<nettime> Synthetic_Times: Media_Art_China_2008

[z <z {AT} parsons.edu>]

Synthetic Times - Media Art China 2008

A Beijing Olympics Cultural Project, an International New Media Art  
Exhibition
National Art Museum of China (NAMOC)
No. 1 Wusi Street Dongcheng District
Beijing 100010 P.R. China
http://www.mediartchina.org



Pre-Exhibition Symposium to Kickoff at  "Modern Mondays"
April 14 -15, 2008
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Parsons The New School for Design
EYEBEAM



June 10, 2008 - July 3, 2008

During the summer of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the National Art  
Museum of China will present ?SYNTHETIC TIMES ? Media Art China 2008?  
in its current location at the center of Beijing. NAMOC is the only  
national art museum in China that is dedicated to the research,  
presentation and promotion of modern and contemporary arts. ?SYNTHETIC  
TIMES ? Media Art China 2008?, scheduled from June 10th to July 3rd,  
will be one of the most important cultural events leading up to the  
Olympic Games in Beijing.

The exhibition will occupy approximately 4500 square meters (48000  
square feet) of the museum gallery space and an additional outdoor  
area of ca. 2000 square meters (22000 square feet). The  
internationally recognized Dutch architecture firm NOX/Lars Spuybroek  
will architecturally transform the entire first floor of the museum in  
response to the nature of the works on display. A full-color catalogue  
will be co-published by NAMOC and the MIT Press with international  
distribution. An online forum dedicated to the discourse of the  
respective exhibition themes and beyond will be created prior to the  
opening of the event. A pre-exhibition symposium will be held in New  
York City in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, Parsons the  
New School for Design, and EYEBEAM. Several satellite exhibition  
venues have been planned within the greater Beijing art community. In  
addition, a number of special evening events during the opening days  
of the exhibition are conceived to celebrate the diversity of digital  
arts.

The exhibition is organized around four distinctive yet interrelated  
themes that testify to the bittersweetness of man?s incessant and  
obsessive pursuit of an ideal world through artistic intervention into  
media and communications technologies as well as bio-cultural spheres.

Works in the exhibition explore the trajectory of unruly visions from  
the desire to transcend the corporal to the construction of synthetic  
worlds, from telematic dreaming to transgenic hybrids, challenging the  
very notion of what we know as reality and what is perceived as being  
human. In this laborious yet romantic process, the tension between man  
and machine, the cooperation and hostility between the physical and  
the digital, manifest the perpetual struggle in which control and  
submission, exploitation and anti-manipulation are the rubricated  
dynamics that insinuate complex human conditions.

A selection of international artists, both established and emerging,  
from twenty-nine countries will present to the Chinese audience a  
stunning battery of significant media installation works, ranging from  
telematic presence to bio-cultural hybrids; from sensible machines to  
generative systems; from robotic interventions to audio-video  
spectacles; from immersive environments to monumental structures. The  
works on view highlight the most cutting edge artistic imaginations  
since the dawn of the new millennium, proposing new sensibilities for  
cultural artifacts. Many of the works featured will be world premieres.

To complement the theme exhibitions, The Museum of Modern Art will  
contribute a special screening program consisting of seminal video art  
works. Ars Electronica presents the award-winning Animation Festival,  
and the European Media Art Festival will produce an edition of  
International Emerging Video Art. The exhibition is envisaged as a  
landmark event in the history of contemporary Chinese art, dedicated  
to embracing the most innovative artistic production and theorization  
to date, and aspiring to foster and advance new modes of thinking and  
novel ways of artistic engagement, reflecting and critiquing an  
increasingly technologically immersed society and global cultural  
landscape.

For detailed information, please visit http://www.mediartchina.org

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