Banquete_nodos y redes
The banquete_ project came about at the opening of the 1990s and evolved as a network of conversations and collaborations between artists and scientists, humanists, technologists and activists. Over time, this network has given rise to an interactive ACTS (the Spanish acronym for Art-Science-Technology-Society) environment, defining a space of encounter and collaboration between different artistic, scientific and technological centres for research, production and diffusion both here in Spain as well as internationally. The shared motivation has been to encourage and socialise the dialogue between sciences and humanities with a mandate to explore the relationships between biological, social, technological and cultural systems.
Barely one century elapsed between Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s discovery of the structure and functioning of neuronal networks and Manuel Castells’ theories on Net Society. Nonetheless, in this relatively short span of time society has undergone great changes in all orders of things. Our dizzying technoscientific, social and cultural transformation has configured a new paradigm, based as much on the complexity of the multiple realities in which we operate simultaneously, as on the interconnection between processes and events which were once considered autonomous, incompatible or simply incomprehensible. While at the end of the 19th century the mind or brain was capable of observing itself contemplating, in turn, its own neuron and its nerve system, it is now, as we cross the threshold to the 21st century, when global society is confronting the need to rethink itself and to construct itself from this new paradigm. The absorbent reality of the net influences our forms of thinking and of acting. All autarchic pretension in the field of knowledge or of creation tends towards a progressive exhaustion in this new space of transit and flow, whose permeability is in itself a new form of understanding and constructing reality. Through the net, identities are increasingly more open and, more than ever before, creation is a form of communication. Against this backdrop one can intuit new experiences and knowledge on the contemporary human condition.
Following the thread that connects neuronal structures with the social networks of communication, this third edition of banquete_nodos y redes is grounded in the theoretical and practical requirement to explore and visualize the dynamic emergencies of the Net Society. Against this backdrop, the until-now dominant model in cultural production, based on a hegemonic centre and unquestionable axes, gives way to a new structure of multiple nodes and networks. This structure is characterised by a constant flow of information as well as by the connection within a network where every point configures a node, a gaze or a narrative. In short, we are talking about a new pluricentric, dynamic and distributed system of cultural production and diffusion that behaves interconnectedly and interdependently. A system in which ideas and concepts, similarly to subjects, entities and institutions, are all agents and catalysts in a process of social and cultural transformation.
This exhibition features in excess of thirty digital and interactive art projects which posit a series of critical reflections and participative experiences while also exploring the new shared matrix of the net. Photographic-based works, videos, virtual reality installations or participative net.art projects comprise a wide-ranging exhibition which outlines a path through these neuronal microworlds and the global dynamics of contemporary societies.
Likewise, the project mirrors the latest trends in Spanish digital art in an open dialogue with other contexts and practices related with the different branches of science and engineering. This growing encounter between digital art and other disciplines and fields of knowledge is generating an emerging transdisciplinary dynamic that situates Spain in the focal point of international digital culture.
Idea & concept: Karin Ohlenschläger & Luis Rico
Curated by Karin Ohlenschläger