Move Semantics: Rules of Unfolding
March 27 - May 1, 2021
A project facilitated by Elæ Moss and Jeff Kasper
Arakawa + Gins / Reversible Destiny Foundation
Martin Byrne
Sky Cubacub
Scarlet Dame
Kelly Fritsch & Aimi Hamraie
Shaina Garfield
Mafe Izaguirre
New York Mycological Society
Alán Peláez López
Constanza Piña
Quimera Rosa
Sunaura Taylor
ABOUT
[move semantics]: rules of unfolding troubles the speculative potentialities of organisms and intelligences across systems––seeking out and proposing strategic futures while reflexively considering the formation of the site of this inquiry itself. The exhibition reimagines EFA Project Space as a laboratory, troubling these conceptual possibilities as a shared frame for translating and forecasting the intersecting roles of biome, body, built environment, media, and machine. These themes extend into the gallery experience as well as into virtual events taking place online assembled as the Move Semantics Lab.
Taking its name from a feature in programming language that allows you to create an efficient workaround to counter the detritus of “temporary objects,” (here, redundant code), the exhibition turns a critical eye on the invented, temporary semantic objects of human experience, proposing a breakdown of the structures both material and ontological that prevent the collective building of reparative, just, biophilic futures.
In keeping with EFA’s 2021 season, and reflecting on Project Space’s history of process-based exhibition-making, led by artists, [MS]:RU asks: “what are the BRIGHT FUTURES for the intersectional body?” Furthermore, how must our practices, our institutions, our networks, our spaces, and our infrastructures radically change in order to survive, live together, communicate, and plant (or provide) the seeds to ensure a future beyond the Capitalocene?
As a key feature of the exhibition, the Move Semantics Lab bridges physical and virtual space, with a core intention of re-imagining curatorial, institutional, and archival possibilities for public activation and futurecasting. [MS]:RU will continue to evolve in virtual space over the course of the exhibition and beyond. Here, the curators offer further reconsideration and re/presentation of the Lab’s strategies in the framework of the public health crisis transforming our landscape, speculating on the adaptive evolution offered to culture work by this profound moment. A Screening Room (also presented online) rounds out the lab’s offerings, with video content from exhibition participants running in a durational program throughout the exhibit.
Exhibition Photography by Yann Chashanovski
Gallery view into Speculative Resilience Library / Archive and Arakawa + Gins Studio Wall. In addition to text materials, plant media, and other materials, library/archive features two curated vitrines of fungi specimen collections as selected from the New York Mycological Society holdings.
MATERIALS
Press Release
Curatorial Statement
Artist/Participant and Curator Bios
The Move Semantics Lab presented a series of weekly events in conjunction with the on site exhibition at EFA Project Space. Co-hosted by the curators, the virtual events provided a guided “tour” through [ms]:ru’s central themes, in conversation with featured artists and their projects. Additional artist-led workshops and programs along these themes were offered weekly. All events had live captioning, see below for events with ASL.
Live recording of event here and field Guide
ABOUT BRIGHT FUTURES
Project Space’s 2021 programming season is dedicated to Bright Futures, envisioning a radical push for transparency, equality, and justice through exhibitions and artist projects that grapple with key political and social issues including racial capitalism, digital surveillance, mobility and access, gender, toxic masculinity, transition, multi-species repair, and ecological crisis. After a year of forced reckoning with America’s broken healthcare systems, the plague of systemic racism and violence, and deep class and gender divides, Bright Futures will connect the work of artists and communities that are united in sparking action and dialogue for changemaking. Taking a prompt from the conceptual frameworks of artist (and Project Space advisor) Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Bright Futures counters the current mood of political, social, and ecological despair. Expanding outward from Project Space’s renewed mission, the 2021 season will spotlight art that is community-based and future-looking, revealing contemporary practices that engage with technology and society, politics and poetics, and fuse belief and praxis in the promise of a better world.
Alán Peláez López, Historia Futura / Future History, 2021. Text commissioned for MSRU. Installation as dual-language white vinyl text directly on grey gallery wall, with Spanish text left and English text right facing each other. Read more here.
Arakawa + Gins / Reversible Destiny Foundation, “Studio Wall” as re-imagined by the facilitators, 2021. All Images: Copyright 1997- 2021, Estate of Madeline Gins, reproduced with permission of the Estate of Madeline Gins. Courtesy of the Reversible Destiny Foundation. Portraits of Arakawa and Madeline Gins at 124 W Houston Street, New York, by Dimitris Yeros, 2000. Read more here.
New York Mycological Society, Speculative Resilience Radical Practice Library & Archive for [move_semantics], 2019-21. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Read more here.
New York Mycological Society, Speculative Resilience Radical Practice Library & Archive for [move_semantics], 2019-21. Mixed media, dimensions variable. Read more here.
Shaina Garfield, Leaves With You Coffin, 2021. Rope, Turmeric Dye, Dress Form, Black Mulch, Lumber. Read more here.
Shaina Garfield, Macrame Memorial, 2021. Mixed media installation, with closed caption video, and vinyl wall text instructions for collective memorial engagement. Read more here.
Martin Byrne / Patternist, Sequence of Bleeding Standard Futures and Alternate Futures: “The Geryon Matter” (in vitrine) “Another Danse Macabre”; “Feral Architecture”; “The Death of Architecture; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cyborg”; Patternist. (L-R), 2009-17. Read more here.
Martin Byrne / Patternist, Sequence of Bleeding Standard Futures and Alternate Futures: “The Geryon Matter” (in vitrine) “Another Danse Macabre”; “Feral Architecture”; “The Death of Architecture; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cyborg”; Patternist. (L-R), 2009-17. Read more here.
Kelly Fritsch and Aimi Hamraie, Crip Technoscience Manifesto, 2019. Mixed media installation: scrolling text on mounted video monitor, audio, and printed braille book. Clear acrylic mounted shelves hold the braille book and a box of white archival gloves for safety purposes during COVID-19. Read more here.
Sunaura Taylor, Speculative Aquifers, 2019. Mixed media: original drawings and watercolors from Taylor; wheatpasted and adhesive printed research documentation affixed to gallery wall; scholarly text printed in vinyl affixed to vitrine and displayed on frosted acrylic panel. Dimensions variable, 2021. Read more here.
Left:
Quimera Rosa, Trans*Plant: an OncoMouse™ journey, 2019. Two closed caption video monitors, text. Read more here.
Right:
Sky Cubacub, Rebirth Garments, 2014-2021, and Radical Visibility: A QueerCrip Dress Manifesto, 2015 (text and video). Tofu Daddy, C’est Kevvie and Val H, Digital C-Prints. Photography by Colectivo Multipolar, 2019. Images appear courtesy of the artist. Read more here.
SCARLET DAME, Towards a Synthetic Identity: The Synthetic Identity Manifesto (text), simfi netune.py (code), text.resonator/Megatron-11b, Synthetic and Human Identity Diagrams, 2019-2021. Mixed media installation (Moss and Kasper): printed, wheatpasted diagrams, python code in vinyl wall text, manifesto text reproduced on frosted acrylic panel, wall mounted bathroom mirror with text resonator algorithm phone number written in scarlet lipstick, projection from antique overhead projector, on cart, and single printed black and white transparency with images of the artist’s hands, notebook, cords from digital music production, and a vial of HRT on a rumpled bed. The projection / transparency seen here includes images from photographer Mercedes Jelinek’s series, Finding Scarlet, 2019-2021. Used with permission. Read more here.
Left:
Mafe Izaguirre, The Emotion Machine:(The Mirror), 2021. (installation) and Deep Meditation: The Mirror and Talking Bird. (live performance) . Read more here.
Right:
Constanza Piña, Khipu Prehispanic Electrotextile Computer, 2017-2021. Presentation slides from print document and live ritual / performance. For [MS]:RU, an on site gallery projection of R&D media and installation documentation from Constanza Piña’s ongoing Khipu Prehispanic Electrotextile Computer project accompanies satellite installation of the work in Mexico City created for the lab. Read more here.
