EXHIBITION AND PERFORMANCE LECTURE
WISSENSKUNST
CREATIVE CLUSTER VIENNA, NOVEMBER 2024
On November 22nd, we had the pleasure of hosting nexus_art + science with The ZoNE. The presentations and conversations dived deep into the world of our current research and experiences in the interfaces between art and science with shared experiences and work.The studio was finally activated by a live studio process by Lace and Neustetter .
OPEN STUDIO EXHIBITION AND PERFORMANCE LECTURE
WISSENSKUNST
CREATIVE CLUSTER VIENNA, SEPTEMBER 2024
Bronwyn and Yogi gave a performance lecture during our open studio event on Sep 21, 2024, at the Creative Cluster in Vienna (5. District). We talk about our outreach activities, Wissenskunst, the ontology of the undefinable, magical realism, and our notion of what is real, and how to make our own worlds a reality.
CONFERENCE
THE ZONE – agitating the space between art and science
by Marcus Neustetter presented at the
37th Annual South African Visual Arts Historians Conference,
12-14 September 2024
hosted at the: Department of Visual Arts in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, Faculty of Humanities, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa Theme: UNSETTLED: re-Collective Memories and Histories of South Africa
EXHIBITION
LANDMASCHINE
DAS ANDERE HEIMATMUSEUM, AUGUST 2024
Styria, Austria
As part of our outreach activities, we were commissioned (through the arts & science collective The ZoNE), to contribute to the event called “Landmaschine” (“land machine”) at Schloss Lind, a museum for art and local history in Styria, Austria, where we will also have an exhibition next year. Our activities at the Schloss can be subdivided into three parts: (1) a projection display (of project-related videos, among other animated elements) on the front facade of the castle, plus (2/3) two installations in the former sheep stable on the domain (one on each side of the building), which we used to address the problem of looking at the world as a machine (the theme of our book, “Beyond the Age of Machines“). These installations juxtapose and integrate technology and mechanisms with the natural processes of the castle garden, and the local insect life attracted by our projections. Parts of the installation remain over winter, exposed to the weather, to be revisited and reactivated next year during our exhibition. Actions such as these are powerful interventions demonstrating our philosophical and scientific approach in applied settings, to audiences not usually exposed to academic presentations or scientific research of the abstract kind we are engaged in.Artwork by Marcus Neustetter and Bronwyn Lace.
ZOOM ZONE
WITH DR. ULRIKE KUCHNER
JULY 2024
We have a new zOOm ZoNE podcast out! Bronwyn, Marcus, and Yogi talk to the wonderful Dr. Ulrike Kuchner, co-founder and main initiator of the ARTlab Nottingham, and member of the SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design), about the importance and role of ArtScience collaborations in today’s crazy world in crisis. We discuss a wide range of topics, such as how to fundamentally change our habits of thinking, how to deal with existing institutions in arts and science, and why thinking out of the box is so important for understanding the universe as a whole.Check it out on the ZoNEYouTube Channel, by clicking here.
STUDIO DIALOGUES
CODED MAPPING
WITH OMAI IN STUDIO, VIENNA, JANUARY 2024
SEMINAR
WISSENSKUNST
ANGEWANDTE VIENNA, DECEMBER 2023
LECTURE PERFORMANCE
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
ANGEWANDTE VIENNA, DECEMBER 2023
STUDIO EXHIBITION
VIENNA, NOVEMBER 2023
PERFORMANCE LECTURE
FRAGMENT #
ANGEWANDTE, VIENNA, NOVEMBER 2023
PERFORMANCE
THEY ARE MADE OUT OF MEAT
THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, SEPTEMBER 2023
Johannesburg, South Africa
Meat, fire, metal and plastic. What will come to define this modern era? As humankind moves closer towards the end of the Anthropocene, and the beginning of the Plasticine, will we be remembered for our ingenuity or for having engineered our destruction?
Directed by Mark Fleishman, This Death Here… draws on Antigone’s Ode to Man and the story of the Greek inventor, Daedalus, to put forward a profound and prophetic lament on the human condition.
Jennie Reznek, Sisipho Mbopa, and Indalo Stofile share and embody the roles of the great inventor and his son, Icarus, accompanied by a resounding Greek chorus. Weaving together a rich soundscape is Neo Muyanga who, in the second half of the epic, drives its enduring lament.
The performance carries a reflexive throughline as it places humankind at the centre and cause of a seemingly incurable world, while also employing a mixture of live music, projected drawing, and physical language, culminating in a rhapsodic collapse.
The work’s closing lines, “Cannot cure, cannot restore, cannot heal… in the face of death”, are no less impactful, no less existentially mournful, for having been signalled at the start through a striking, bloody plunge. They are devastating and deliberate.
But it is not a work without hope. Sprouting up through the low, torrential keys of Muyanga’s closing composition – like the field of flowers that springs up in Neustetter’s drawing – are the high, faithful notes, the enduring ability to find hope in an otherwise irresolvable condition.
CONCEPTUALISERS | Jennie Reznek & Mark Fleishman
DIRECTOR | Mark Fleishman
COMPOSER | Neo Muyanga
PERFORMERS | Jennie Reznek, Sisipho Mbopa & Indalo Stofile
CHORUS | Tshepang Mofokeng, Nomathamsanqa Ngoma, Mapule Moloi, Anathi Conjwa, Khokho Madlala & Zandile Hlatshwayo
VISUAL ARTIST / PROJECTION | Marcus Neustetter
TEXT | Jennie Reznek after Sophocles and Ovid
THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA
PERFORMANCE
THEY ARE MADE OUT OF MEAT
THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, SEPTEMBER 2023
Johannesburg, South Africa
Terry Bisson’s absurdist text They’re Made Out of Meat is adapted by Bronwyn Lace and performed inside the Pepper’s Ghost in this two-hander by Katlego Letsholonyane and Sello Ramalahloane.
Drifting through the endless reaches of space and orbited by yawning, bellowing mouths, two extraterrestrial characters discuss their encounter with the strange, carbon-based life forms they’ve come to classify as sentient meat – humans.
Here, the short, sharp text is reimagined with some local, anecdotal flair, and comes alive inside the Pepper’s Ghost in new ways. In the context of Activating the Archive, it becomes a performance that speaks to the remote and anthropologically centred ways in which archival footage and materials are often engaged.
CONCEPTUALISER | Bronwyn Lace
DRAMATURG | Phala Ookeditse Phala
PERFORMERS | Katlego Letsholonyana, Sello Ramolahloane & Chorus
TEXT | They’re Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson
THE CENTRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA
STUDIO EXPERIMENTS
SPACE SHELTER EARTH
STUDIO VIENNA, SEPTEMBER 2023
Marcus Neustetter and Johannes Jaeger hosted Paris-based curator Annick Bureaud (Leonardo/Olats) with a project Space Shelter Earth and the South African MA and PHD students form the Uninet Africa project “A Practice of Doing” with Johan Thom and Basak Senova to explore ideas and concepts of the research project both in context of South Africa and in space.
PROJECTION EXPERIMENTS
ORGANISM MEETS MACHINE
THE CENRE FOR THE LESS GOOD IDEA, SEPTEMBER 2023
Johannesburg, South Africa
Marcus Neustetter, Micca Manganye and OMAI collaborate in the Pepper’s Ghost introducing Neustetter’s robot made of rusted steel to percussionist Micca to see what happens.
PUBLIC PROJECTION
UNHARMONISCH
DAS ANDERE HEIMATMUSEUM, SEPTEMBER 2023
Styria, Austria
Schloss Lind and Das Andere Heimatmuseum in Styria became the host for experimental projections that played with digitally drawn layers on the natural and build qualities of this historic site.
MUSEUM IMMERSION
MUSEUM STUDIO SESSIONS
MURAUER HANDWERKMUSEUM, JULY 2023
Murau, Austria
Marcus Neustetter was immersed in the artist residency with Salvatorhaus and the Murauer Handwerksmuseum in Murau, exploring the traditional tools and crafts through experimental light drawings and image projections.
SCIENTIST DIALOGUES
STUDIO SESSIONS
CREATIVE CLUSTER VIENNA, JUNE 2023
The problem of embodiment – Jannie Hofmeyr, Johannes Jaeger, Brown Lace and Marcus Neustetter, discuss, map and build the Hofmeyr assembly diagram in studio.
ARTIST DIALOGUES
STUDIO SESSIONS
CREATIVE CLUSTER VIENNA, JUNE 2023
Xolisile Bongwana and Paul Cooper in creative conversation and Marcus Neustetter
EXHIBITION
OPEN STUDIO
CREATIVE CLUSTER VIENNA, 5 MAY 2023
Opening talks by Johannes Jaeger, Bronwyn Lace and Marcus Neustetter of the works in process for the research: Pushing the Boundaries – Agency, Evolution, and the Dynamic Emergence of Expanding Possibilities https://www.expandingpossibilities.org
ZOOM ZONE
Julian Gough – The Egg and the Rock
THE ZONE presentation to select philosophers and scientists
27 April 2023
THE ZoNE sits down with writer and philosopher Julian Gough (https://www.juliangough.com) to discuss his project called “The Egg and the Rock” (https://theeggandtherock.substack.com), the End Poem in Minecraft (https://youtu.be/6VWsq1JXVWY), and how to navigate that space between arts and science.
EXHIBITION
2FOLD
ART ROOMS KYRENIA, CYPRUS, 2 November 2022 – 2 February 2023
an exhibition by Bronwyn Lace and Marcus Neustetter, curated Basak Senova
2Fold designates an ongoing process of a parallel act that discovers each other in the inquiry of doing. Two artists with different approaches and visual languages fold and unfold ideas of doing. Hence, they materialize this process with the use of paper. The act of folding always leaves a crease in paper, any other following act could never erase it. It is in the crease that new forms and questions emerge. Lace and Neustetter explore what happens in the crease as a place for revealing that which is hidden as well as that which is speculated and imagined. One of the chapters of the exhibition was dedicated to the undertakings of THE ZoNE.
VIDEO PRESENTATION
Shadows
THE ZONE presentation for the Octopus Programme
Tonkino Saalbau, Vienna
02 June 2022
We have undone Plato’s cave. God is dead. There are no ideal forms. Yet, there is no cave either anymore. Our experiences are no mere illusions. It is time to have a closer look at those shadows. They are all that remain. Yet how can we see what is not there? How can we pay attention to the hole, rather than what surrounds it? What if that hole, that absence, that shadow, is within us? We are avoiding it for fear of discovering what horrors may lurk there. But denial will not get us anywhere. Confront the shadows we must. Enter the shadows we will.
EXHIBITION
Symbiosis
ANGEWANDTE INTERDISCIPLINARY LAB VIENNA, 2 – 17 June 2022
curated by Basak Senova
The Octopus Programme – a programme developed new critical perspectives to process artistic research and practices while bridging and acknowledging the diversity of socio-political realities – concludes with “the Octopus” exhibition as the most comprehensive iteration of the experimental curatorial and educational path theOctopus Programme has pursued. The Octopus Programme is a guided research-based educational programme that encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations in different geographical regions. The exhibition presents an accumulation of research and process-based works by its participants, associated actors, and its curated archive. the Octopus also features prominent examples from certain guest lecturers who have influenced the programme. THE ZoNE was featured with a re-staging of Symbiosis.
LECTURE
Wissenskunst – Serious Play with Evolutionary Ideas
THE ZONE presentation to select philosophers and scientists
12 March 2022
by Johannes Jaeger
This is a solo talk by Johannes Jaeger, held on Mar 12, 2022, at “Hope Recycling Station” (http://www.h-r-s.cz) in Prague as part of an arts & science event organized by the “Transparent Eyeball” collective (Adam Vačkář and Jindřich Brejcha).
It centers around William Irwin Thompson’s concept of “wissenskunst,” which deeply infuses and informs our creative efforts in THE ZONE. “Theory art” does not quite capture it. Through wissenskunst, we attempt no less than to establish a new narrative order for the 21st century by engaging in a secular kind of mythopoiesis. Mind you, we are not likely to succeed. In fact, our quixotic quest is highly paradoxical, since proper myths cannot be deliberately created. They must grow in the context of a suitable set of cultural and historical conditions. To create such conditions, we must first understand the meaning-making engine that underlies all attempts at philosophically sound and scientifically informed myth-making. In this presentation, Jaeger explores the evolution-like process of relevance realization as the medium in which a new mythology may grow.
The talk is also available as a blog post: http://www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/wissenskunst
PERFORMANCE LECTURE
Undoing The Cave
THE ZONE presentation to select philosophers and scientists
9 March 2022
by Johannes Jaeger and Marcus Neustetter
The last time we entered Plato’s Cave, we ended up inverting his parable. Anagoge, instead of an ascent out of the cave, becomes a descent into our shadows. But before we can take the plunge, there’s some housekeeping to do, and Nietzsche will be our janitor. In six short paragraphs, he tells us how the cave was born and how it was undone. Between those paragraphs, 2,400 years have passed. We end up in a diffuse fog, surrounded by a pile of rubble. Deconstruction complete. That was the easy part. But how to rebuild? What will guide us on our onward journey? It is all a matter of perspective. Our perspective. The experience that grounds us, empowers us to choose our own pro and contra. There is nothing more we could ask for.
EXPERIMENT IN WISSENSKUNST
Clumsy Utterings and Gestures – annotated in 5 parts
by Johannes Jaeger, Marcus Neustetter and Bronwyn Lace
“Clumsy Utterings and Gestures” is a performance and a journey at the same time. Our art is always in the making. This project originated with the commission to present a public lecture on art and science at the “Pint of Science Vienna” festival in May 2021. To be honest, it is really neither art nor science—most certainly not an attempt at reconciliation or unification. Rather, it has to be understood as wissenskunst, a playful exploration of the space between the two. Our first public appearance, it constitutes a true origination event, yet no singularity. Due to the pandemic, the performance had to be moved online. On top of that, we had to rerecord because of a glitch with the software. The result is a bit patched up, like Frankenstein’s monster, which seems rather fitting to our purpose. The lecture itself only provides the shortest of glimpses into our process (a single patch of the patchwork). While it shows the generation of Rorschach blots and electronic drawings, the origin of the text itself remains hidden. In fact, it is obscure even to us, as it arose by mere coincidence from our investigations of mysterious scholarly figure Alexís O. van Tlön. But that is beside the point. What is important here is: the genealogy of texts that accompanies the video of the performance is at best a retroactive attempt at revisionism, an annotative resolution of confusion that suggests linear clarity where there was none. Origins are messy, inchoate; and at the end, the text is again completely erased, written out of existence. Annotations and art is what remains. And so story is layered on top of story, generating a stratigraphy of fossilized context.
Access annotations in 5 parts here
PERFORMANCE LECTURE
Inverting Plato’s Cave
THE ZONE presentation at the Octopus Programme, The Universtiy of Applied Arts Vienna
11 January 2022
by Johannes Jaeger and Marcus Neustetter
THE ZONE is a trans-disciplinary experiment to establish an ecology of practices that address the current crisis of meaning in the arts, philosophy, and science. We use an immersive experience of Plato’s parable of the cave to illustrate what it could mean to make sense of ourselves and our lives through the cultivation of wisdom.
More information about Inverting Plato’s Cave by Johannes Jaeger: Tethering the Platonic Realm
PERFORMANCE LECTURE
Clumsy Utterings and Gestures
PINT OF SCIENCE, 17-19 May 2021, Zoom
A performative venture into worlds brought forth beyond the confines of arts or science.
A series of philosophical openings and closings.
A conversation triggered.
EXHIBITION
Symbiosis
FÄRGFABRIKEN, STOCKHOLM, August 28 – November 28 2021
curated by Björn Norberg
VIDEO PERFORMANCE
endZONE
ANGEWANDTE FESTIVAL, The Universtiy of Applied Arts Vienna
2 July 2021
Chapter IV of PLAY, the Octopus Programme
endZONE is a performative venture into worlds brought forth beyond the confines of arts or science. A series of gestures towards physically manifesting our world-making processes by transgressing, subverting, and inverting boundaries. It explores an open-ended (infinite) game and reveals the inner workings and tools that ground and guide our deliberations.
EXHIBITION
Metamorphosis | A Kafka Moment
The Center for the Less Good Idea – Johannesburg, South Africa
April 2021
as part of Bronwyn Lace’s contribution to the mini-season: A Kafka Moment
Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Translation and Transformation – a report for Bronwyn Lace by Johannes Jaeger
DOWNLOAD PDF HERE
EXHIBITION
Worldmaking
The Mixed Reality Workshop – Johannesburg, South Africa
6 November – 22 January 2022
as part of the exhibition Lead The Way Again by Marcus Neustetter
“Worldmaking: Generating an account of the world, we also create the objects our account refers to. The world seen as mind, where differences constitute basic ideas, where the relation between content and context is more fundamental. All relations are the foundation of all knowledge. Things don’t exist out there. They are generated by the mind’s interaction with the physical world. Objects become ideas through this interaction.”
Johannes Jaeger, The Zone
“No exercise of power can make a world. A world must be its own source.”
Alexís O. Van Tlön
More about the exhibition: Lead the Way Again