To celebrate the UK launch of Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 (MIT), edited by Jussi Parikka and Joasia Krysa, LUX and BIMI present a screening event around the work of two visionary Finnish artists: technology pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941) and moving image artist Mika Taanila (b. 1965).
Over the past forty years, Kurenniemi has been a composer of electronic music, experimental filmmaker, computer animator, roboticist, inventor, and futurologist – a “scientist-humanist-artist” who attempts to find the technological essence of the human soul. Relatively unknown outside Nordic countries until his 2012 Documenta 13 exhibition, ”In 2048,” Kurenniemi is at last receiving long-overdue international recognition. Taanila’s 2002 essay documentary The Future Is Not What It Used to Be deftly intersperses never-before-seen archival material from the early years of electronic art, including excerpts from Kurenniemi’s unfinished experimental short films, with more recent footage of the artist obsessively collecting video, audio, and found objects – artifacts of a stream-of-consciousness digital diary. A decade later in 2013, Mika Taanila completed the reconstruction of Spindrift, a 1966 lost film by Jan Bark & Erkki Kurenniemi, which will also be screened.
In the presence of Mika Taanila, professor Jussi Parikka (Winchester School of Art), Dr Joasia Krysa (Liverpool John Moores University/Liverpool Biennale) and Dr. Matthew Fuller (Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University).
With the support of the Finnish Institute, London.
Programme:
The Future Is Not What It Used to Be
(Mika Taanila, 2002, 35mm, dialogue in Finnish, English and Swedish, 52 min)
Is the merging of man and machine really possible? Or has it already happened?
Spindrift
Jan Bark & Erkki Kurenniem, 1966/2013, 16mm on 35mm, sound, 14 min
Spindrift was a project initiated by Swedish composer/musician Jan Bark. In 1965 he proposed SVT to produce an experiment for a new kind of “music for black and white TV”, exploring audiovisual synesthesia.
The screening will be followed by a reception.
Copies of Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 will be made available for purchase at the event for a special UK launch reduced price (cash only)
Please book via Eventbrite
photo credit: © Kinotar
