Dear inhabitants of the world,
It has long been a tradition to present a concert to welcome the New Year. This year, we would like to thank you for inviting us to share in this celebration, for recognizing our rights to sing with you on New Year’s Eve -and not for labelling us “urban pests” as many others do.
Beginning the 31st of December 2020, we hope that you will take the time to spot our presence in the upper-left corner of a window, behind a radiator, between ceiling lights, under a wardrobe: this is our home as much as it is yours. We hope that by hearing and seeing us closely you will join this concert, and that at its end you would consider allowing our continuing but threatened, unlimited existence.
This concert will unite us all. While this pandemic continues to divide people around the globe, we sing to engender a shift, to change anthropocentric and capitolocentric behaviours. We hope that in this New Year you might rethink a way that we can all live together, and renew the good will of cohabitation.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Opening 24 September, 2019
25 September - 01 December 2019
Curated by Stefanie Hessler, More-than-humans brings together outstanding works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tomás Saraceno from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) collection, which consider that which cannot be explained by the rational anthropoid mind.
More-than humans will be accompanied by a wide-ranging public programme including a public conference with the artists on September 24, 2019 and a workshop by Tomás Saraceno Studio focusing on arachnophobia and arachnophilia.
Events
Artist talk
September 24, 7–8pm
with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tomás Saraceno, Stefanie Hessler; introduced by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza
Tuning into Other Worlds: Spider/Web and Invertebrate Vibrations
October 30, 10am–1pm
Citizen sciences workshop
Animism and Arachnomancy: Encountering Nonhuman Intelligence through the Spider/Web and Invertebrate Vibrations
October 30, 5–8:30pm
Panel
La Biennale di Venezia, Teatro alle Tese Arsenale, Venice, Italy
14 September 2019
Tomás Saraceno will join the two day conference addressing art’s relationship with technological, social and environmental issues, taking place at Teatro alle Tese Arsenale as part of the 58th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, May You Live In Interesting Times Public Program, led by the curator Ralph Rugoff.
Building on the premises shaping the Spider/web Pavilion 7 presented at the Venice Biennale 2019, Tomás Saraceno will talk about rights of non-human animals, interspecies interactions and issues related to the representation of non-humans and its ethical implications. The presentation will take place on Sept 14th and will be followed by a conversation with Ralph Rugoff, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Margaret Wertheim.
Friday, July 12 from 11 AM – 1 PM Studio Tomás Saraceno invites you, our Arachnophilic friends, to make your voices heard and help weave the web of interspecies understanding. The dialog surrounding new and future developments in the Arachnophilia community comes after the launch of Arachnophilia.net and the Arachnomancy App, both released in conjunction with Tomás Saraceno’s Spider/Web Pavilion 7 currently on view at the Venice Biennale.
These resources serve as living public reserves, whose free and accessible archives continue to expand as the chorus of voices that join in the proliferation of spider/web stories and worlds weave the fabric of an Arachnocene!
Esteemed guest Markus J. Buehler, Department Head and McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, spearheads the gathering with his talk: “The Nexus of Materialized Sound and Sonified Material”, the abstract of which can be found below.
A long-term scientific collaborator of Saraceno and the studio, Buehler’s research interests span from the material properties of spider silk and spider web architectures to artificial intelligence. Tracing the links between art and science, Saraceno and Buehler first met during Saraceno’s residency as the first CAST Visiting Artist at MIT in 2012. After scanning Latrodectus mactans (black widow) and Cyrtophora citricola webs in collaboration with Saraceno in 2014-2015 as part of the Spider Web Scanner 3.0, Buehler retained a strong bond with the studio, refining and automating the Spider Web Scanner to better study the functional dynamics of web architectures.
Buehler teamed up with Saraceno once again this past fall to realize a 3D spider web instrument and interface – along with Evan Ziporyn and MIT researchers Isabelle Su and Ian Hatwick – for ON AIR at the Palais de Tokyo.
Events · La Biennale di Venezia, 45°25'46.4"N 12°21'30.0"E
The Spider/Web Oracle manifests, so that we might consult and read the collective, multi-species futures that are written in the silken threads. As life draws lines on your hands, so the spider draws lines on your future. Attuning to this non-verbal language may amplify our response-ability to each other—Nothing makes itself alone: ask the oracles how many multitudes might contain the cosmic web…
The Spider/Web Oracle Readings Program runs 8th-11th May as part of May You Live In Interesting Times, Biennale Arte 2019, curated by Ralph Rugoff, and summons a community of arachnophilic friends, including:
Wednesday May 8th
4.00PM
A sonic spider/web tour
with Boštjan Perovšek and the Spider/Web Oracle
Thursday May 9th
10.00AM
Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Spider/Web Oracle
4.00PM
The Web of Inquiry: Spider-Man
with Lukas Feireiss and the Spider/Web Oracle
5.00PM
Spiders Framing Questions (from Spider Divination in Cameroon to thinking about futures)
with David Zeitlyn and the Spider/Web Oracle
Friday May 10th
3.00PM
Human-machine-animal: interactions and interpretations across species boundaries with the aid of machines
with Alex Jordan and the Spider/Web Oracle
3:30PM
“Specchio ustorio”: the burning mirror, an emblematic image of love
with Rudy Favaro
4.00PM
Spider-human relations: a survey of fear
with Filipa Ramos, Heidi Ballet and the Spider/Web Oracle
Saturday May 11th
4.00PM
Arachnocosmia, the emergence of space and the elements in a network of interactions
with Stavros Katsanevas and the Spider/Web Oracle
5.00PM
A spider/web tour of the Biennale Giardini
with Marco Isaia and the Spider/Web Oracle
Meeting point: Spider/Web Pavilion 7, 45°25’46.4″N 12°21’30.0″E