Artists Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas will present their project in Washington
Continuing their multiannual swamp research, artists Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas will present the Swamp Observatory app at the „State of the Arts Night“ at Hirshhorn Museum in Washington on April 21.
Swamp Observatory is an artistic device that facilitates vision into the “future” and discovery of a “shadow biosphere” - life forms yet invisible to us. It seeks to catalyze our imagination for new commonalities – new sensitivities and relationships with living and non-living matter around us.
The app was initially created as artistic intervention into the planning process of the new sustainable city in a decommissioned regimental area of Gotland island in the Baltic sea.
Suggested as an instrumentarium to restore the swamps, the AR app was developed in collaboration with students and teachers off the Athene school, who contributed to creating fictional creatures - eco-monsters - that will cohabit the planned stormwater ponds in the northern Visborg.
Seagrasseassador, Cocomolko, Carboni, Tortotubus, Nucleo-Flocularia, Cementa, Udarnik, Foudge-Locus and other twenty six eco-monsters interact with each other and create holobiontic relationships with real and virtual worlds assembling into five compositions - Carbon Coral, Methane Cloud, Atom Ring, Sulfur Swarm and Phosphorus Moss.
With the help of pedagogical intervention this project proposes a new type of sentient public space where humans and more-than humans meet in a hybrid world of reality and fiction (of course, with the help of technology and its interface). The project is commissioned by the Public Art Agency Sweden and Baltic Art Center, and initiated in dialogue with the Region planning administration in the Gotland Island. Project is supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture and MIT CAST.
The Swamp Observatory Gotland continues the artists’ ongoing interest in swamp, as a biotope, and as a concept or metaphor that offers us a multifaceted lens through which we can look into the world and our interdependencies.
“State of the Arts Night” event is presented by the European Union Delegation in Washington, DC, in partnership with the Hirshhorn Museum. This special after-hours evening is celebrating the importance of artistic expression in a post-pandemic society. This unique pop-up experience welcomes artists from 9 European Union member states to share their creative and philosophical responses to pressing issues of the post-COVID era. In addition to participating in a series of conversations on topics ranging from climate change to war to gender, artists will present recent work.
Throughout the evening, the Hirshhorn’s outdoor plaza will come alive with interactive performances, music, projection, and augmented reality.
Since opening in 1974, the Hirshhorn is a leading voice for contemporary art and culture and provides a national platform for the art and artists of our time. As one of the most visited modern art museums in the US, museum seeks to share the transformative power of modern and contemporary art by creating meaningful, personal experiences in which art, artists, audiences, and ideas converge. Through groundbreaking exhibitions, events, research, and acquisitions, museum creates the space where people encounter the most important artists of the 21st century. The Hirshhorn’s holdings encompass one of the most important collections of postwar art in the world, and museum is committed to providing the artists of today a global platform to explore new ways to create, with performance, digital media, video, and technology.
The event is partly funded by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Washington, DC.
Composition Atom Ring. Photo by Urbonas Studio
Last updated: 20-04-2023