[spectre] Fwd: NEW NOW Festival for Digital Arts 2023 opens in Essen, Germany

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Betreff: NEW NOW Festival for Digital Arts 2023 opens in Essen, Germany
Datum: 	Thu, 25 May 2023 17:01:31 +0000
Von: 	e-flux Agenda <art-agenda at mailer.e-flux.com>
			

NEW NOW Festival for Digital Arts

Zollverein Foundation

June 1–August 6, 2023

*Opening weekend:* June 1–4

*Hypernatural Forces exhibition:* June 2–August 6

*Conference:* June 2, 10am–10pm

*Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage*
Mixing Plant
45141 Essen
Germany

https://newnow-festival.com

The NEW NOW Festival for Digital Arts will take place from June 1 till 
August 6. Entitled /Hypernatural Forces/, the exhibition in the Mixing 
Plant and the accompanying events will focus on the powerful 
interactions between nature and digitality.

Developed especially for the exhibition, all the artworks in the Mixing 
Plant are world premieres. As part of the NEW NOW residency, seven 
artists were invited to develop projects for /Hypernatural Forces/. Over 
a period of seven months, they intensively researched, investigated and 
engaged with the locale and history of the Zollverein UNESCO World 
Heritage Site and the architecture of the Mixing Plant. In addition to 
the resident artists, other artists have also been invited to show new 
works. The festival is directed by Jasmin Grimm.

*/Hypernatural Forces/:*/**/June 2–June 8, 2013
Exhibition with world premieres by AATB, Daniel Franke, Eva 
Papamargariti, Haha Wang, Jana Kerima Stolzer and Lex Rütten, Pinar 
Yoldaş, Sabrina Ratté, as well as Ali Phi and Cinzia Campolese. Opening 
on June 1 at 8:30pm.

We live in a time of hypernature. Technical knowledge and organic life 
are merging in new ways. Boundaries between reality and simulation are 
blurring. New dependencies and symbioses are appearing. Nature itself is 
becoming art. Over a period of nine weeks, the exhibition /Hypernatural 
Forces/ will show artistic positions around the theme of hypernature in 
the Mixing Plant from June 2 till August 6, 2023.

Visitors enter the territory of a roaming robot pack. Listen to the 
beguiling song of invasive plants. Or wander through deserted landscapes 
of electronic waste and organic fiction. At Zollverein, they can 
experience how artificial intelligence (re-)interprets the site—once the 
largest colliery in the world—and generates new worlds from it. NEW NOW 
renders visible which ecosystems, biotopes and cycles emerge when 
plants, animals, minerals, technology, and humans intertwine in new 
ways. The exhibition is accompanied by an interactive audio walk 
designed by the Körperfunkkollektiv. It invites visitors to reflect on 
the interplay between humans, nature and technology—and to dive into the 
exhibited artworks and themes.

*Immersive Sound Night: *June 1 from 9pm
With France Jobin & Markus Heckmann, Myriam Bleau, Katatonic Silentio. 
Visitors are invited to immerse in electronic-audiovisual soundscapes 
with the Immersive Sound Night during the inaugural evening on the June 
1. In collaboration with MUTEK Montréal, an international festival of 
digital creativity and electronic music, NEW NOW presents international 
artists who will fill the Mixing Plant with experimental electronic 
sounds and visuals.

*Conference: *June 2, 10am–10pm
With Anja Schürmann, Anna-Verena Nosthoff, Daniel Franke, Daniel Hengst, 
diffrakt—zentrum für theoretische peripherie, Eva Papamargariti, Felix 
Maschewski, Franziska Barth, Geert Lovink, Hannah Wallenfels, Jana 
Kerima Stolzer and Lex Rütten, Kathrin Yacavone, Lyndsey Walsh, Manischa 
Eichwalder, Manuel van der Veen, Markus Rautzenberg, Mona Leinung, MONOM 
Studios, Pınar Yoldaş, Rafaël Rozendaal, Rafael Dernbach, Sabrina Ratté, 
Sam Balfus, Tabitha Swanson, Total Refusal

The conference can be experienced both on site and as a livestream 
online and will be available with English and German translation.

A conference on /Hypernatural Forces/ will take place on June 2 as a 
discursive element of NEW NOW. For a whole day, we will discuss and 
experience how digitalisation is changing our understanding of nature. 
To this end, international and local artists will be in conversation 
with scientists, activists and all other interested parties at Zollverein.

Is the digital a hypernatural force? How are digital technologies 
changing our understanding of nature? And what are the ecological 
effects of digitalisation? These questions are at the centre of the NEW 
NOW conference. Without computer models, knowledge about the climate 
crisis would be limited. And with the help of artificial intelligence 
biological organisms can be recombined and speculative worlds created.

Concurrently, digital technologies are increasingly criticised for their 
role in destroying ecosystems and exacerbating the climate crisis. We 
want to discuss how the Digital Arts are exploring new natures and 
images of nature. Part of the conference is a symposium by the Institute 
for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI) as a contribution to 
their annual theme “More or Less” with the title “Digital Relations and 
New Environments”, which will analyse novel and unfinished processes of 
negotiation between humans, nature and technology. A performative 
evening programme explores “hypernatures” in an artistic way.

Participation is free. Please register.

*NEW NOW *is a project of the Zollverein Foundation. The Festival for 
Digital Arts is funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the 
State of North Rhine‐Westphalia and is an anchor project of the 
initiative "Neue Künste Ruhr".