Pro Helvetia at Intersections | ISEA 2018
Pro Helvetia Johannesburg is pleased to support a strong collaborative presence at ISEA2018, the 24th International Symposium on Electronic Art. ISEA2018 is the first ISEA to be held on the sub-continent. Taking place in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa, this event will combine with the 5th iteration of the Durban University of Technology Digital Festival and Innovate Durban’s 2018 Innovation Festival.
Bringing new audiences, academics, and practitioners together, the ISEA2018 / Digifest05 / IF Durban theme, INTERSECTIONS, positions creative technological innovation as an activist engagement into public space and public practice with underlying critical questions of ownership, imposition and development.
We support a number of projects and initiatives as part of the cultural programme of the event:
The mechatronics project Free Sunshine is realised through a collaboration between South African artist Miranda Moss and Swiss designer and mechatronic artist Oliver Walkhoff. Engaging with current legislation relating to independent power generation, the project takes the form of a series of public workshops enabling participants to build solar-powered robots, culminating in a contribution to the exhibition Life Hacking at the KZNSA opening on the 26th of June 2018. For more info go here.
The launch of our new art-science residency programme developed in partnership with the Artists in Labs unit at the Institute for Cultural Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts, and the announcement of the recipients of the 2018 residencies in Cape Town/Sutherland and Geneva. The launch announcement and a reception will precede the Leonardo 50th anniversary party taking place on the evening of Thursday the 28th of June at Ushaka Marine World.
The B(l)(e)(e)(n)ding(s) project of Swiss electroaccoustic composer Luca Forcucci lands at ISEA on the 24th of June. Forcucci collaborates with local musicians Cara Stacey (returning this month from a residency in Basel) and Mpho Molikeng. For more info, including dates in other cities, go here.
The Eskine 4 project of Jill Scott has involved her Swiss media art group working with seven visually challenged learners from the Mason Lincoln Special School in Umlazi and two Durban based dancers. The media art team visually interprets the participants stories for a sighted audience, supporting their self-presentation on this mediated stage. Here, technology is used as a platform for social engagement to amplify the voices of this local community. In a final performance a wider public is introduced to a unique experimental theatre event.
We also support the presence of Swiss artist Francesco Marrioti, who works with the Peruvian based collective Alta Tecnologia Andina on a project which connects Andean and Amazonian myths and oral traditions with local knowledge in Durban. Marrioti transforms a contaminated space into a habitat that can accommodate a colony of fireflies, extremely sensitive creatures which require very specific conditions to survive. His work will also be presented at the Life Hacking exhibition opening at the KZNSA on the evening of the 26th, as well as the Art, Science and Us programme at Ushaka Marine world on the afternoon of the 28th of June. Find out more here.
For updates on the programme see the ISEA website here.
