World of Matter | 2013
Collaborative Art and Media Project 2011-2014
World of Matter is an international art and media project investigating primary materials (fossil, mineral, agrarian, maritime) and the complex ecologies of which they are a part.
Initiated by an interdisciplinary group of artists and scholars, the project responds to the urgent need for new forms of representation that shift resource-related debates from a market driven domain to open platforms for engaged public discourse.
The project seeks to develop innovative and ethical approaches to the handling of resources, while at the same time challenging the very assumption that the planet’s materials are inevitably a resource for human consumption; this human-centered vision has been the motor for many environmentally and socially disastrous developments. The social ecologies presented on this site give evidence to the interdependence between human and non-human actants in this fragile system.
World of Matter considers visual source material a valuable instrument for education, activist work, research, and raising general public awareness, particularly in light of the ever more privatized nature of both actual resources and knowledge about the powers that control them. Hence the project acts through exhibitions, public events, publications and an online platform.
The multimedia platform, launched in Brussels in 2013, is the backbone of the collaborative project, providing an open access archive that connects different files, actors, territories and ideas. Its content is the result of extensive field research and media production in situations of heightened material significance, including: the extractive Amazon basin, Indian cotton farmers, water ecologies of the Nile, fisheries in the Dutch polders, mining culture in the Brazilian Minas Gerais, and the rush for arable land in Ethiopia. The platform includes material from the World of Matter core group as well as a number of additional, related art and media projects. It is conceived in such a way as to stimulate a variety of possible readings about the global connectivity among these sites.
World of Matter considers a planetary perspective on a world that matters.
Concept Group
Mabe Bethonico, Belo Horizonte (BR), artist-researcher Ursula Biemann, Zurich (CH), artist, videoessayist and curator (see and ) Uwe H. Martin, Hamburg (DE), photo journalist, interactive multimedia publisher Helge Mooshammer & Peter Mörtenböck, Vienna & London (AU, UK) research architects and cultural theorists Emily E. Scott, Zurich (CH), art historian, cultural geographer and artist Pablo Tavares, Campinas (BR), architect and autonomous media practitioner Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Amsterdam (NL), artists
The project was initiated by Uwe H. Martin and Ursula Biemann.
Research Roundtable Meetings - Project Development
The project structure is based in a collaborative process which is advanced through roundtable meetings which last 4 days and can generate semi-public laboratories and exhibitions of the research phase.
1st meeting: Gasworks London, April 21 – 24, 2011 with students from the MA program of Goldsmiths College London (UK)
2nd meeting: Zurich University for the Arts ZHdK, Institute for Theory, December 15 – 18, 2011 with students from the MA of Art and Media, ZHdK (CH)
3rd meeting: MAP, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, April 2012 with students from the Fine Arts department of State University of Minas Gerais UFMG, Belo Horizonte (BR)
4th meeting: Hartware MedienKunst Verein, Dortmund, October 12-14, 2012
5th meeting: Argos, Brussels, October 15-18, 2013 Launch of website, public conference and research meeting to conceptualize the exhibition.
World of Matter Exhibitions
Hartware Media Art HMKV in Dortmund (DE), February 28 - June, 2014
James Gallery, Graduate Center New York (US), September 10 - November 1, 2014
Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia U, Montreal (CN) February 20 - April, 2015
Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (SE), December 2016
Nash Gallery, UMN, Minneapolis, September - December 2017
World of Matter Conferences and Workshops
Public Kick Off Meeting of Supply Lines at Gasworks London, April, 2011
Provisoe - three-day public conference at the Museum of Art Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (BR), April 2012
Book Launch of Provisoe at Maldives Pavillion, Venice Biennale, May 31 2013
Argos Center for Art and Media, Brussels, 2-day conference and WoM web launch, October 18 + 19, 2013
Radical Materialism, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, September 9 + 10, 2014
World of Matter - Extractive Ecologies and Unceded Terrains, Concordia University, Montreal, Feb 10 + 21, 2014
Partners
World of Matter is a collaboration with:
Institute for Theory (ith), University of the Arts, Zurich (CH)
Visual Department at Goldsmiths College, London (UK)
Fine Arts Department at State University of Minas Gerais (BR)
Hardware Media Art Dortmund, (DE), curator Inke Arns
Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (SE), curator Maria Lind
Argos, Brussels (BE)
James Gallery, Graduate Center, New York (US), curator Katherine Carl
Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal, curator Michèle Theriault
Concordia University, Montreal, Krista Lynes
College of Design, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Ozayr Saloojee