VIDEO TEASER:

The founders and directors Estela Oliva and Carmen Salas tell us about the ideas behind the exhibition and the criteria they’ve used for choosing the work of arts.

Presented in collaboration with Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Lima, New Realities is a project that aims to explores the implications of technology on human behaviour and identity, and how the ever ­changing nature of the Internet and use of new technologies are bringing about new avenues for creative expression. The exhibition runs until Friday 17 June 2016, free access, all ages.

“It’s been an amazing experience to present the exhibition at Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Lima. They’re doing such a great job, and we found many synergies with what we do here. We’ve worked very closely with them for over a year to adapt the project to their spaces and audiences.” says Carmen Salas.

Photo credit: LaTurbo Avedon.

Through this journey of art, technology and digital creativity, we seek to provide new perspectives on the reality we live, and anticipate the future we are all heading to. A future in which we can decide what role to adopt in order to make a more harmonious place for future generations. The exhibition illustrates a culture of continuous change and complex transformation in which the digital tools we once created are now acting as important agents of change.

Photo credit: Espacio Fundación Telefónica.

New Realities includes the works of 12 contemporary artists and designers featured across three thematic areas. The criteria for selecting the works has been to choose projects that significantly deal with defining questions of this new reality in which we live; artworks that blend artistic research with innovative practices to break boundaries, and foster the development of new disciplines. The artists featured in the exhibition include: Karolina Sobecka, LIA, LaTurbo Avedon, Jan de Coster, Lawrence Lek, Mark Dorf, Quayola, Universal Everything, Ustwo, FIELD, Fabrica and Realität.

Photo credit: Energy Flow by FIELD.

For Alpha-ville, it is essential that all technological developments go hand in hand with a critical reflection through research and artistic creation, so that we can deepen the impact and possibilities that these new technologies have on society and culture. This is the message we wanted to convey with New Realities, a concept that is also explained in the Marshall McLuhan’s quote we’ve used in the exhibition text: “artists are always ahead of technology offering us clues to understand the impact these technologies will have later on. “

Photo credit (left to right)
First: Ustwo.
Second:Espacio Fundación Telefónica
Third: gEOF by Jan de Coster.

More details about the exhibition can be found here.

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Mark Dorf is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. This is where he makes…

Two years ago I moved to Brooklyn and I have had two spaces that I work in, this one being of course the most recent. I tend not to have complex large workspaces at the moment because I work almost exclusively digital albeit through photography or other digital media like 3D, video or animation. I try to make my walls a reflection of the current headspace that I inhabit – they stay cluttered with recent works, inspiration, and texts that I have been working on so that I can at a glance look and understand my placement in my process. Additionally, I try to keep the tools I use most within arm’s length on the walls so that I’m never searching for anything for a long time – it is so important for me to be able to keep my momentum and not get stopped by something silly like trying to find a straight edge and consequently lose my direction. My work predominantly is based within the landscape, so the real studio is of course in the remote reaches that I love to explore.

Dorf’s most recent show //_PATH is being exhibited at the New Realities Exhibition in Barcelona – an international exhibition curated by Alpha-ville and powered by Mobile World Capital. Read more about this on Central Station here. Dorf is also releasing a set of digital limited editions from his //_PATH series on Sedition, along with other artists participating in the exhibition. You can view and purchase the collection here.

Mark Dorf -  //_PATH, Untitled

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

New Realities is an eight week exhibition at Mobile World Centre Barcelona curated by Alpha-ville. The exhibition forms part of Music + Arts an international showcase of new trends in music, art and digital culture organised by Mobile World Capital in partnership with Movistar, and in collaboration with Alpha-ville. The show features the work of 30 international artists, designers and musicians. Running until 13 December, both the exhibition and its parallel programme of events, explore the current digital art and cultural landscape, and reflect on concepts brought by the integration of digital into our society.

Herman Kolgen – Seismik_Index, 2014

Sougwen Chung – Mytheme Etude Op.4, 2013

The exhibition features work from Herman Kolgen, Sougwen Chung, Mark Dorf, Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet and many other talented creatives. There’s much to see with installations ranging from print to interactive and from music videos to web experiments. There are also several showcases around the digital arts, tangible objects, music and art apps and generative art. If you’re in Barcelona, don’t miss Beyond Music + Arts (13 December), a symposium around digital technology and innovation in music and art which runs as part of the New Realities parallel programme.

Beyond Music + Arts – Image: Felix Faire

New Realities Preview:

New Realities runs at Mobile World Centre until 13 December.

For more from New Realities, see this Recommends feature from Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet. Stay tuned for more features from New Realities in the coming weeks.

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

New Realities is an exhibition curated by Alpha-ville and powered by Mobile Word Capital that takes place at the Mobile World Centre in Barcelona. The exhibition which is part of the Music+Arts showcase explores the current art and cultural landscape through the work of 30 artists, designers and musicians from around the globe. It reflects on concepts brought by the integration of digital and the Internet into our society. The artists involved use new technologies to express their interests, perspectives and visions of a new cultural reality that is breaking boundaries.

For New Realities, artist duo Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet have been commissioned to create “The Highest Human Tower” – a new interactive art project inspired by the Catalan tradition of Castells (human towers). The onsite installation and a dedicated website collects the measurements of participants, creating the highest human tower ever made.

Photo: Manuel Portela

Hangar (ArtSpace)

This is one of the core spaces for art in Barcelona. Hangar is an art production space by the Catalan artist association.

The Plague (Movie directed by Neus Ballús)

The Plague is a film of intertwining stories, that offers a moving portrait of life in the outskirts of Barcelona. The main characters are not actors and it was shot in the hometown of Mar. Watch the trailer here.

La Central Macba (Bookshop)

This bookshop attached to MACBA museum is a place we regularly visit in the center of Barcelona. It offers a good variety of art books.

The Influencers (Festival)

The Influencers is a festival about unconventional art, guerrilla communication and radical entertainment. It happens every year in November and is hosted at CCCB. This is the kind of festival you don’t want to miss. We travel a lot and we missed it several times but luckily for us they have a nice online archive with all the talks for each year.

More: Website

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For more recommendations on what to read, watch or listen to, go here.