional models using open source software.
The models were then carved with a CNC router into a series of clear acrylic cylinders. This process captured the dynamic movements of the waves and ripples from a specific time and location and suspended this ever-changing water pattern into a static transparent form. 

Light Art Museum Budapest