Synopsis
This issue covers two exhibitions that have taken place at Witte de With in recent months. The first, Strangers and Paradise, presented the work of three artists (Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye, Nasrin Tabatabai, Gedimias Urbonas) who share a personal experience of what it means to change geographical and cultural claims. For example, the work of Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye who was born in Nigeria and educated in Scotland, has undergone two major shifts of orientation which exemplify the parallel developments that technology is bringing to society. First, a shift from the static photographic image to a narrative art deduced from the moving video image. Second, a circulation toward the meandering distribution and creation networks of electronic information. In the other exhibition, Play-Use, the notion of the prototype is central. Contrasts between pleasure and efficiency, play and productivity, knit together the contributions of the different participants. Play-Use is the prototype of a cultural institution that seeks to connect the influences of new technologies with changes in the use of objects.
The conclusion it reached is that art is more relaxed to new forms of craftsmanship than to technological development."synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.