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This winter, 14 arts organizations throughout Greater Boston are partnering to present an ambitious, region-wide exploration of art and technology. This exciting cultural collaboration will offer a range of exhibitions, performances, film screenings, and other programs all exploring the relationship between art and technology in celebration of the Boston area’s rich history of technical innovation, and its overlap with art.

Touching on issues of privacy, community, networks, identity, innovations, surveillance, and more, the collaboration is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, opening February 7 at the ICA.

Art in the Age of the Internet examines how the internet has radically changed the field of art, especially in its production, distribution, and reception. The exhibition is comprised of a broad range of works across a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects—that all investigate the extensive effects of the internet on contemporary art and culture. 

Partner organizations include Berklee College of Music, Boston Cyberarts, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Film Archive, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Science, Boston, Peabody Essex Museum, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, and Tufts University Art Galleries.

More information about partner organizations and events can be found at aiai.icaboston.org.

 

 

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Associate.

Major support is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional support is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Robert Davoli and Eileen McDonagh, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Kim and Jim Pallotta, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Charles and Fran Rodgers, Mark and Marie Schwartz, and Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III.

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To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.

 

14 Boston-area arts organizations partner on ambitious, region-wide cultural collaboration dedicated to art and innovation, highlighting Boston as a center of technology

This winter, cultural organizations throughout Greater Boston are partnering to present an ambitious, region-wide exploration of art and technology, announced Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA). Aligned with the ICA’s sweeping exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today opening February 7, this extraordinary collaboration will offer the public concurrent exhibitions, performances, screenings, and programs at area cultural organizations, all exploring the relationship between art and technology. The organizations partnering with the ICA are:

“Art in the Age of Internet, 1989 to Today gives us the opportunity to examine all the forms of connectivity made possible by the internet, as well as to work in partnership with colleagues and institutions in Greater Boston,” said Medvedow. “The rich history of tech innovation in Boston makes this an ideal place to raise questions about community, privacy, networks, identity, surveillance and speed in a dynamic citywide experience.”
 
“The context of technological innovation in Greater Boston provides a crucial backdrop for the ICA exhibition and our collaboration—the first email was sent from Cambridge; the term ‘cloud’ was first coined in relation to the internet in an MIT research project; Facebook was invented here,” said Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and organizer of the ICA’s exhibition. “The exhibitions and programs presented by the partner institutions enrich the ICA’s exhibition by providing additional opportunities for audiences to connect with the topic of art and technology.”

aiai.icaboston.org
Audiences and scholars around the world can learn about Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today via a dedicated web platform. The extensive site will bring extended content and varying perspectives to the exhibition, and will virtually connect the activities of area partners.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

At the ICA
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today explores the widespread cultural impact of the internet on art. Featuring a broad range of works across a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based works—the exhibition considers the extensive effects of the internet on artistic practice and contemporary culture. Themes explored in the exhibition include emergent ideas of the body and notions of human enhancement; the internet as a site of both surveillance and resistance; the circulation and control of images and information; possibilities for new subjectivities, communities, and virtual worlds; and new economies of visibility amplified by social media.
 
The exhibition features the work of 60 artists, collaborations, and collectives, including Cory Arcangel, Dara Birnbaum, Harun Farocki, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Juliana Huxtable, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Frances Stark, Cindy Sherman, Hito Steyerl, and Anicka Yi. 
 
Exhibition-related programming includes an artist talk with award-winning artist Trevor Paglen in conversation with historian of science Jimena Canales, as well as a robust schedule of performances, organized by David Henry, Bill T. Jones Director of Performing and Media Arts, and John Andress, Curator of Performing Arts. These programs include Sounding the Cloud, a music performance by renowned composers Neil Leonard, Stephen Vitiello, and Scanner that explores what “the cloud” might sound like; Annie Dorsen’s The Great Outdoors, which is presented in an inflatable planetarium, inviting the audience to imagine the internet as a celestial place; and Ryan McNamara’s MEƎM 4 Boston: A Story Ballet About the Internet, an immersive, museum-wide experience that aims to recreate the feeling of surfing the web. For details about these programs, visit icaboston.org
 
Art in the Age of the Internet is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, and Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Associate. It is on view February 7 through May 20, 2018.

At Berklee College of Music
Berklee is sponsoring an interdisciplinary arts seminar designed to further expose music students to visual and performing arts. Students will visit the ICA exhibition, attend artist talks at the ICA, and hold regular off-campus meetings on-site at partner institutions. The seminar will culminate in “Binge Watch,” a public performance by Berklee students that explores the use of digital tools for musical expression, on Thursday, May 10 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Neil Leonard, Artistic Director of the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute, will lead the seminar.

At Boston Cyberarts
Artificial Creativity: Neural Network and Augmented Intelligence Art, explores new tools born of artificial intelligence research that artists are using to make unique new work. Neural network art is a tool for artistic embellishment and creation. In its most common visual form, it combines the imagery of one image and the style of another to create a third hybrid image. Neural networks are a biologically inspired form of computing which, unlike classical computer algorithms, are not programmed directly by human operators but instead learn from large amounts of example data. Other augmented intelligence programs like ‘bots,’ are used to respond in creative ways to human inquiries. The exhibition also explores augmented intelligence used in the creation of music. Artists include Mike Tyka, Mario Klingemann and Jessica Brillhart, among others. Brillhart presents her virtual reality video, Deep Dream VR. Klingemann’s work features a machine running real-time feedback loops, generating work in the present moment.

Artificial Creativity is organized by George Fifield, Director of Boston Cyberarts, with Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg of the Google Brain Team. The exhibition is sponsored by Google and will be on view January 12 through February 18, 2018.
 
At the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University (CCVA) presents talks with pioneering new media artists Lynn Hershman Leeson and Dara Birnbaum. Both talks are organized by Dan Byers, John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, and Daisy Nam, Assistant Director, at the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts. Lynn Hershman Leeson’s talk takes place at 6:00 PM on February 8, 2018, and Dara Birnbaum’s at 6:00 PM on March 29, 2018.
 
At deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum
On view at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, located in Lincoln, MA, are two concurrent exhibitions. Screens: Virtual Material features work by six leading contemporary artists who are confronting how conditions of vision, belief, and behavior are powerfully shaped by the presence of screens in our daily lives. Artists include Brian Bress, Marta Chilindron, Liza Lou, Matt Saunders, Josh Tonsfeldt, and Penelope Umbrico. Cool Medium: Art, Television & Psychedelia, 1960-1980 includes paintings, sculptures, and prints that reveal dynamic intersections between the visual languages of psychedelic experiences and color television as both grew in popularity during the post-war period. Artists include Yaacov Agam, Paul Laffoley, Alan Shields, and Harold Tovish, among others.

Screens: Virtual Material is organized by Sarah Montross, Associate Curator at deCordova, and will be on view through March 18, 2018. Cool Medium: Art, Television & Pyschedelia, 1960-1980, organized by Sarah Montross and Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Assistant, will be on view through March 11, 2018.
 
At Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums present a new installation by JODI, the pioneering artist collective formed in 1994 by Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. One of the most influential artists working in the age of the internet, JODI will produce a new interactive project that plays with the histories of games and collections. It will be on view in the Harvard Art Museums’ Lightbox Gallery, a collaborative space for digital projects on the museums’ uppermost level.
 
The installation is organized by Mary Schneider Enriquez, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Chris Molinski, Associate Research Curator for Digital Initiatives, at the Harvard Art Museums. It will be on view February 7 through April 23, 2018.
 
At Harvard Film Archive
Harvard Film Archive presents Caught in the Net: The Early Internet in the Paranoid Imagination, a series of film screenings that examines the cultural origin story of the internet as lodged within the paranoid imagination. This film program emphasizes the consistency of cultural fears around the internet, while also charting the ways in which these fears have shifted over time.
 
Films include: Blue Thunder (John Badham, 1983), From yu to me (Aleksandra Domanović, 2013–14), WarGames (John Badham, 1983), Electric Dreams (Steve Barron, 1984), Johnny Mnemonic (Robert Longo, 1995), The Ghost in The Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), Strange Days (Katheryn Bigelow, 1995), Level Five (Chris Marker, 1997), eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999), Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001), Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2007).
 
Caught in the Net is organized by Haden Guest and Nathan Roberts, and will be screened March 9 through March 18, 2018.
 
At Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Artist Judith Barry has created a new work for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as part of the museum’s series of semi-annual site-specific commissions for contemporary artists. For her installation on the Anne H. Fitzpatrick Façade, Barry has chosen to work with some of the hundreds of drone images circulating on the World Wide Web depicting refugees fleeing their homes and seeking a new life elsewhere. Looking up, these asylum seekers greet the seemingly effortlessly hovering drone with a mixture of relief and elation—even though the drone is unmanned and not human, and even though the resulting encounter is no guarantee of a rescue or of entry into another country. By orienting one of these boats vertically and populating it with the upward turned faces taken from these photographs, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Façade can act as a beacon: the faces forming a procession, illuminating the sky. 
 
Judith Barry is organized by Pieranna Cavalchini and will be on view January 17 through June 27, 2018.
 
At MIT List Visual Arts Center
Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974–1995 shines a spotlight on a body of work that has been largely overlooked since its inception, and explores the connections between our current moment and the point at which video art was transformed dramatically with the entry of projective, cinematic installation into the gallery space. As artists were probing the new medium in the early 1970s, many were making single-screen tapes for monitor display but, increasingly from the 1980s onwards, created elaborate environments assembling large numbers of monitors in architectural configurations, video walls, or room installations incorporating other objects. In concert with developments in technology, video editing and effects were getting more sophisticated. Unlike cinematic projection, these works were less interested in pictorial space and narrative but rather articulated a range of concerns related to the medium of television, the still and the moving image, seriality, figuration, and identity. This exhibition will present a re-evaluation of monitor-based sculpture since the 1970s and serve as a tightly focused survey of works that have been rarely seen in the last twenty years. Like Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, this exhibition examines how available technologies become materials for a range of formal and thematic artistic concerns. Artists in the exhibition include Dara Birnbaum, Ernst Caramelle, Takahiko Iimura, Shigeko Kubota, Mary Lucier, Muntadas, Nam June Paik, Tony Oursler, Adrian Piper, Diana Thater, and Maria Vedder.
 
Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995 is organized by Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions and Curator, MIT List Visual Art Center. It will be on view February 8 through April 15, 2018.
 
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) hosts a program in collaboration with the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute on Thursday, May 10 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, as part of The Nancy Lee Clark Concert Series Sound Bites, organized by Kristen Hoskins, MFA Curator of Lectures, Courses, and Concerts. Berklee students will perform “Binge Watch,” reflecting on creating music in the age of the internet. This program highlights “addictive music” and students will explore the use of computers, smart phones, and tablets as tools for musical expression.
 
At the Museum of Science, Boston
The Museum of Science, Boston presents four talks as part of its Cyber-INsecurity series. Cyborgs, Futurists & Transhumanism: A Conversation considers a transhumanist future on Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 7:00PM; Cyberattacks & Information Terrorism: The Next World War? investigates whether the United States is prepared for the worst-case scenario today and in the future on Wednesday, April 11 at 7:00PM; Robot Sex: Connection, Privacy & Ethics in the 21st Century probes the difficult questions we will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades on Wednesday, April 25, at 7:00PM; and at CryptoParty: A Crash Course in Digital Hygiene, Somerville Cryptoparty and other privacy activists will demonstrate good cyber-habits and practical tools of digital security on Wednesday, May 9 from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.

Cyber-INsecurity is organized by Lisa Monrose, Producer, adult programs and James Wetzel, Co-Producer, adult programs.

At Peabody Essex Museum
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA presents PlayTime, the first major thematic exhibition celebrating the role of play in contemporary art and culture. 40 works by 20 leading contemporary artists—including large-scale installations, sculpture, photographs, video and tactile interactives—examine how play catalyzes creative expression, enchants the ordinary, and helps us understand ourselves in new ways.

PlayTime is organized by Trevor Smith, the Peabody Essex Museum’s Curator of the Present Tense, and will be on view February 10 through May 6, 2018.

At the Rose Art Museum
The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University presents an exhibition focusing on the unconventional publication Blueprint for Counter Education, a boxed set of posters and texts that introduced the tools for a radical pedagogical model. Its open-ended charts and diagrams mapped a world of ideas, from the avant-garde to the postmodern, in a form that presaged the internet, allowing readers to chart a course of thinking and discovery that anticipated the prevalence of search engines, social media, and the quick connection of the hyperlink.
 
This exhibition is organized by Caitlin Julia Rubin, Assistant Curator of the Rose Art Museum, and will be on view March 2 through July 8, 2018.
 
At Tufts University Art Galleries/School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts
Tufts University Art Galleries is hosting a two-campus presentation of Jillian Mayer’s Slumpies. “Sculptures that work for you,” Slumpies are designed to support visitors’ bodies as they use their portable screens and smartphones. They are a post-posture sculptural solution that leans towards an idea of function, relieving the human form of the duty of supporting its own neck while acknowledging our ever-increasing relationship with mankind’s best invention. Mayer will visit Tufts for a public lecture, a filming and virtual reality workshop with students, and a post-workshop screening in February 2018.
 
This exhibition is organized by Dina Deitsch, Director and Chief Curator of Tufts University Art Galleries. It is on view January 16 through April 15, 2018.

Major support for Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
 
Additional support is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Robert Davoli and Eileen McDonagh, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Kim and Jim Pallotta, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Charles and Fran Rodgers, Mark and Marie Schwartz, and Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III.

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“The internet has introduced a new way of seeing and being,” says Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA. “It’s affected how we shop, eat, date, travel, our social behaviors, our political machines, and how we create and consider art,” both online and off. The exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, on view February 7–May 20, 2018, brings together more than 60 artists and collectives of different generations and backgrounds to take a look at this ubiquitous influence.  

We spoke with Eva about the inspiration for Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, its relevance, and why she considers the show site-specific to Boston.

Can you talk about what you mean by “internet”?

Great question. When we talk about the internet, it can be many things. It is a physical thing: a set of cables, wires, and protocols operated by disparate software and hardware. And it is also a social and political construct, a set of social practices and exchanges that have wide-ranging effects. The internet has changed how we consume information, exchange goods, conduct research, present our private and public selves, understand our bodies, date, shop, make friends, travel, and eat. It has transformed attitudes and mores, affected how societies see themselves and others, and how we see ourselves. It has influenced every facet of our lives and virtually every field and industry, including art.

This exhibition looks at the internet as a social and political construct—as a lens to understand our current moment. Art reflects the ideas of our time, and with this exhibition, we hope to offer insights on some of the complex issues of our digital age: How has the internet influenced art and how it circulates, how it is valued? How has the internet changed our understanding of privacy? How have network technologies changed our understanding of what it means to be human, and our perception of reality? What do we make of this powerful medium, which still holds so much promise, but is also a sign of a world divided, full of anxiety, operating at a breakneck pace, and competing for our increasingly distracted attention? Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today addresses the profound influence of the internet on art. Rather than presenting an exhibition of technology, we hope to explore how all art—whether painting or moving images, sculpture or photography, websites or performance—has been radically transformed by the cultural impact of the internet.

Was there an aha moment when you knew you wanted to do this exhibition?

I had been thinking about this exhibition for quite some time. Around 2006, I began hearing about a certain kind of art, called post-internet art. This inadequate and misleading term was coined to describe art made in the “wake” of spending time surfing the internet, and is generally used to describe a group of artists born in the 1980s working in London, Berlin, and New York. This term has been applied to a wide variety of art practices, from screen-based work to painting, sculpture, and performance. Although I reject this term (as do most of the artists in this exhibition), I was intrigued by much of the work being made under this moniker. The attributes of post-internet art—immersive space, multiple visualities and perspectives, the use of digital markers in real space—are not new. Many of these conditions have been pioneered by performance and video artists in the 1960s and 70s, and ideas of dematerialized art practices were similarly established by conceptual artists in the 1970s. But the new cultural and technological conditions introduced by the internet make vital its ongoing examination. This exhibition does not propose these contemporary works as a radical break with the past, but attempts to establish relevant historical links between a new generation of artists and their predecessors. While the technologies may have changed over generations, for artists many of the concerns have been the same.

You’ve described this show as site specific. How so?

Greater Boston has a rich history in technology. The first email was sent from Cambridge. The term “cloud” was first coined in relation to the internet in an MIT research project. Facebook was invented here. The ICA commissioned video art for WGBH-TV in the 1980s, including from artists such as Nam June Paik, who is featured in Art in the Age of the Internet. The context of technological innovation in this town provides a crucial background for this exhibition. For me this exhibition is sited in the city of Boston and has special meaning here. 

Another way that I think about site-specificity with this exhibition is with the commission of a new virtual reality piece by the Canadian artist Jon Rafman. Rafman has used virtual reality technology in several art works, requiring users to don Oculus Rift goggles to access an immersive 360-degree viewing experience. This emerging technology offers radical new models of visuality, not unlike the major shift witnessed by the introduction of cinema around the turn of the twentieth century. For the ICA, Rafman has created a site-specific virtual reality work for the museum’s John Hancock Founders Gallery, whose floor-to-ceiling windows offer a sweeping view of Boston Harbor. Rafman developed a virtual depiction of the site, so the museum’s architecture and the surrounding seaport are characters in the work, collapsing real and virtual space.

Rafman is most interested in how VR technologies can fundamentally change subjectivities, anxieties, and fears. He has said: “I question whether it is useful anymore to talk about a clear dichotomy between the virtual and the real, as most of our lives are happening in front of a screen.” For me, this work, and the blurring of the virtual and real, point to a big part of the contemporary condition of living online.

You’ve also described the show as having several different platforms.

For me this project has three expressions: the exhibition, catalogue, and website. Each of these is a medium-specific exploration of the topic. With the exhibition, I thought a lot about the physical manifestation of the ideas, and it is designed to consider the physical encounters with works of art. While there are many screen-based works in the exhibition, there are also paintings, sculptures, and photographs. The book is a scholarly manifestation of the project, with more than 15 scholars and artists weighing in on the topic. The book looks and acts like a book—that is, a scholarly resource with longer-form essays and historical references—and the design is one of classic book design, as opposed to “digital” type. The web platform looks and acts like a website; its design does not mimic a book. The information on the website is shorter form, it is an aggregator of information and can be updated throughout the exhibition, functioning as a real-time mirror to the physical manifestation of the exhibition.

This exhibition is already more than two years in the making—perhaps a long time in Internet years. Is there a different resonance to some of the works today than when you first envisioned the show?

Much has changed since we began this project more than three years ago: Brexit, this rise of Black Lives Matter from rallying hashtag to social movement; the election of Donald Trump; the Oxford Dictionary choosing “post-truth” as 2016 word of the year. All of these events have been heavily influenced by how we use the internet to circulate information, share news, and understand our world. The technologies and visual conditions of the internet continue to transform at an accelerated rate, exemplifying what curator and writer Hans-Ulrich Obrist has termed the extreme present. Visual culture now, in our immediate digital epoch, does much more than hold a mirror up for us: it is instrumental in creating our realities. Art in the Age of the Internet was conceived to respond to our shifting, infinite present by exhibiting and examining artworks that represent multivalent artistic strategies, whether romanticism or cynicism, optimism or pessimism, nostalgia or antipathy; what we often encounter is a complicated combination of them all. I would say continually adapting to this extreme present has been both the pleasure and challenge of working on a topic that is so timely. As is the case with many thematic exhibitions, Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is an incomplete account. This project aspires to being neither the first nor last word (as if that were even possible).

 

Inaugurating the new ICA Watershed in East Boston will be two artworks by artist Diana Thater (b. 1962, San Francisco) that create immersive experiences through light and moving-image projections. The new space is scheduled to open in summer 2018.

“With the opening of the Watershed, the ICA once again transforms the cultural landscape of Boston and its waterfront through contemporary art,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “The Watershed is a new opportunity for artists and audiences to experience the industrial, maritime, and social history of Boston, build a connection between the neighborhoods of East and South Boston, and activate our beautiful harbor through art, water transportation, and public access.” 

The installation will center on Thater’s artwork Delphine, reconfigured in response to the Watershed’s raw, industrial space, and coastal location. In this monumental work, underwater film and video footage of swimming dolphins spills across the floor, ceiling, and walls, creating an immersive underwater environment. As viewers interact with Delphine, they become performers within the artwork, their own silhouettes moving and spinning alongside the dolphins’. 

In addition to Delphine, the Watershed will feature a recent sculptural video installation, A Runaway World, focused on the lives and worlds of species on the verge of extinction and the illicit economies that threaten their survival. Produced in Kenya in 2016 and 2017, A Runaway World is staged within a unique architectural environment of free-standing screen structures designed by the artist. The Diana Thater installation is organized by Barbara Lee Chief Curator Eva Respini. 

“Diana Thater’s strategies of intensified color and visually stunning moving images will offer visitors an extraordinary introduction to the Watershed and raise urgent questions about the impact of human intervention on the environment,” said Medvedow.

Thater received a BA in Art History from New York University before receiving her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has had major solo exhibitions at leading institutions, including the Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2016); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria and Natural History Museum, London (2009). Her work was featured in the 56th Venice Biennale at The Azerbaijan Pavilion as well as several Whitney Biennials (1995, 1997, and 2006), and is represented in prominent museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). Among her numerous notable awards, Thater has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1993). A prolific writer and educator, Thater lives and works in Los Angeles, where she teaches at the Art Center College of Design.

The Watershed will be housed in a former copper pipe factory restored and updated by award-winning firm Anmahian Winton Architects (AW). A raw, industrial space for art unlike any other in Boston, the Watershed will offer a flexible space for exhibitions, programming, and workshops, as well as an orientation gallery introducing visitors to the historic shipyard and a waterside plaza that will serve as a gathering place with stunning harbor views. The ICA will present artworks and public programs seasonally in the 15,000 square-foot space while continuing year-round programming in its Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed facility in Boston’s Seaport District. Transportation between the two locations will be by boat. Admission to the Watershed will be free for all.

(Boston, MA—November 13, 2017) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) will open the ICA Watershed, a new seasonal space for art, with a major project by internationally renowned artist Diana Thater, announced Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA, today. Opening in summer 2018, the ICA Watershed is located across Boston Harbor from the ICA in the Boston Shipyard and Marina in East Boston. The ICA will provide a boat to bring visitors between both locations.

“With the opening of the Watershed, the ICA once again transforms the cultural landscape of Boston and its waterfront through contemporary art,” said Medvedow. “The Watershed is a new opportunity for artists and audiences to experience the industrial, maritime, and social history of Boston, build a connection between the neighborhoods of East and South Boston, and activate our beautiful harbor through art, water transportation, and public access.” 

Thater’s installation will reflect on the fragility of the natural world, transforming the ICA Watershed through light and moving image projections. The installation will center on Thater’s artwork Delphine, reconfigured in response to the Watershed’s raw, industrial space, and coastal location. In this monumental work, underwater film and video footage of swimming dolphins spills across the floor, ceiling, and walls, creating an immersive underwater environment. As viewers interact with Delphine, they become performers within the artwork, their own silhouettes moving and spinning alongside the dolphins. Grounding the sea of projections is a composite video wall, a grid of nine cube monitors displaying a single glowing image of the sun. The Diana Thater installation is organized by Barbara Lee Chief Curator Eva Respini. 

“Diana Thater’s strategies of intensified color and visually stunning moving images will offer visitors an extraordinary introduction to the Watershed and raise urgent questions about the impact of human intervention on the environment,” said Medvedow.

About the ICA Watershed
In summer 2018, the ICA will expand its artistic programming across Boston Harbor to the Watershed, a new space for art in the Boston Shipyard and Marina in East Boston. Award-winning firm Anmahian Winton Architects (AW) has been engaged to design the renovation of the facility, a former copper pipe factory, and restore the historic building for new use. The ICA will present artworks and public programs seasonally in the newly renovated 15,000 square-foot space while continuing year-round programming in its Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed facility in Boston’s Seaport District. The Watershed will be a raw, industrial space for art unlike any other in Boston. In addition to a flexible space for exhibitions, programming, and workshops, the Watershed will house an orientation gallery introducing visitors to the historic shipyard complemented by a waterside plaza that will serve as a gathering place with stunning harbor views. Admission to the ICA Watershed will be free for all. Read more.

About the artist
Diana Thater (b. 1962, San Francisco) received a BA in Art History from New York University before receiving her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has had major solo exhibitions at leading institutions, including the Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2016); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2015); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria and Natural History Museum, London (2009).

Her work was featured in the 56th Venice Biennale at The Azerbaijan Pavilion as well as several Whitney Biennials (1995, 1997, and 2006), and is represented in prominent museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). Among her numerous notable awards, Thater has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2005) and the National Endowment for the Arts (1993). A prolific writer and educator, Thater lives and works in Los Angeles, where she teaches at the Art Center College of Design.

About the ICA
An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for 80 years. Like its iconic building on Boston’s waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA, located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 AM–5 PM; Thursday and Friday, 10 AM–9 PM (1st Friday of every month, 10 AM–5 PM); and Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM–5 PM.  Admission is $15 adults, $13 seniors and $10 students, and free for members and children 17 and under. Free admission for families at ICA Play Dates (2 adults + children 12 and under) on last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our website at www.icaboston.org. Follow the ICA at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

“The ICA’s willingness to be forward-looking engages my imagination and encourages my commitment and long-term support.”

Nan Tull, a 1980 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, is a Boston-based painter currently represented by Soprafina Gallery. A founding member of the Fort Point artists’ 249 A Street Cooperative in 1983, Nan maintains a studio and her practice there. She has steadily supported the ICA as a member over decades and recently made the generous decision with her husband, Frank Wezniak, to include the ICA in their estate plans through a bequest. We sat down with Nan to talk about her history with the ICA.

How did you first become involved at the ICA?

My interest in the ICA stems back many decades. Around 1972 I saw Ed Kienholz’s installation The Beanery and, at the time, thought it was definitely not my thing. Nevertheless, the experience stuck with me—it was my introduction to installation art.

From that point forward, I began to look to the ICA for the new and different in art and have visited the ICA regularly ever since.

What have been some of your favorite ICA moments?

Ironically, another installation, the 2000 exhibition of Cornelia Parker’s work—many ICA-goers know her for her piece Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson)—ranks as one of my favorites!

Why is the ICA important to you?

As an artist exhibiting in Boston over the past 35 years, I appreciate that the ICA has always shown the work of contemporary women artists. The ICA’s Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women stands as a prime example of support for women in the arts and includes many favorites: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Kiki Smith, to name a few.

Why have you chosen to include the ICA in your annual giving?

The ICA’s willingness to be forward-looking engages my imagination and encourages my commitment and long-term support. In that regard, I think the Watershed, the new, raw, industrial space in East Boston, will be an exciting new venue with its focus on experimental work and public-art projects.

What motivated you and Frank to include the ICA in your estate plans?

We want the art of our time to be available to as many people as possible in Boston. Including the ICA in our estate plans means that we are able to continue to help the ICA in the future when we are no longer here to offer that support.

To learn more about including the ICA in your estate plans, contact the Development Office at 617-478-3183 or jspsociety@icaboston.org.

From painting to performance to virtual reality, sweeping exhibition features work of an international, intergenerational group of artists, including Cory Arcangel, Dara Birnbaum, Harun Farocki, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Juliana Huxtable, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, and Anicka Yi.

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
February 7–May 20, 2018

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is the first major thematic group exhibition in the United States to examine the radical impact of internet culture on visual art. Featuring 60 artists, collaborations, and collectives, the exhibition is comprised of over 70 works across a variety of mediums, including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, web-based projects, and virtual reality. Themes explored in the exhibition include emergent ideas of the body and notions of human enhancement; the internet as a site of both surveillance and resistance; the circulation and control of images and information; the possibilities for exploring identity and community afforded by virtual domains; and new economies of visibility accelerated by social media. Throughout, the work in the exhibition addresses the internet-age democratization of culture that comprises our current moment. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Associate.
 
“Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today shows the extraordinary changes in contemporary art that have developed alongside the rise of the internet. Our exhibition looks at the implications of these changes—and our understanding of self, privacy, community, and virtual and physical space—and the ways that artists convey, explore, and challenge them,” said Jill Medvedow, the ICA’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director.

“Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today explores how all art—whether painting or moving images, sculpture or photography, websites or performance—has been radically transformed by the cultural impact of the internet,” said Respini. “The exhibition also establishes important historical links between ideas pioneered by artists before the internet age and artists working today.”

The earliest work in the exhibition is from 1989, the year that Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory outside of Geneva, Switzerland. This development, and others that followed in quick succession, modernized the internet, and in the process radically changed our way of life―from how we shop, make friends, and share experiences, to how we imagine our future bodies and how nations police national security. The development of the internet after 1989 engendered the introduction of new digital technologies, allowing for the now ubiquitous platforms for social media and communication, and the massive proliferation of images of all kinds, drastically altering the ways in which we access and generate information. 1989 also marked a watershed moment across the globe, with significant shifts in politics, geographies, and economies. Events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and protests in Tiananmen Square signaled the beginning of our current globalized age, which cannot be imagined without the internet.
 
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is divided into five thematic sections: “Networks and Circulation,” “Hybrid Bodies,” “Virtual Worlds,” “States of Surveillance,” and “Performing the Self.”
 
In “Networks of Circulation” artists working with objects, images, and materials aggregated from the endless stream of information proliferating online and off explore the widespread social and political impact of our previously unimaginable level of interconnectivity, often pointing to how an accelerated image economy increasingly structures our everyday experience.
 
The age-old question “what does it mean to be human?” remains critically important, and takes on new urgency in today’s technologically mediated societies. Artists in “Hybrid Bodies” explore various related subjects, as well as how the body remains a site for politics, history, and contestation amidst the increasing complexity of science, politics, and international relations.
 
In “Virtual Worlds,” artists explore the aesthetic possibilities of computer-generated spaces as sites of production and inquiry, even as they mark the increasing elision between the virtual and the real in everyday life.
 
In “States of Surveillance,” artists employ a variety of strategies to examine the wide-reaching effects of surveillance technologies while pointing to paths of resistance.
 
The artworks in “Performing the Self” explore the extraordinary visibility afforded to individuals and groups moving within digital networks as well as their far-reaching effects offline.

The exhibition will feature a newly commissioned site-specific virtual reality installation by artist Jon Rafman. The ICA’s architecture and location on Boston Harbor feature prominently in the work, collapsing real and virtual space in a dreamscape that unfolds over eight minutes.

Art + Tech: A Citywide Collaboration
Art in the Age of the Internet is the lead exhibition in a region-wide exploration of art and technology. Fourteen art organizations and educational institutions will offer a range of exhibitions, performances, film screenings, and talks all exploring the relationship between art and technology in celebration of the Boston area’s rich history of technical innovation.

Artist List
aaajiao (Xu Wenkai) (b. 1984, Xi’an China)
Cory Arcangel (b. 1978, Buffalo, NY)
Ed Atkins (b. 1982, London, United Kingdom)
Alex Bag (b. 1969, New York, NY)
Judith Barry (born 1954, Columbus, OH)
Gretchen Bender (b. 1951, Seaford, DE)
Frank Benson (b. 1976, Norfolk, VA)
Dara Birnbaum (b. 1946, New York, NY)
Lee Bul (b. 1964, Seoul, South Korea)
Antoine Catala (b. 1975, Toulouse, France)
Kate Cooper (b. 1984, Liverpool, United Kingdom)
Simon Denny (b. 1982, Auckland, New Zealand)
DIS (collective, founded 2010)
Aleksandra Domanović (b. 1981, Novi Sad, Serbia [former SFR Yugoslavia])
Gregory Edwards (b. 1981, Rocky Point, NY)
Harun Farocki (b. 1944, Nový Jičín, Czech Republic [former Czechoslovakia])
Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou, China)
Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin (b. 1981, Bloomington, IN and Webster, TX)
Celia Hempton (b. 1981, Stroud, United Kingdom)
Camille Henrot (b. 1981, Paris, France)
HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? (collective, founded 2013)
Juliana Huxtable (b. 1987, Bryan-College Station, TX)
Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962, Paris, France)
JODI.org (collaborative founded c. 1995)
Jon Kessler (b. 1957, Yonkers, NY)
Josh Kline (b. 1979, Philadelphia, PA)
Oliver Laric (b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria)
Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, United Kingdom)
Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, Cleveland, OH)
Olia Lialina (b. 1971, Moscow, Russia [former Soviet Union])
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City, Mexico)
M/M Paris (Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag) (b. 1967, Cavaillon, France and 1968, Paris, France)
Jill Magid (b. 1973, Bridgeport, CT)     
Michel Majerus (b. 1967, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg)
David Maljkovic (b. 1973, Rijeka, Croatia [former SFR Yugoslavia])
Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari (b. 1950, Los Angeles, CA and 1968, Izmir, Turkey)
Ryan McNamara (b. 1979, Phoenix, AZ)
Mariko Mori (b. 1967, Tokyo, Japan)
Rabih Mroué (b. 1967, Beirut, Lebanon)
Albert Oehlen (b. 1954, Krefeld, Germany)
Laura Owens (b. 1970, Euclid, OH)
Trevor Paglen (b. 1974, Camp Springs, MD)
Nam June Paik (b. 1938, Seoul, South Korea)
Sondra Perry (b. 1986, Perth Amboy, NJ)
Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu, HI)
Seth Price (b. 1973, East Jerusalem, Israel)
Jon Rafman (b. 1981, Montreal, Canada)
Pamela Rosenkranz (b. 1979, Uri, Switzerland)
Thomas Ruff (b. 1958, Zell am Harmsbach, Germany)
Julia Scher (b. 1954, Los Angeles, CA)
Cindy Sherman (b. 1954 Glen Ridge, NJ)
Taryn Simon and Aaron Swartz (b. 1975, New York, NY and 1986, Highland Park, IL)
Avery Singer (b. 1987, New York, NY)
Frances Stark (b. 1967, Newport Beach, CA)
Hito Steyerl (b. 1966, Munich, Germany)
Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA)
Wu Tsang (b. 1982, Worcester, MA)
Amalia Ulman (b. 1989, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Penelope Umbrico (b. 1957, Philadelphia, PA)
Anicka Yi (b. 1971, Seoul, South Korea)
 
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a generously illustrated scholarly publication, co-published with Yale University Press, which will be a major resource and scholarly contribution to the field. The publication features a range of established and emerging scholars, critics, and curators, including Kim Conaty, Lauren Cornell, Tim Griffin, Caitlin Jones, Caroline A. Jones, Thomas J. Lax, Omar Kholeif, Gloria Sutton, and the exhibition’s organizers. The catalogue also features topical conversations between artists Lynn Hershman Leeson and Hito Steyerl, Paul Pfeiffer and Josh Kline, and Martine Syms and Wu Tsang,
 
Web Platform
Art in the Age of the Internet is also accompanied by an extensive web platform, designed by Wkshps, which will expand on the themes and works in the exhibition by including additional content, such as special projects by artists in the exhibition.

Exhibition Press Preview
February 6, 2018 | 9:30AM-11:00AM
Media are invited to attend a tour of the exhibition led by Respini. RSVP to Margaux Leonard, mleonard@icaboston.org.

Exhibition-related programs
Join us for thought-provoking programming featuring talks by artists and relevant experts, exhibition tours, parties, family activities, and networking opportunities. A full list of exhibition-related programs can be found here.

Major support for Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
 
Additional support is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser, Karen Swett Conway and Brian Conway, Robert Davoli and Eileen McDonagh, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, Kristen and Kent Lucken, Kim and Jim Pallotta, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, Charles and Fran Rodgers, Mark and Marie Schwartz, and Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III.

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