New Obsolescence – Critical Media Conversations with Beta Festival
When: Thursday, November 7 2024, 11am-4:30pm
Where: Fire Station Artists Studios, 9-12 Buckingham Street Lower, Dublin 1
Cost: €25
New Obsolescence – Critical Media Conversations is presented by Fire Station Artists Studiosas part of Beta Festival, with guests Benjamin Gaulon/NØ SCHOOL, Brian Castriota, Rob Collins, Aisling Phelan, Amanda Rice, aemi, D.A.T.A. and more
Planned obsolescence with its socio-economic and environmental consequences is an intrinsic part of our lives, undeniably linked to overconsumption within neo-liberal extractivist economies.
Obsolescence in the arts is often discussed retroactively as an institutional concern of preservation and access. Issues such as the environmental toll of planned obsolescence, the demands of current technological frames, and the implications of preserving and displaying time-based and digital artworks in the future can also be projected onto contemporary arts practice and education.
Providing a critical view that counters technocratic discourses surrounding digital media in the visual arts, this one day event at Fire Station Artists’ Studios will include artists’ talks, group conversations, screenings, and a practical workshop, in an open and inclusive environment encouraging an exchange of knowledge, concerns, and ideas, to consider the following questions: How can artists use media archaeological processes to create new work that engages with these issues and questions market imperatives in subversive, inventive, and socially engaged ways?
How can concepts used to analyse product obsolescence, such as consumer and institutional demand or the distinction between technical and psychological obsolescence be useful to a critical engagement within the arts sector?
How do we approach creating work that uses rapidly changing and soon to be obsolete technologies and how is this work impacted both at source and in the processes of exhibition and conservation by institutions?
To book your place, email resource@firestation.ie. The cost is €25 per person and places are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Beta is a festival of art and technology critically engaging with the impact of emerging technologies on society. Taking Ireland’s role as a central node in today’s wired world as a starting point, Beta will showcase and celebrate Ireland’s research and artistic communities through a combination of creativity, debate, and experimentation. Beta allows members of the public to engage playfully and critically with new technologies, essentially beta testing ethical issues facing society.
Benjamin Gaulon is an artist, researcher, educator and cultural producer based in Paris. He has previously released work under the name “recyclism”. His research focuses on the limits and failures of information and communication technologies; planned obsolescence, consumerism and disposable society; ownership and privacy; through the exploration of détournement, hacking and recycling.
Benjamin will represent 1/2 of the NØ collective and introduce his practice as artist, educator and cultural producer. Initiated and led by artists and educators Benjamin Gaulon and Dasha Ilina, NØ SCHOOL is an artist run school founded in 2018 in Paris and Nevers. Designed as a hybrid between learning, residency and research, NØ SCHOOL is aimed at students, artists, designers, makers, hackers and educators who wish to further their skills and engage in critical research and discussions around the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies.
Dr Brian Castriota is a Glasgow-based researcher, educator, and conservator specialised in time-based media, contemporary art, and archaeological materials. He is Lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media at University College London (2023–), Time-Based Media Conservator at the National Galleries Scotland (2017–), and Freelance Conservator for Time-Based Media and Contemporary Art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2018–). He has previously held Lecturer positions at the University of Glasgow and the Institute of Fine Arts – NYU. He served as Supervising Conservator with Harvard Art Museums’ Archaeological Exploration of Sardis from 2018 to 2023 and has worked on various excavations in Turkey, Italy, and Egypt since 2011. His research and scholarship consider how agential realism and other new materialist, post-humanist, and post-qualitative theories and methodologies rework sedimented practices of conservation.
Robert Collins is an Irish artist, designer and creative technician based in Sweden, and is currently working as a PhD researcher in Contestable Design at the Umeå Institute of Design.
His work explores the inherent noise and saturation of information in contemporary society, through speculative objects and software, and has has appeared at Ars Electronica, Science Gallery and Neural Magazine.
He holds an MSc in Interactive Media, where he explored the creation of spaces for adversarial discussion and common ground. He also facilitates artworks for new-media artists and produces ArtScience exhibitions across the world on behalf of Science Gallery International and others.
The Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA) was formed in March 2002 to create a space for promoting, exploring, discussing, and exhibiting art and technology in Ireland and beyond. Based in Dublin, DATA is built on the idea that sharing and collaboration are key to supporting rich and critical conversations about technology through art practice and about technologically mediated arts practices.
DATA aims to create informal spaces where art and technology meet and where people from diverse backgrounds come together to collaborate and explore new directions and art practices.
Aisling Phelan is an Irish multi-disciplinary artist working across AI, 3D animation, photography, video, sculpture, virtual reality, and live interactive technologies. Her work delves into the complex relationship between our online and offline identities and aims to highlight the ethical concerns and vulnerabilities of digital representation. She is a co-curator of D.A.T.A, the Dublin Art and Technology Association, producer of BASE Dublin, and the founder of the Digital Artists Ireland Online Discord Channel.
aemi is a Dublin-based initiative that supports and regularly exhibits moving image works by artists and experimental filmmakers. aemi was founded by its co-directors Alice Butler & Daniel Fitzpatrick in 2016 and is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
It’s key objective has been to provide support for artists working with the moving image in order to contribute to a developing infrastructure around these practices in Ireland. aemi is dedicated to expanding audiences for this material through regular curated programmes of Irish and international work with the intention of enriching the critical discourse that surrounds the wide range of activity in this area.
aemi has presented screening programmes featuring work by over a hundred Irish and international artists. These events create opportunities for critical discourse through commissioned texts and talks with artists, programmers and curators.
Screening: The Flesh of Language, Amanda Rice, 2023, Ireland, 16.5 mins
The Flesh of Language examines humanity’s impact on Earth’s ecosystems through the lenses of two interrelated mechanics of capitalism: extraction and overproduction.
