The online multimedia project Well-trodden Connections, one of the events of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS Interdisciplinary Programme, is built on the dialogue between modern digital media with the popular science films from the Kyivnaukfilm film studio, and theories of cybernetics.
The exhibition’s name Well-trodden Connections is a phrase from Mykola Amosov’s popular science work, in which he analyses how the human brain works and describes the mechanisms of thinking and cognition. What we describe as a process of ‘understanding’ is based on the fact that neurons form stable connections with each other. Using the knowledge available at that time, Amosov is trying to predict what artificial intelligence will be like.
How do art, science, and technology interact? What are the media of expressiveness in contemporary art, and why is cinema also a medium? What digital media do contemporary artists work in? Why should a work of art comprehend both itself and its own means of expression? Is there cyber-art, and how is it related to popular science cinema? We will talk about all of these issues during the discussion.
Speakers:
The SVITER Art Group is the duo of Lera Polianskova and Max Robotov. The artists mainly work with new media, with sound, video and digital art. Lera and Max are co-founders of Photinus Studio and the Shukhliada exhibition space. Since 2015, they have been participating in an interdisciplinary cultural organisation called The Institution of Unstable Thoughts. They participated in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, the Transmediale Vorspiel 2018 (Berlin), and the Digital Cultures Festival forum 2019 (Warsaw).
Tetyana Kochubynska is an art critic, researcher, independent curator and author. Her main expertise is Ukrainian contemporary art. In 2016–2019 she curated the Research Platform of the PinchukArtCentre. In her curatorial practice, Tetyana deals with questions of responsibilities, memory, and trauma, connecting the Soviet past with today’s society. This is reflected in a series of exhibitions such as Guilt (2016), Anonymous Society (2017), and Motherland on Fire (2017). She curated the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2015 and 2018 and co-curated the Future Generation Art Prize in 2019 and the FGAP@Venice as a collateral event of the 58th Venice Biennale.
Moderator:
Oleksandra Nabiyeva is a culturologist, critic, researcher of visual arts. Curator of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS interdisciplinary programme and the Well-trodden Connections multimedia exhibition.
