Notes from ZKM

I finally got around to post some images from "What Was Old is New Again", a fabulous event/conference organized by Henry Zemel (Caeno Foundation) and hosted by ZKM, Karlsruhe. This most unique gathering brought together assyriologists, architects, anthropologists, art historians, new media artists and dealers.

The most memorable presentations included the short history of "computer user" by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied, a lecture on transformation of Nam Jun Paik's work from minimalism to maximalism by Barbara London, Luke Murphy's demonstration of uranium decay driven Geiger counter-perfect-randomness generator, a 3 thousand years old Babylonian song reconstructed and performed by Theo J.H. Krispijn and a very strange lecture by Bazon Brock, which made no sense at all, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed .

Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied

The full list of participants: Mel Alexenberg / Netanel Anor / Michael Bielicky / Bazon Brock / Yiyi Chen / Michael Cohn / Brian Dillon / Dragan Espenschied / Dmitry Gutov / Jenia Gutova / Wayne Horowitz / Th. J. H. Krispijn / Bo Lawergren / Olia Lialina / Barbara London / Naomi May / Luke Murphy / Muzaffer Ozgules / Marcin Ramocki / Morty Schiff / Irene Sibbing / Joey Skaggs / Peter Weibel / Martin Williams / Jocelyn Wolff / Henry Zemel.

The conference opened symultaneously with "Medium Religion", a huge and quite interesting exhibition curated by Boris Groys and Peter Weibel, which "aims at demonstrating the medial aspect of religion using current examples of religious video propaganda and the work of contemporary artists".

Fore some moving images of the symposium/exhibition check out the short video below.