EYEBEAM: From the Rupture

Initiated by

Juan Pablo García Sossa — JPGS (*Bogotá, COL) is a Designer, Researcher and Artist fascinated by the clash between emerging technologies and grass-root popular culture in tropical territories. His practice explores the development of cultures, visions, realities and worlds through the remix and reappropriation of technologies from a Tropikós perspective (Tropics as Region and Mindset). JPGS has been part of diverse research institutions and design studios and currently is a design research member at SAVVY Contemporary The Laboratory of Form-Ideas’ Design Department in Berlin and Co-Director of Estación Terrena, a space for Arts, Research and Technologies in Bogotá. JPGS is a 2020 Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow at EYEBEAM.

TECH SUPPORT

Sarah Grant — Chootka

Sarah Grant is the Visiting Professor of New Media at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and founder of the interactive media studio Cosmic.Berlin. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fine Art from UC Davis and a Masters in Media Arts from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. She has been a Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Journalism at Columbia, Adjunct Professor at NYU Polytechnic in Digital Media, and Artist-in-Residence at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center.

With a focus on radioart and networked media, she researches and develops open source software, artworks as educational tools, and workshops that demystify computer networking technology. Since 2015, she has also organized the Radical Networks conference in New York and Berlin, a community event and arts festival for social justice activations, critical investigations, and creative experiments in telecommunications.

Common Garden Fork into a Tropical Garden

Constant Dullaart | Common Garden

Constant Dullaart (Leiderdorp, 1979) is a Dutch conceptual artist, media artist, internet artist, and curator.[1] His work is deeply connected to the Internet.

BENGALURU

RHIZOME COORDINATION

Komal Jain

Komal Jain is a spatial and experience designer based in India. Her fascination lies in creating learning narratives and engagements that are evocative and explore the world of science, play, and culture in informal learning spaces/

Yatharth

Yatharth is an anti-disciplinary designer/artist/researcher exploring our relationship with emergent media technology, both as its users and makers; His work and research looks at technology as a tool for both control and liberation.

PRACTITIONERS

Karthika Sakthivel

Karthika Sakthivel is a Media Artist and Storyteller from Bangalore, India. Coming from a multidisciplinary background, she situates her work at the intersection of art and technology. By interweaving the tactile with the virtual to tell stories, she seeks to blur the boundaries between the real and the imagined.

Her practice, greatly informed by Indian narrative structures, involves crafting interactive and immersive experiences that encourage one to pause and listen - if only for a brief moment. Her recent works adopt non-binary, non-linear and decolonised approaches to reimagining, rewriting and retelling timeworn stories in novel ways. Exploring the act of storytelling in an embodied manner is at present, the core of her investigation.

The Urdu Project

The Urdu Project is a socially-engaged storytelling collective that began as an attempt to learn the Urdu language. It eventually transitioned into a documentary short, titled ‘Guftagu’. Cursorily, the film explores the inherent romanticism of Urdu but the subtext explores the very premise of discourse and exchange, examples of which are scattered across Delhi’s history. Fundamentally, the project uses the Urdu language as a metaphor for the cross-cultural transgression that has defined the identity of Delhi and its people.

It has since expanded into a broader project exploring syncretric South Asian identity across time and sits within ‘theurduproject.asia’, a web-based repository of experiences, writings, films and more, on Urdu and its role as a bridge between culture. The current team features Aastha Gupta (NID ‘12, DIFF ‘17 & Kochi Biennale ‘19), Prateek Shankar (SPA ‘12, Young India Fellow ‘17, RISD ‘21) as well as specialised cross-disciplinary collaborators in the field of urban planning, animation, web development and user experience design.

Aastha Gupta

Aastha Gupta studied film at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. Her work tends to begin at the intersections

Prateek Shankar

Prateek Shankar, a visual designer and writer, attended the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University & loves to create in the spaces between disciplines.

Deepikah Bhardwaj

Deepikah is an interdisciplinary artist based in Bangalore, India. Trained in Communication design from Delhi, she uses painting and installation art to express issues related to gender, self-worth, and perception. She became a full-time artist after becoming a full-time mother in 2016. In the same year, her work was showcased across India at Gender Bender 2016. Her project “Trial Room” tackles body dysmorphia and social conditioning, and was exhibited at Gender Bender 2018 and then at The Irregulars Art Fair in 2019. She was one of the three selected residents for Fissure, curated by Shaleen Wadhwana at Virtual Nursery 2020 by Pollinator which culminated in an online exhibition in January 2021.

Design Minus Design | Indian Ephemera

Kevin Angelus

Kevin Angelus is a designer from Chennai, India. His area of expertise is in identity and graphic design, with a strong interest in experimental design and communication as well as localized Indian design of the present day. He is interested in design education and the documentation of conventionally unexplored directions in design, and recently launched Indian Ephemera, a project to document and learn from Indian design objects, solutions, and history.

Vedant Sharma

Vedant is a Communication Designer, from Mumbai, India. His work and interests lie within the intersections of Brand & identity, Interaction design, Type design, and design education. He has also been exploring the fields of design research and podcasting, starting Thinking Design, a design podcast to focus on academic narratives within the field. He is currently working towards opening accessibility to quality design resources.

Curating for Culture

We are a collective of many diverse individuals, who are passionate about cultural issues and creativity is our hack. Our work ranges from community engagement in diverse settlements, initiatives for historical and cultural preservation, and designing collaborative responses to disseminate cultural narratives.

Ishita Shah

Trained as a designer and historian, Ishita Shah (She/her) says their practice revolves around the idea of curating for culture (www.curatingforculture.com). In the current pandemic, Ishita has been conducting online engagements on constructing personal archives in order to discuss creative possibilities for archiving in India and the Global South. Over the past year, Ishita collaborated with Biome Environmental Solutions, National Centre for Biological Sciences and INTACH Bengaluru, and co-curated the public engagement platform “Design-ed Dialogues” at The Courtyard Bengaluru, with an intention to develop a wide range of public interpretation projects. Prior to these appointments, Ishita served as an educator and a coordinator to the UNESCO Chair in Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development at Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Ishita was also the founding archivist and oral historian at CEPT Archives, and they worked with Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), INSITE Magazine, SPADE India Research Cell and Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC). Ishita is the 2020 recipient of the Graham Foundation Grant for their research project on reimagining the architectural history of 20th Century India by tracing the narrative of women practitioners.

Debanshu Bhaumik

Debanshu Bhaumik is a new media practitioner, technologist and designer. His works dominantly revolve around emerging technologies and his interests lie in thinking critically about new media and its implications on society. Professionally, he collaborates as an exhibition designer and technologist with artists, art collections, archives and museums. Recently one of his exhibition designs won the Red Dot Award 2020 and Interaction Award 2021.

Currently he works out of Bangalore.

BOGOTÁ

RHIZOME COORDINATION

Estación Terrena

Estación Terrena is a space for arts, research, technology and contemporary creation located in the electronic sector of the city of Bogotá (carrera novena between 19th and 24th streets). It is a convergence point for multidisciplinary creative practices in relation to nature, technology and culture in Calle 22 #9-31.

Valentina Medina

is a plastic artist and researcher based in Bogotá, interested in the creation of wandering spaces through objects and installations inspired by the relationship nature-technology.

Álvaro Rodriguez

is an Artist and film producer based in Bogotá working between the arts and film industry. He works with digital mediums that stand between arts and technology intersection.

PRACTITIONERS

Eblis Álvarez | Meridian BrothersFrom Bogotá – Colombia, MERIDIAN BROTHERS is a tropical psychedelic band.
The group started as a solo laboratory for sound of the composer Eblis Alvarez.
Since 2007 the project went live formed by a group of university friends: María
Valencia (sax, clarinet and percussion), Eblis Alvarez (vocals, guitar and
direction), Mauricio Ramirez, replacing Damian Ponce in 2016 (drums),
Alejandro Forero (keyboards), Cesar Quevedo (bass) and Juan Camilo Montañez
(Sound engineering).

The always changing style of the MERIDIAN BROTHERS explores different lines
of Latin-american music from the past and present, giving a particular and
histrionic view of it, creating an alternate dimension to the nowadays pop scene
in the continent. Departing from styles such as salsa, boogaloo and going
through experiments with genres such as noise, vallenato or tropicalia, the
MERIDIAN BROTHERS have earned the reputation of cult band in LatinAmerica.

Diana Pizano

Diana grew up in the Andean highlands of Colombia, within infinite planes and ridges of mountains. With a longing to admire the beauty and to savor the infinite bounty the world offers, she walks between the science and the joy of experiencing nature, food and medicine. She has experience as a researcher in food landscapes and the use of biodiversity, as a home cook setting the table for many to offer her curiosity for artisanal foodways and agrobiodiversity, and as a gardener in her food and medicinal garden. The intention behind her work swims around bringing the sacred back to her metabolism and to deepening the relationship and the understanding of the qualities of the plants she lives with.

Eliana Muchachasoy Chindoy

Master in Plastic Arts

Comunidad Indígena Camëntŝá

Sibundoy Putumayo – Colombia

Eliana Muchachasoy opens a window to the Camëntŝá people from her works, from there we can see the survival strategies that the community maintains in its territory: its colors speak of music, ancient medicine, millenary dances, its dreamlike spaces refer us to its worldview, to the wisdom of the Yagé and her elders. Her territory is her work.

She has found a way to represent different struggles, that of being a woman, that of being indigenous, and her purpose of defending the territory through her art, she projects for the whole world her indigenous universe, her culture, her colors, her food its rituals, its life itself, its magical daily life with which native peoples weave life, emphasizes the defense of their culture, supporting from their art the millenary memory that indigenous communities weave in defense of mother earth.

Sebastián Lema González

Born in 1992 in Colombia. Raised both in the city and the countryside. Attended art school and woodworking studio in Colombia before finding out transdisciplinary design was the path to combine personal interests and fullfill own creative ambitions. Interested in exploring the intersection where design, art, architecture and technology meet. Currently designing and building rural cabins and interior spaces, concerned with how to choose, process and display building materiales that are found locally and that usually have a cultural background -especially palm trees and bamboo species, as well as other natural sources for fiber.

Paulo Cesar Acosta

Paulo Cesar Acosta was born in Bogota. From a young age he showed an interest in art. In the second half of the 90s he entered the National University of Colombia to study graphic design. It was there that he had his first contact with photography. He learned the basic technical concepts and worked in the darkroom discovering the magic of this process. Later, he worked for several years in post-production within product photography, which allowed him to acquire technical skills in image software.

About five years ago, he carried out a photographic creation process whose central axis is Bogota. As a result of this interaction with the city, several series of images have come to light that speak of memory, resistance, chaos, and all the different ways of living.

His work has been part of various photography shows in the last four years and he currently continues his urban exploration to develop new projects/

Juan Covelli

Juan Covelli is a Colombian artist and independent curator currently living and working in Bogatá, where he teaches at Universidad El Bosque/Universidad Javeriana, he also runs the online art platform Nmenos1. A graduate of MA Contemporary Photography; Practice and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, Covelli’s practice revolves around the technological potentials of 3D scanning, modelling and printing to readdress entrenched arguments of repatriation and colonial histories. Using video, modelling, data sets and coding; he creates IRL and URL installation-based works which collapse historical practices with current models of display and digital aesthetics.

Wilmer Rodríguez | Café Internet XYZ

Café Internet XYZ is an archival and curatorial project run by Wilmer Rodriguez (1992,CO), with the purpose of registering context-specific dynamics and phenomena that tie together elements such as the Internet, telecommunications and general technology. It directs itself toward possible futures and the multiple realities found within the digital world and how these corresponding visions affect our daily lives. This project compiles images in a systematic fashion with the aim of referencing events happening around technological progress and indexing projects that, situated in the space of the visual arts, are able to review the function of the digital and the analogue.

KINSHASA

RHIZOME COORDINATION

Nada Tshibwabwa

Tombola Art, artist & musician

Elsa Westreicher

Elsa Westreicher (*1989, Kinshasa, DRC) is a graphic designer based in Berlin and Kinshasa. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2012 and pursued her interest in cultural studies at The New School for Social Research in 2013–2014. She was an active part of S A V V Y Contemporary–The Laboratory of Form-Ideas from 2014 until 2020, where she initiated the Design Department. Her practice is grounded in the desire to question and destabilise reading patterns, including the logics of coloniality. She recently curated the project »Spinning Triangles: Ignition of a School of Design« (2019).

Timbela Batimbela Yo (Collective)

Music Collective and atelier for experimental instruments
(Alphi Bakaschika [founder], Esto Ndjondjo [artistic director, rapper], Pitchou Massels [administration], Serge Muepu [administration], Naomie Muhiti [administration], Heissels Kapata [administration], Guykam Koko [sound Engineering], Ingénieur Lévy [beatmaker], Bebson de la Rue [artist, rapper, experimental instruments], Tissman [artist, rapper]

Maman Adeline Boyube

Culinary art - cook master

Judith Kaluaj

Graphic novel artist

Maman Iza & Papa Lofo

Farmers - Vernacular designs, knowledges and artifacts

Kill Bill

Performance Artist

Lumumba Lab

Experimental tech collective

PERFORMANCE KINSHASA

Miriam Omande [musician, dancer], Shoty Ndjoli [musician], Love Lokombe [Kokoko!, musician], Bebson de la Rue (artist, rapper, recycled instruments), Nanu Longa [rapper], Vicko Egwa-Mupassa [musician], Bobo Bass [musician], Chenchenko [musician], Aicha Makina Mena [Fulu Miziki, musician], Nada Tshibwabwa [Tombola Art, artist, musician], Tissman [artist, rapper], Julien Droum [musician], Ingénieur Gykam [sound engineer] Maman Adeline cooked for everybody that day.

PERFORMANCE BOGOTÁ

Eblis Álvarez | Meridian Brothers | DJ Humildad

Perle Galicia Camera

VISUALS

Carlos Serrano

Visual Artist

SOUND MASTERING

Carlos Pablo Villamizar

GENERAL VIDEO EDIT

jpgs