Talk
May 1, 2015, 7pm
In parallel with Hito Steyerl's exhibition at Artists Space, Metahaven will present a lecture titled After Effects.
In response to After Effects, Metahaven will be joined by writer Joanne McNeil and artist Melanie Gilligan, who will each present short talks reflecting on the intersection of these ideas with aspects of their own work.
Metahaven is an Amsterdam-based design studio founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden. The studio's practice is propositional and investigative, articulating the manner in which design and the mediation of information plays an integral role in contemporary notions of identity and politics. Their production spans branding strategies, to publications, texts, exhibitions, merchandising, music videos, films and talks.
After Effects addresses geopolitics, internet, and propaganda, specifically considering how contemporary "ideological twists and turns are not located in (geo)political protocols but in the infrastructure, hardware, and software that are used to bring these to a global audience." Taking in the "media critique" of Russia's international news channel RT, Metahaven raises questions as to the inadvertent alliances that arise across this new cross-technological and cinematic topology. After Effects was written in the context of The Sprawl, an internet-based series of short documentary films directed by Metahaven, produced in collaboration with Lighthouse and supported by The Space, London.
Metahaven is a studio for design, research, and art, based in Amsterdam and founded Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden. In March 2015 with Sternberg Press, it published Black Transparency: The Right To Know In the Age of Mass Surveillance, which engages transparency’s connections to design, architecture, and pop culture. Recent solo exhibitions include Islands in the Cloud (MoMA PS1) and Black Transparency (Bureau Europa, Maastricht), both 2013. In the same year the studio was also awarded the bi-annual Cobra Art Prize and Icon magazine distinguished Metahaven with its Design Studio of the Year award.
Joanne McNeil is a writer based in New York. She is currently a 2015 fellow at the Cal & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation, where she received the Arts Writing Fellowship Award to an emerging writer in digital arts. McNeill is a contributing editor for The Message, the technology-focused opinion magazine published by Medium. She was recently an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam, and is formerly the editor of Rhizome.org. Her writing has appeared in catalog essays and the 2014 publication Art and the Internet (published by Black Dog Publishing), and in numerous journals and magazines including Domus, frieze, Wired, and n+1.
Melanie Gilligan is an artist and writer based in New York and London. The Common Sense, Gilligan's latest episodic video work is a three-part project presented across multiple institutions. The final installment is presently on view at de Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam, following exhibitions at Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory in Utrecht and De Hallen Haarlem. Previous solo exhibitions include Chisenhale Gallery, London; Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Banff Centre, Banff; and Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf. Gilligan’s critical writing on art, politics and economics has appeared in publications such as The Market (Whitechapel), and Immaterial Economies (Fillip), as well as in journals and magazines including Grey Room, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Mute magazine.
