Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona 2021

Institut Ramon Llull, Hac Te – Hub of art, science and technology of Barcelona, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), New Art Foundation, .BEEP { collection;}, Espronceda – Institute of Art and Culture, Canòdrom – Digital and Democratic Innovation Athenaeum and Hangar – Center for Art Research and Production, oganize the Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona, within the official program of Festival Ars Electronica 2021, which this year will be held for the second time in distributed mode, with Barcelona as one of its locations.

From September 8 to 12, Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona presents exhibitions with unpublished works and projects in process produced especially for the occasion, talks between artists and scientists, performances and film screenings.

AE Garden Barcelona will take place in two venues: the Canòdrom Digital and Democratic Innovation Centre and Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture.

Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona exhibition programme

Canòdrom will host a historical work and an unpublished production of the Beep Collection of Electronic Art and the five projects specifically funded to participate in Ars Electronica by the Institut Ramon Llull, The New Art Foundation, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, La Caldera and Hangar.The selected projects have been created by Anaisa Franco, Andy Gracie, Estampa, Esther Rodríguez-Barbero and Óscar Martín.

On the other hand, the Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture in the exhibition Being Corporeal Again presents five installations, which address hot topics of contemporary creation such as NFTs, cryptocurrencies, ecological data pollution and multi-user experiences.

Dates: From September 8, to September 12, 2021
Time: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Venues: Canòdrom-Ateneu d’Innovació Digital i Democràtica. C/Concepción Arenal, 165. Barcelona // Espronceda Institute of Art & CultureCarrer d’Espronceda 326, Nau 4, 5 i 10, Barcelona
Entry: free. No prior registration required.

Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona dialogues programme

Date: 9 September
Time: 16 to 21 h
Venue: Canòdrom – Carrer de Concepción Arenal, 165, Barcelona

16 h. Welcome & presentation
By Arnau Monterde and María Lladó.

16:15 h. Opening conference
Conference by Geert Lovink.

17 h. Crossed dialogues

Through a series of dialogues between artists, scientists, technologists, thinkers and activists in the space of the Canòdrom experiences will be shared as well as reflections on the themes, processes and methodologies used in the framework of the artistic research-production residency program developed jointly with Hac Te, Barcelona’s art, science and technology hub, and some of its partners such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the Institute of Photonic Sciences or the centers attached to the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology.

The different artistic research-production processes developed at Hangar and the Caldera Performance Arts Center by scholarship artists such as Estampa, Andy Gracie, Oscar Martin, Esther Rodríguez-Barbero or Anaisa Franco will be the guiding thread of the talks, which seek to invite us to rethink the hybrid space of knowledge, methodologies and epistemologies generated in the framework of the transversal initiative presented here. With these dialogues we aim to delve into the processes of (de)construction and care of spaces for interdependence between disciplines, institutions, communities, groups and individuals, micro and macro-politics mutually reliant on each other towards our current/contemporary hybrid condition of time and space.

17 h. Dialogue with Estampa (ES) and Alejandra López Gabrielis (ARG).

17.30 h. Dialogue with Óscar Martín (ES) and Jara Rocha (ES).

18 h. Dialogue with Andy Gracie (UK) and Carme Jordi (ES) and Samuel Briden (DE).

18.30 h. Dialogue with Anaisa Franco (BZ) and Vicente Matallana (ES) introducing Neuronnection.

18.45 h. Esther Rodríguez-Barbero (ES) with Carolina Jiménez (ES) introducing Do bodies dream of electromagnetic organs?

19 h. Introducing Arc-hive with Christopher Fanning (NZ), Helen Torres (UY) and Antonio Gagliano (AR).

Project Arc-hive creates an open source digital platform that aggregates, preserves, publishes, distributes and contextualizes a variety of information, knowledge and documentation on art with a focus on biomedia, ensuring open access to a variety of users, and a wide outreach of digital materials across cultural sectors and territories. The talk will address the challenges of creating and distributing cohesive digitization and dissemination protocols through a centralized digital space where knowledge and best practices relevant to art using biological materials are collected.

Arc-hive is a Creative Europe project co-funded by the European Union.