bangaloREsidency-Expanded Virtual 2020 / Digital Residency

Announcing a digital residency programme, initiated out of a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, Walkin Studios Bangalore and Netzwerk Medien Kunst // C. Rockefeller Center for the Contemporary Arts, Dresden, Germany. This is the forerunner for a larger collaboration starting 2021 under the banner of the bangaloREsidency, involving sustained artistic exchange between Bangalore and Dresden.

In these very difficult times for artists and their exhibition projects and independent research, thanks to widespread cancellations due to lockdowns and work/travel restrictions, we want to encourage artistic production and reflection about the present structure and circumstances of our underlying operating system, the so-called consciousness.

Who can apply: Artists or artist groups from Karnataka and Kerala with a professional background, preferably media art, conceptual art, photography, video

What will the grant comprise of: 3 projects will be selected by an international jury, each project will receive INR 50,000 for the realisation of the proposed project

Where will it be shown: The project will be presented at the Museum Technische Sammlungen in Dresden, Germany as part of an international media art exhibition

Open Call for Artworks <media art>

Deadline: August 15, 2020

Selection: August 24, 2020

Project realisation: August 27 – October 27, 2020

Exhibition opening: November 13, 2020

For this Open Call we will prioritise references to South Asian philosophy, spirituality or anthropology; and explorations of the context technology plays within this paradigm.

Submit your application via email by August 15, 2020 to residency-bangalore@goethe.de.

Please include a project outline, a short CV and references to your artistic work and practice, preferably in PDF Format. If your file size exceeds 10 MB please use a file transfer hosting service such as Wetransfer or Dropbox and include the link to your files in the application.

Exhibition:
The title of the project for 2020 is MIND OVER MATTER, an English expression that can be compared to the German folk axiom DER WILLE VERSETZT BERGE <Pure willpower can move mountains>. The phrase is also used in parapsychology to describe paranormal phenomena such as psychokinesis. In the context of the exhibition and the lecture programme, which will be embedded in the conference DATEN-SPUREN of the Chaos Computer Club Dresden, questions of consciousness research, machine learning and the structure of self and self-experience will be investigated in particular. Since time immemorial, these questions have been projected in the context of science fiction literature, and film series such as Matrix or Westworld into futuristic settings, which try to solve the question of how mind and consciousness phenomena can develop and manifest itself within complex collections of matter, composed of the smallest atomic components by means of advanced technology. This raises several basic philosophical questions about the structure of being and time, which will be explored by means of technological and artistic experimental arrangements. Media art has been dealing with this kind of complex of questions since the outset, and in 2020 it is particularly relevant to reflect and speculate on the development of consciousness, both individual and collective.

The Technische Sammlungen in Dresden, which will be the venue for the exhibition with the Vernissage scheduled for November 13, 2020 is especially suitable as an exhibition venue for this nature of questioning, since physical and technical research on this complex of issues is also pursued here in other formats and attracts a very mixed audience of young and experienced visitors with an interest in technology predominates.

The depiction of the artistic dimension of this question can be particularly successful here, since the combination of media technology, information processing, perception research and cybernetics has been the central starting point for various educational and experimental formats in this museum for years.

Documentation of past exhibitions of the series Netzwerk Medien Kunst in Technische Sammlungen:
dresdencontemporaryart.com/nmk-2017-galerie/
dresdencontemporaryart.com/nmk-2018-galerie/