News & Notes

May 22, 2003: Talk+Workshop at Kyushu University, School of Design, Ohashi Campus, Fukuoka

 

Now in print and online: my conversation with Gregor Jansen, director of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, for Maecenas, the quarterly publication by the Hessische Kulturstiftung

 

 

Running from December 2, 2022–February 12, 2023:

The Tide Is High

Kunsthaus Wiesbaden

Curated by Sylvia Metz and Christin Müller

 

 

October 2022

Research Trip to Japan made possible thanks to a 2021 stipend by the Hessische Kulturstiftung and finally actually possible after Japan’s Covid restrictions were lifted.

 

Running from July 1–31, 2022

Note di Sguardi

Berlin * Bologna * Cervia

Conceived by the artist and curator Giovanna Sarti, Note di Sguardi is realized in collaboration with Sara Bernshausen in Berlin and Gino Gianuizzi in Bologna. Every year thirty-six artists, 12 artistic contributions from each city, are asked to select from their photographic archive an image that captures a fleeting moment and has specific meaning within their personal research. In the poster format 70×100 cm, three reproduced images, each from every city, are on display simultaneously for a month in Berlin, in Bologna, and in Cervia.

I encountered this salt lick in Vallunga, near Wolkenstein in South Tirol. I have recently been fascinated by the sheer formal beauty of these blocks of salt that have been licked into shape by animals. These “licking stations” seem to me a little like the animal-equivalent of an office’s water cooler. It’s a social node of sorts. The licking reminds me of how we physically activate other types of social junctions: by swiping and stroking our mobile devices we gain access to a digital social sphere.

 

 

Running from December 3, 2021–August 28, 2022:

Back to Future: Visions of Technologies between Fiction and Reality

Museum für Kommunikation, Berlin

Cosmic Night Shade © 2014, photography: Kay Herschelmann / MSPT

Artistic directors: Katja Weber, reflekt, and Yvonne Zindel
Artists: Aleksandra Domanović, ecoLogicStudio, Antonia Hirsch, Hyphen-Labs, Fabrice Monteiro, Suzanne Treister, Pinar Yoldas

 

New publication out now:  ✨

Negative Space: Trajectories of Sculpture in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Peter Weibel and Anett Holzheid (eds). Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2021.
Catalogue of the exhibition by the same name at ZKM in 2019.

 

Running from April 9–May 15, 2021

Technē

Republic Gallery, Vancouver

STIPENDIATIN 2021/22 / NEW FELLOW: ANTONIA HIRSCH / REISESTIPENDIUM / TRAVEL GRANT: JAPAN

EN

Born in Frankfurt am Main, Antonia Hirsch (*1968) explores in her sculptural practice the affective charge of objects.

In Japan, she will investigate design strategies that  originally widely known as Kansei Engineering. This design approach particularly targets affects, for example in the design of a car whose radiator seems to smile.

In addition, the artist will explore traditional Japanese arts and crafts, their production, materiality, and ceremonial charge. She intends to incorporate the results into her artistic practice, in which she has been exploring the central motif of the screen.

DE

Die in Frankfurt am Main geborene Antonia Hirsch (*1968) setzt sich in ihrer skulpturalen Praxis mit der affektiven Aufladung von Objekten auseinander.

In Japan wird sie Designstrategien untersuchen, wie sie im Kansei Engeneering Anwendung finden. Dieses Design zielt besonders auf Affekte ab, so z.B. beim Entwurf eines Autos, dessen Kühler zu lächeln scheint.

Zudem wird sich die Künstlerin mit traditionellem japanischem Kunsthandwerk, dessen Produktion, Materialität und zeremonieller Aufladung befassen. Die Ergebnisse will sie in ihre künstlerische Praxis einfließen lassen, in der sie sich schon seit einigen Jahren mit dem zentralen Motiv des Screens auseinandersetzt.

 

Running from November 21–January 31, 2021

Cover Me

Ho Tam Press, Vancouver

 

Opening November 17, 2020

Running from November 17–August 29, 2021

Back to Future

Museum für Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main

Antonia Hirsch, Cosmic Nightshade (2014)

 

“Museum für Kommunikation in Frankfurt am Main has developed an exhibition, which highlights the technological utopias of the past and present. It particularly reflects on digitalisation and the social changes it has engendered, featuring selected works by internationally renowned artists like Antonia Hirsch, Aleksandra Domanović, Fabrice Monteiro, Suzanne Treister and Pinar Yoldas, alongside objects of technological history. Visitors embark on a visual journey passing four thematic rooms that introduces them to the technological models of the future, developed by the creative visionaries of the 19th century. Some of these utopias have become established models of everyday life, while others, though entertaining, clearly overshot their mark.

The artworks offer individual points of access to scientific history and provide alternative perspectives on technological innovations. In the piece by Pinar Yoldas, for example, visitors are given opportunities to consider the advantages (and disadvantages) of human optimisation. Entitled “Designer Babies” (2013-2016), her work reflects both the fascination and horror evoked by such themes as human-machine hybridisation, cyborgs and body extensions. In her installation „Cosmic Nightshade“ (2014), Antonia Hirsch simulates the other-worldly images of the asteroid 433 Eros that were sent to earth by a probe in 2000, thus capturing the human push into the unknown and sometimes threatening depths of the universe. The award-winning virtual reality installation „Neurospeculative Afrofeminism“ (2017) by the multi-disciplinary collective Hyphen-Labs introduces the visitors to a future in which women of color transcend the current intersectionality to become pioneers of neuroscience.” (Kulturstiftung des Bundes)

Artistic directors: Katja Weber, reflekt, and Yvonne Zindel
Artists: Aleksandra Domanović, ecoLogicStudio, Antonia Hirsch, Hyphen-Labs, Fabrice Monteiro, Suzanne Treister, Pinar Yoldas

Goodbye old studio!

Work in progress.

 

Opening March 3, 2020

Running from March 3–May18, 2020

Awakening

Antonia Hirsch, World Map Project: Equal Countries A-Z (2006)

“In the spring of 2017, the Art Bank partnered with the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario on an exhibition tied to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Entitled Awakening, the exhibition featuring 21 artworks from the Canada Council Art Bank collection was curated by Bruce Mau.

An international tour of Awakening brought these thought-provoking pieces to places where significant debates about the health and sustainability of the planet were taking place, providing new perspectives and keeping these issues top of mind. In 2019, the exhibition travelled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, to the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, and to the World Conference Centre in Bonn for the United Nations Global Climate Conference… Artists featured in this exhibition are Germaine Arnaktauyok, Iain Baxter&, Fernand Bergeron, Eleanor Bond, Edward Burtynsky, Sid Butt, Ken Danby, Randall Finnerty, Antonia Hirsch, Marilyn (Molly) Magid, Jimmy Manning, David Morris, Norval Morrisseau, Kim Ondaatje, Bruce Paton, David Rasmus, Michael Snow, Takao Tanabe, Joanne Tod, Chih-Chien Wang and Shirley Wiitasalo.”

 

 

 

Arbeitsstipendium Stiftung Kunstfonds 2020!

 

Opening April 27, 2019

Running from April 27–May 4, 2019

You Are—ontological positions around matter

Reinbeckhallen, Berlin

 

Opening on April 23, 2019

Running from April 24–June 29, 2019

Absorbers

Decad, Berlin

 

 

Running from April 6–August 11, 2019

Negative Space: Trajectories of Sculpture

ZKM Karlsruhe

 

Installation view of 16×9 (2017)

 

Opening  Thursday, February 21, 2019:

INTOTO #7

Kunstverein Rosa Luxemburg Platz, Berlin

 

Work in progress.

Work in progress. Ex voto-personal device.

 

Running from May 26–August 18, 2018

zero, ground

Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver

Installation view of the exhibiton zero, ground at Griffin Art Projects.

Left: Philipp Lachenmann, right: Antonia Hirsch mobilemobile I (2016).

Photography: Lee Plested.

Glass research: bird’s eye view of a silica mine near Golden, British Columbia.

 

Opening Tuesday, May 1, 2018:

For further information visit the exhibition’s website.

 

Opening Saturday, April 14, 2018:

antonia_hirsch_surrey_art_gallery_flow

For further information visit the Surrey Art Gallery website

antonia_hirsch_dialog_republic

 

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January residency at Orbitas—workspace with a view.

Gold ruby glass: this glass comes completely clear, but contains gold that with the right temperature and duration turns red.

Here’s the “before” picture: kiln packed with test in the foreground.

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Here the test later in the process… it’s not there yet, a cool red: keep holding at 700 degrees.

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Proper gold ruby opening the kiln after the cool-down period:

ruby_kiln_antonia_hirsch

“Beyond [gold ruby glass’] aesthetic qualities, there is an alchemical connotation: Since ancient Greek times, descriptions of the sorcerers’ stone agree that it was believed to be a red substance and the key to the transmutation of metals, principally the making of gold. Whoever discovered how to color glass red must have thought himself to be on the right track to attaining the ultimate goal of alchemy… Red glass of some sort was produced almost from the time that glassmaking began. Knowledge was gained and then lost, and while there were rediscoveries on several occasions, this glass does not seem to have been produced again until it was revived in Brandenburg in the late 1670s and 1680s. It is here, with the arrival of the alchemist, pharmacist, and glassmaker Johann Kunckel (1637?–1703) in early 1678, that the real story of gold ruby glass begins.”

Source: Corning Museum of Glass

Screen Shot 2017-09-12 at 12.04.47The Surplus Library on Affect & Economic Exchange will be part of this fantastic Reading Room organized by Wendy’s Subway for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. The illustrious list of extraordinary (in the true sense of the word) libraries: Aeromoto (Mexico City); Aleph B° (Beirut); Ashkal Alwan (Beirut); AND (London); at land’s edge (Los Angeles); Beta-Local (Puerto Rico); Bureau of General Services—Queer Division (New York); CC Catálogo Contemporáneo (Mexico City and other locations); Chimurenga Library (Cape Town); dispersed holdings (New York); Feminist Library on Wheels (F.L.O.W.) at the Women’s Center for Creative Work (Los Angeles); Free Black Women’s Library (New York); Fundación Alumnos47 (Mexico City); Interference Archive (Brooklyn); Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (Los Angeles); P A L / Pilipinx American Library (Queens); Parmer (Brooklyn); Press Press (Baltimore); Provisions Library: A Project for Social Change (Fairfax and Washington D.C.); Reanimation Library (Queens); The Surplus Library on Affect and Economic Exchange (Multiple Locations); Temporary Services (Chicago); Vancouver Women’s Library (Vancouver); Ulises (Philadelphia); Yale Union (Portland)

Check out the details here.

 

antonia_hirsch_glass_kiln_8-17Here we go again: another set of molds packed for kiln casting, awaiting their crucibles and glass.

IMG_0898More raw material: two cardiac pacemakers, the “Phoenix” a demo, the “Dialog II” the real (and used) thing.

raw_materialRaw material: black glass billet.

IMG_0885Next set of molds ready for the kiln.

bostonglobeClick here for the article.

Prop (verb vs noun)

antoniahirsch_prop

Shot from a display at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.

Persistence of Vision

 

antonia_hirsch_infest_sketch

Above: sketch I made a couple of years ago and never realized.

Below: 16×9 (2017)

antonia_hirsch_table_rock.3.1

 

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Form filled to the brim with black glass.

 

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Glass drip frozen in mid-air…

 

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Glass billet’s “imprint” in the crucible…

 

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Behold: no broken molds and glass seems to have melted fully into the forms.

 

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2hrs at 850° C when everything is glowing red hot, then venting the kiln to rapidly cool it down to 480° C. Then 40 more hours of cooling.

 

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Inside of the kiln: forms at the bottom, buttressed with bricks and flower pots as crucibles with the black glass billets inside.

 

wax_stillNot a DIY distillery, but my setup for steaming wax out of my molds.

 

 

Opening today, March 9, 2017:

the_invisible_hand_2

The Invisible Hand (After Adam Smith), installation view at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2010

For further info visit Under Super Vision an exhibition and symposium at the University of British Columbia.

 

 

CameraAwesomePhoto

For some, thing theory is still a thing…
From Bill Brown’s Things, pg. 5

 

 

stomach_phone_sm copy

My contribution to Decad‘s ACLU fundraiser. Silent Auction this Sunday, February 26, in Berlin.

 

 

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Four out of eight plaster forms for casting iPhone6-future-relics in black glass.

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…for now with the wax still inside the mold.

Solanum I & II

solanumSmall diptych (Solanum I & II) I’m donating to the Western Front’s 44th anniversary fundraiser.
Picking up on amateur meteorite photography and 19th century spirit photography.

 

Opening today, February 9, 2017:
This Now, More Than Ever
Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver, CA

 

Herbert Marcuse's gravestone in Berlin (my contribution to the show)

Image of Herbert Marcuse’s grave in Berlin (my contribution to the show);
“weitermachen” = “carry on,” “continue”

 

 

fcf6e013248253.5636985e3354aImage of a thing by Kevin McNamee-Tweed found on Supercargo.com

 

 

flesh_phone_28smProfane waxes.