Repairing the Present :REWORLD :REWILD :RETOOL

As a corollary to 21 international residencies developed within the framework of S+T+ARTS Regional Centers and its Repairing the Present programme, a triptych of exhibitions and a series of accompanying events will be presented throughout the fall of 2022 at Ars Electronica (Linz), MEET (Milan), MAXXI (Rome), ZKM (Karlsruhe), and CINQUANTENAIRE (Brussels). Enabling artists and creative agents to develop their research in collaboration with innovation catalysts, clean tech hubs, and art institutions across Europe, each of the S+T+ARTS Residencies within Repairing the Present, points to an EU Green Deal or a New European Bauhaus goal and reflects pan-European or global challenges that require situated and collaborative approaches.

An urgent call to collective inspiration and joint creative effort, Repairing the Present fosters dialogue between science, technology, and the arts as key players in the exploration of new scenarios for ecosystemic improvement. The very notion of repairing the present evokes a hands-on attitude to the immediacy of contemporary issues—from climate change to post-pandemic social dynamics, decolonial processes, and identity politics—while emphasising the importance of anticipating challenges and opportunities in the years, decades and centuries to come starting in the now. The Repairing the Present exhibition series :REWORLD :REWILD :RETOOL, curated by Manuel Cirauqui, explores the productive tension between the urge to project and the urge to care for; between the presentness of the living and the futurity of technological development; between the immediacy of bricolage and the mediation of prototypes in our path to enhanced co-existence.

In a time of recurring uses of the particle re- as expressions of our longing for renewal, the quasi-archaic sustainability motto of „reduce, reuse, recycle“ has been replaced by a myriad of efforts to reinvent, reset, rename, restore, rethink, re-everything…

The Repairing the Present exhibition series plays on this theme by means of three words that attempt to encompass the complexity and novelty of trans-disciplinary, art-driven innovation as a response to the insufficiencies of the industrialised economy and its extractive models. A central idea to the entirety of the series is that not only do specific current affairs require fixing, but also our sense of presentness, our connection with and among ourselves in the present time, demands repair and redefinition. As we synch back with the existence and natural rhythms of our planet, :REWORLD :REWILD :RETOOL appear as both operational and speculative principles to produce sustainable imaginaries of harmonious living. While each show will be tailored to its site and display a singular arrangement of works, the manifold aspects of Repairing the Present’s residencies will become apparent as they activate diverse temporalities and materialities, sometimes allowing one project to manifest itself in multiple forms.

Exhibitions Venues

:REWORLD

Dates: 4th-30th October
Venue: MEET Digital Culture Center, Milan
Artists: Wassim Alsindi and 0x Salon, Kat Austen and Fara Peluso, Samira Benini Allaouat, Felix Gaedtke, Josef Hovadik, Studio Lapatsch | Unger & Johanna Schmeer, Studio Above&Below, and Sissel Marie Tonn.

As a first iteration in the series, :REWORLD will be presented at
Milan’s digital arts center MEET from October 4th through October
30th. The exhibition addresses world-building or worlding as a
core activity in advanced digital culture—an emerging domain of
constructed reality that is starting to face its own sustainability
challenges and contradictions. While the blockchain economy
seems to go through a critical moment of self-awareness, mixed realities (XR) reveal an unparalleled potential to provide critical
visualisations of ecosystems outside our bodies and also to map
out the emotional and nervous entanglements inside of them. :REWORLD will follow the investigations of artists working
in domains such as immunology, biomaterials, the crypto
economy, speculative design, and cultural critique with a variety
of technologies and material languages.

:REWILD

Dates: 15th October-13th November
Venue: MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome
Artists: Gregor Krpič, Samira Benini Allaouat, Penelope Cain, Filip Van Dingenen and David Shongo, Susi Gutsche, Olga Kisseleva, Adriana Knouf, Lugh O’Neill, and Studio Lapatsch | Unger & Johanna Schmeer.

Beyond the visceral need to restore feral patterns into tamed ecosystems, :REWILD emphasises possible contaminations of the natural and the synthetic, the artificial and the organic, the animal and the mineral realms, toward renewed forms of living in the Anthropocene. Dowsing, seeking a reconnection with the nonhuman, mapping the dynamics of lichen or the twisted paths of urban waste, the artists engage with the land, biotope, and outer spaces.

:RETOOL

Dates: 18th November-18th December
Venue: ZKM, Karlsruhe
Artists: Wassim Alsindi and 0x Salon, Markus Jeschaunig, Grow Your Own Cloud, Hypercomf, Lugh O’Neill, Olga Kisseleva, Studio Lapatsch Unger & Johanna | Schmeer, Adriana Knouf and Unit Lab.

In light of accelerating emergencies, a growing lack of resources and the complex patterns of the unpredictability of global dynamics, RETOOL gathers creative contributions of resident artists and studios to our tooling up. As pandemic breakouts and eco-catastrophes teach us to live under the pressure of future fractures, new forms of learning and tooling become essential to survival and are presented in their performative dimension, from invention processes to experimentation and rehearsal. This presentation will also include a new interactive model developed by STATE Studio Berlin.

About Repairing the Present

Repairing the Present is the common mission of 12 Regional S+T+ARTS Centers. The project addresses the unintended consequences of steadfast technological development resulting in the European continent’s present social, economic, and environmental challenges by proposing ways of tapping into the potential of artists to act as catalysts for change and actively contribute to innovation.

The Regional S+T+ARTS Centers have hosted 21 S+T+ARTS Residencies in 11 different locations, offering artists the chance to develop artworks in collaboration with regional business, industry and research leaders.

The S+T+ARTS residencies explore the possibility of Repairing the Present through resource, urban, ICT & art-powered transformations at a regional level. By creating the context for innovation processes at the nexus of science, technology and the arts, the projects encourage a critique of the present, the exploration beyond its current limitations and the reimagination of other possible futures. While the challenges addressed by each of the residencies are pan-European or global, the solutions require a focus on specific local problems. Thus, Repairing the Present thinks globally but acts locally.

Find more information about Repairing the Present :REWORLD :REWILD and :RETOOL in the press kit.