Investing in cultural cooperation networks
By State Society for Exterior Cultural Action of Spain (SEACEX)
Seduced by constantly changing images, one of the recurrent focuses ofthe contemporary gaze is the mobile surface of the screen, its increasinglyfuzzy contours and its power to invent, reconstruct or interpret reality.Given this perspective, posing new and continuous challenges for theconnection with science and technology, creative experimentation,assisted by the potential of digital advances, represents one of the mostenthralling and promising realms for an activity overstepping theconventional boundaries of art. In this field, Spain’s current contributionhas a special value and deserves the kind of attention we are now seeingin this exhibition. Its goal is to develop a system of relations betweenpersonal and international initiatives fostering links between creation andresearch in consonance with present-day society. In this regard, thisexhibition of digital art can be viewed as one of the core axes of a moreambitious project also embracing a project on computer research and acommunication and production platform.A project such as this fits in to perfection with the goals of SEACEX (StateSociety for Exterior Cultural Action of Spain), a public body acting as anagent for the promotion of our country’s cultural reality, with a strategy forinternational dissemination based on high standards of rigor concerningknowledge and representing a concerted effort to contain all thecontributions from the most varied fields of knowledge and art that makeup the structure of a modern nation whose most telling sign of identity isplurality.Banquete_nodos y redes is a project responding to a shared effort tocreate and consolidate local, national and international culturalcooperation networks, endorsing interdisciplinary digital communities andexploring the potential for symbiosis between art, new technologies andsocial demands. And all of it grounded in close dialogue between sciencesand humanities.The alliance of LABoral, Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, ZKM Centerfor Art and Media, and Fundación Telefónica, allows SEACEX to continuefurthering the profile of Spanish culture abroad, to increase andstrengthen the presence of Spain’s contemporary creation in internationalmarkets, to consolidate cultural cooperation, and to provide a frameworkfor the relationship between art practitioners and professionals that willcontribute to the emergence of sustainable networks.