Experimenta Recharge (2014-2016)

Experimenta Recharge: 6th International Biennial of Media Art toured Australia in 2014–2016.

Experimenta Recharge presents the work of artists who employ, critique and experiment with media and technology. The exhibition’s thematic and title, Recharge, focuses attention on artists whose work is inspired by and entangled with the past.

By listening, watching, thinking and making, artists recharge knowledge and meaning systems, reinvigorating these systems or radically transforming them. By documenting current practices, Biennials can ferment future developments for the artistic community and entice renewed curiosity from audiences.

The strength of Experimenta Recharge is its rich engagement opportunities and co-creation approaches. Artists Leisa Shelton and Cake Industries accompanied their pieces to each venue in order to work directly with local audiences to realise their works throughout the duration of the tour. Leisa Shelton’s Mapping Australian Media Art invited audiences through direct conversation, to contribute to an archive of memories of seminal moments in Australian media art. Whilst Cake Industries’ Simulacrum engaged with 15 members from each gallery community. These participants had their portraits scanned and 3D printed with the outcomes being incorporated into the artwork on display.

Other commissioned artworks included: Magister Ludi, by Christy Dena (QLD); Tele Visions Afterlude by Televisions: Alex White and Emma Ramsay (NSW); The Contamination of Alice: Instance #8  by Svenja Kratz (QLD); RL2000 by  Abel Korinsky (Germany).

 

Key exhibition staff included:

Artistic Director: Jonathan Parsons
Associate Curators: Elise Routledge and Lubi Thomas

Executive Director: Amelia Bartak
Artistic Director: Jonathan Parsons
Registrar / Tour Manager: Lynn Mowson
Program Manager: Elise Routledge
Marketing and Development Manager: Bettina Garnier

 

 

 

 

Experimenta Recharge presented the work of artists who employ, critique and experiment with media and technology. The exhibition’s thematic and title, Recharge, focuses attention on artists whose work is inspired by and entangled with the past.

Recharge asks: does knowledge change when it is presented in different technological forms and cultural contexts? Through processes of experimentation, and by producing unconventional perspectives, can artists illuminate knowledge for new generations? Can an artwork lead us to new modes of consciousness?

Media art was born from developments in computer technology that made possible a far wider interplay between disparate technologies and disciplines due to computer processing power. For this reason, media art is inherently multidisciplinary. Recharge features artworks that draw from photography, biology, sculpture and installation, electromagnetics, sound art, robotics, gaming, dance, the world-wide-web, performance, programming, animation, film, video, and analogue television. The exhibition includes works by more than 20 acclaimed Australian and international artists, and five new works commissioned for the biennial. The artworks in Recharge enrich the exhibition with a number of sub-themes, including portraiture; the ownership of knowledge; understandings of time – scientific, spiritual and bodily; and the relationship between communication technology and the archiving of information.

Artistic Director: Jonathan Parsons
Associate Curators: Elise Routledge and Lubi Thomas