Tuesday, October 12, 11.30am – 1.00pm
SCREENING & ARTIST TALK
(Opening event of the online exhibition and project Aquaphobia: Fear of Water)
Jakob Steensen (artist, Berlin) in conversation with Daniel Birnbaum (director and curator, Acute Art), introduced and moderated by Cristina Baldacci (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) and Valeria Facchin (producer and independent researcher, London). www.aquaphobia.world
How can immersive technologies help us embrace a more resilient future?
For the Aquaphobia: Fear of Water online exhibition launch, this talk will explore the possibilities offered by immersive technologies in pre-/re- enacting endangered ecosystems and possible future scenarios taking as a starting point Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s practice and his 2017 VR work Aquaphobia.
Aquaphobia: Fear of Water was specially conceived for the Anthropocene Campus Venice, in collaboration with Steensen, with the support of the Danish Arts Foundation. www.aquaphobia.world
Jakob Kudsk Steensen
is an artist and director working with environmental storytelling through 3d animation, sound and immersive installations. He creates poetic interpretations about overlooked natural phenomena through collaborations with field biologists, composers and writers. Projects are based on extensive fieldwork. Steensen was a finalist for the Future Generation Art Prize at the 2019 Venice Biennale. He received the Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in 2019 to create his work The Deep Listener with Google Arts and Culture. He is the recipient of the best VR graphics for RE-ANIMATED (2019) at the Cinequest Festival for Technology and Cinema, the Prix du Jury (2019) at Les Rencontres Arles, the Webby Award – People’s Choice VR (2018), and the Games for Change Award – Most Innovative (2018), among others.
Daniel Birnbaum
is the director and curator of Acute Art. He was the former Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Among his most recent projects as a curator are the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005), Airs de Paris (with Christine Macel) at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2007), the 2nd Yokohama Triennial (2008), and Zero (with Tijs Visser) at Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin, 2015). In 2009, he was Director of the 53rd Venice Biennale. Birnbaum co-authored, together with Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Spacing Philosophy: Lyotard and the Idea of the Exhibition (Berlin, 2019).
Cristina Baldacci
is a Contemporary Art Historian currently Senior Researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research interests focus mainly on the archive as a metaphor and art form; appropriation, montage, and ‘re-’ practices; image theory; sculpture and installation art; art in the Anthropocene. Among her recent publications are the monograph Archivi impossibili: un’ossessione dell’arte contemporanea (2016/2019), and the forthcoming co-edited volumes Over and Over and Over Again: Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory (with Clio Nicastro and Arianna Sforzini), On Reenactment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools (with Susanne Franco).
Valeria Facchin
is a producer, cultural strategist and independent researcher based in London. With a focus on visual studies, biology and AI, her work explores the relationship between bodies, technologies and future ecosystems. She has held curatorial positions, among the others, at Fiorucci Art Trust (UK), Science Museum (UK), Somerset House (UK) and La Biennale (IT). She is the co-founder of W21 | Women 21st Century.
