September 14 – December 11, 2021
Curator: Tom Leeser, Director of the Art and Technology Program and the Center for Integrated Media, CalArts
Tech/Know/Future/ From Slang to Structure is a critical response to technological systems within art addressing the issues of identity, history and abstraction, placing the viewer at the intersection of the past, present and future. Eleven diverse cross-disciplinary artists will use their creative practices to establish new relationships among technology, knowledge and time through augmented reality, artificial intelligence, sound, video, textiles and works on paper.
The exhibition is curated by Tom Leeser, Director of the Art and Technology Program and the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts, who will bring together a group of innovative artists including: Morehshin Allahyari, Salome Asega, Nancy Baker Cahill, Stephanie Dinkins, Carla Gannis, Taehee Kim, LoVid, Amelia Marzec, Olivia Mole, Sondra Perry, and Casey Reas.
Tech/Know/Future is an examination of humanity’s particular moment in time amidst a newfound era of social and political upheaval. Humanity stands at a crossroads between its past attachment to technology’s promise and a precarious, vague future. The artists who comprise this exhibition are compelling and provocative: their work collectively maps future territories of uncommon knowledge, digitally reconstituted iconographies of the present, and short-circuited networks of the past.
The exhibition draws inspiration from the essay “Iconic Treatise Gothic Futurism” by the late writer, artist and musician Rammellzee, and the book After the Future by the Italian cultural theorist Bifo Berardi. Rammellzee designed a “technological language” to challenge the art world’s conventional approaches to image-making and writing. Berardi defines the future as a “cultural construction” of a materialistic, superficial twentieth-century society. He declares the mythology of the future is over, with the rise of global capitalism and its powerful “imaginary effects” to blame. Berardi’s post-future is a dematerialized, infinite present, a virtual space and time.
Visit the digital twin of this exhibition, viewable on desktop, mobile, or as an immersive VR experience.
Click on an image below to enlarge photo.
Experience Tech/Know/Future/ beyond the Segal Gallery
Social Media
Join the conversation on social media by tagging @montclairstategalleries and using the hashtags #TechKnowFuture and #MontclairStateGalleries.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated book featuring an interview by Director Megan C. Austin with curator Tom Leeser and essays by Andrew Culp, Professor of Media History and Theory, CalArts; Dan/Dani Bustillo, Los Angeles-based artist and writer; Charlotte Kent, Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at Montclair State University; Tom Leeser, CalArts; and Carlin Wing, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College.
Opening Reception
Celebrate the opening of Tech/Know/Future/ From Slang to Structure
Thursday, September 23, 2021
5 – 7:30 p.m.
Remarks from Director Megan C. Austin, Dean Daniel Gurskis, and curator Tom Leeser at 6 p.m.