‘Queering and Quaring Virtual Space,’ Runway: Space, December 2017.

Screen grab from Virtual Drag. ‘Virtual Drag Presentation for UNIT Festival’, 2017.

Virtual Reality (VR), as put forth via the gaming and film industries, involves the design and crafting of virtual 3D environments, as well as characters and interactions within these settings, often accessed through a viewfinder-headset and other devices that facilitate an ‘immersive experience.’ Inevitably, certain conditions — for example access to technology and education — determine what kind of VR experiences are made. For this text I followed VR experiences being developed by those whose interests and experiences might not be so well represented in the film and gaming industries, but are nevertheless gaining recognition within the art world. It extends research begun at the ‘Closer’ workshop run by the School of Machines, Making and Make-Believe, Berlin which I attended in July 2017, supported by Create NSW’s 360 Visions virtual reality initiative.

More in Runway: Space, iss. 35, December 2017.

‘Art Object as Counter-fetish in Otobong Nkanga’s Carved To Flow, Documenta 14,’ Runway

Otobong Nkanga, ‘Carved to Flow’, Documenta 14, Athens, 2017. Photo: Sumugan Sivanesan

Carved to Flow
Otobong Nkanga’s Carved to Flow (2017) is a process-based research project and enterprise encompassing performance, installation and socially engaged methodologies. Its focus is the production, distribution and sale of a natural soap bar, o 8, made up of seven oils that ‘nourish the skin’ sourced from regions that encompass the Mediterranean, North and West Africa and the Middle East. The oils are combined with water, lye and charcoal which according to Nkanga prompts us to ‘think about spaces that are actually charred’; places that are depleted of resources, riven by war, impacted by ecological shifts, toxicity and other such traumas that force people to move. The histories, knowledges and stories that are associated with these places travel with the ‘nourishing oils’ that are combined into o 8 and are according to the artist, ‘part and parcel’ of a ‘taste palate’ that connects us.

More in Runway conversations.

‘Ritual As Resistance, Transmediale 2017,’ Runway

‘Ritual Casualty 003.’ Black Quantum Futurism, Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus, Humbolt University, Transmediale, 2017.

This year marked thirty years of Transmediale, the premier festival of (post)digital culture and aesthetics held annually in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt and other venues. Founded as VideoFilmFest in 1988 to showcase a media format that had been phased out of the Berlin International Film Festival and poised at the cusp of the ‘digital revolution,’ the festival embraced developments and experiments in computer animation, multimedia, games and net-art to become a truly ‘transmedia’ event by the late 1990s. My introduction to Transmediale came via my involvement in Electrofringe, an annual festival of emerging media arts which I co-directed in 2005 and 2006. Over these years both festivals exchanged screening programs and I attended Transmediale in 2006 to present on a panel and participate in an artist-run satellite project, Transit Lounge, a Berlin–Australia exchange. Which is to say, in the first decade of the World Wide Web, Transmediale was supportive of the kinds of independent experimental practices and networks proliferating with the onset of web-based culture. By then, Transmediale had expanded to include a music program, Club Transmediale, which is now run as a distinct yet interconnected festival, CTM, showcasing contemporary electronic and digital music alongside experimental sound and club cultures. As such, the first weekend in February has become a red letter date for media artists, technologists, theorists and enthusiasts from the world over to gather in Berlin.

More in Runway conversations

Runway: ‘Institutional Reform’

‘Big Oil Out of Culture,’ Paris, December 2015. Credit: Sumugan Sivanesan

A new article, ‘Institutional Reform: Art as Anti-Statecraft’ for Runway #30, Ecologies is now online. 

Institutions that facilitate the coming together of cultural objects, historical narratives, philosophical concepts, the wealthy elite and their political interests can be understood as instruments of statecraft—the skill of governing, effecting and maintaining power. The formulation of counterpower through these same institutions is its antithesis.