Island Thinking

JAKOB KUDSK STEENSEN, REGINA DE MIGUEL AND PAUL ROSERO CONTRERAS

Curated By Irene Campolmi and Àngels Miralda

The metaphor of the island has been a fecund source of inspiration across many domains, from More’s Utopia to Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The title “island thinking” proposes a reflection on the pulse of keeping alive natural ecosystems, in their uniqueness of being entirely ‘isolated' from the continental mainland. On the other hand, it addresses the need to rearrange new boundaries in a socio-political environment that seems to increasingly ‘isolate’ forms of being and thinking, preventing forms of communication and interaction between species.

The residency will be a research period to view these aspects – and not only - through the process-oriented lens of ecology. We are interested in exploring the conceptual limits of islandness and look at the island as a metaphor that can simplify complex structures and frame the unbounded. We are interested in applying the metaphor of 'island thinking' to the current geopolitical situation, which is penetrating the whole world. The isolationist and increasingly polarized politics of current forms of geopolitical nationalism, which denies the plurality of 'life diversities', end up reflecting the way we approach the preservation of the diversity of the natural ecosystem.

The residency's objective is to investigate aspects and issues of the many ecologies that co-exist in the geographical context of the Azores' archipelago, placing particular attention to the politics and the ethics of the being and coexisting in the ecosystem of the islands.

Campolmi and Miralda have invited three internationally renowned artists – Jakob Kudsk Steensen (Denmark/USA), Paul Rosero Contreras (Ecuador) and Regina de Miguel (Spain/Germany) – with whom they have worked in the past. The invited artists will use the residency as a means to explore and investigate aspects related to their research including technology, politics, and ethics about natural ecosystems; de-colonial thought and society of the Azores Islands; preservation of underwater species of plants and animals, currently threatened by violent and repeated actions from mine companies.

The artists will take as their point of departure the importance of the island's geographical location in the history of the Atlantic.

At the end of the residency, the artists will present their work in an homonymous exhibition 'Island Thinking' at the Museum Angra do Heroismo. The exhibition is accompanied by a public program of film screenings, talks, and performative walks during the weekend of September 27/28.

ISLAND THINNKING
MAH MUSEUM

CURATORS

Irene Campolmi
Àngels Miralda

ARTISTS

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Jakob Kudsk Steensen is a Danish artist and director based in New York. He is concerned with how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine. Kudsk Steensen show his work as video, VR and installations that invite visitors to enter new ecological realities. To make his work, he collaborates with NGOs, residencies, scientists and artists from different fields. Kudsk Steensen ventures on excursions where he collects organic material, which is digitized and converted into digital worlds with 3D scanners, photogrammetry, satellite data and computer game software. Inspired by ecology-oriented science fiction and conversations with biologists and ethnographers, his projects are ultimately virtual simulations populated by mythical beings existing in radical ecological scenarios.

Kudsk Steensen is currently preparing for exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and the Serpentine Galleries (London). He has recently exhibited internationally at the Geneva International Film Festival, Tranen Contemporary Art Center, SXSW, the Pinchuk Art Centre, the 5th Trondheim Biennale for Art and Technology, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Serpentine Galleries Marathon, Jepson Center for the Arts, Time Square Midnight Moment, Sundance Film Festival, MAXXI Rome, FRIEZE London, Podium, and Ok Corral. His work has been featured in MOUSSE Magazine, artnet News, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, Politiken, Information, VICE, and the New York Times, among other publications.

He is a finalist for the Future Generation Art Prize 2019, and he has received awards from the Danish Arts Foundation, The Augustinus Foundation, and the Lumen Arts Prize. In 2018, Kudsk Steensen's work as an art director won him a Telly award, a Webby Award, a Lumiere Award, and a Games for Change Award. He has been the Artist-in-Residence at Harvestworks, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, AADK, Centra Negra, MASS MoCA, BRIC, and Mana Contemporary. Steensen is an alumni of NEW INC, a technology and culture incubator by The NEW MUSEUM, in NYC.

REGINA DE MIGUEL

Regina De Miguel works as an artist through critical and interdisciplinary agency in processes and convergences focused on producing hybrid objects and knowledge.

She has set up solo exhibitions in: Rising Anxiety, Maisterravalbuena Gallery; I ́m part of this fractured frontier, C3A Córdoba, 2018; Aura Nera, Santa Mónica, Barcelona, 2016; Ansible, Maisterravalbuena Gallery, Madrid, 2015; All knowledge is enveloped in darkness, Kunsthalle São Paulo, 2014; Nouvelle Science Vague Fiction, General Public, Berlin 2011, El 5ire 5ún no respirado, MUSAC, León 2008.

She h5s 5lso exhibited in group shows as: _Momentum 10 Bienal, Moss, Noruega. Curated by Marti Manen; Cosmos. Film Programme. Tentacles Gallery, Bangkok, 2019; Celda Unidad, Cultural Institute of León, Guanajuato, México, 2018; Capitalo, Chthulu, and A Much Hotter Compost Pile 5t Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2018; Technosphbrenklbnge #a: Performance with Lucrecia Dalt. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2018; Adverbios Temporales, Centro Centro, Madrid, 2018; NO Music, Haus der Kulturen der Welt; Berlín, 2017, Silence Empire, Funkhaus, Berlin, 2017;

Fermenting Feminism, Broken Dimanche Press, Berlin, 2017; L'Élection Parfaite, Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, 2017; Une Estela en la Tierra. Ecos de violencia institucional en América Latina, Bienal del Sur, Tucumln, Argentina,2017;

Bienal del Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2017; Contemporary Visions, New cine and video in apain. The Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, California, 2017; Hasta que las cosas y los cuerpos sean como queremos que sean, CA2M, Madrid, 2017; Berlin Art Prize, Kühlhaus Berlin; Univers Simulés, Gamerz Festival, Vasarely Foundation, Aix en Provence, France; A forma do pensamento, Cristina Guerra Gallery, Lisbon, 2016; Towards a New Shore, NC Arte, Bogotl, 2016; Riddle of the Burial Grounds, Extra City, Anwerp, Belgium; Hall of Half-Life, steirischer herbst festival gmbh, Graz Austria, 2015; Riddle of the Burial Grounds, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, 2015; Modernisms (for future thoughts), Invaliden Eins Galerie, Berlin, 2015; The Future Wonʼt Wait, La Capella, Barcelona, 2014; Rencontres Internationales, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Of Time & Place, Gasworks Londres, 2012; Out of the black, Reh Kunst, Berlin, 2011.

PAUL ROSERO CONTRERAS

Paul Rosero Contreras is an Ecuadorian artist and researcher working on the intersection of experimental arts and biology. His body of work explores topics related to geopolitics, environmental issues and the relationship between humans and extreme living surroundings. Usually going out on explorations to remote places, his projects include doses of speculative realism, scientific data and fictional narratives.

His work has received different prizes and grants including the National Award for the Arts of Ecuador and the Paris Award at the 11th Cuenca Biennale, among others.

Rosero Contreras' work has been displayed widely in the form of audiovisual installations, short films, biological sculptures and public talks. He has taken part of major art events and venues such as the 57th Venice Biennale – Antarctic Pavilion, the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, the 1st. Antarctic Biennale, the 1st. and 2nd Bienal Sur, the 11th. Cuenca Biennale, the Siggraph Conference in Los Angeles, the Musee Quai Branly in Paris, the Museo de Historia de Zaragoza, the H2 Center in Augsburg, the METQuito, among other spaces.

Rosero Contreras is currently working on a video installation for the 21st. VideoBrasil Biennale and on his first museum show in Portugal opening next year. He lives in Quito – Ecuador and teaches at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito..