Session Two can be accessed by this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88698782440
City Lights presents a two session (lecture/panel) event celebrating the publication of
The Quantum Revolution: Art, Technology, Culture
by Arthur Kroker and David Cook
published by University of Toronto Press (in the Digital Futures Series)
With Arthur Kroker, Lynn Baron, Rebecca Belmore, Ricardo Dominguez, Nadia Myre, and Jackson 2Bears.
Hosted by Peter Maravelis
We are living the quantum age in real time: artificial intelligence in the ascendent, vibrant art, blended bodies, fast communication, breaking events delivered at the speed of light, bitterly entangled politics, right-wing populism on the rise, mindfulness everywhere accompanied big drops in human consciousness, viral contagions with truth itself in eclipse.
When major technological change slams into the human condition—quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, genetics—what’s left after the fatal implosion is the debris of the death of the social—cosmic dust that gets in our eyes—as life itself is overwhelmed by the particle blast, riding the storm waves of change and disruption.
Focusing on the newly published book, The Quantum Revolution: Art, Technology, Politics (University of Toronto Press, 2023), City Lights is organizing two sessions to explore the origins and impact of the quantum revolution in contemporary society, with a particular focus on the creative artistic imagination, particularly indigenous art, as a gateway to new ways of seeing in a turbulent 21st century.
Session One – The Quantum Revolution: A Holographic Talk
Saturday, February 17, 2024, 12:00 pm (Noon) Pacific Time / 3:00 pm Eastern Time
with Arthur Kroker including short interventions by Lynn Baron
This session explores a new way of thinking drawn directly from the quantum imaginary itself. The quantum revolution is viewed as everyday life, where technology moves fast, and where, under cover of the digital devices that connect us, the most sophisticated concepts of technology and science originating in mathematics, astrophysics, and biogenetics have swiftly flooded human consciousness, shaped social behavior, and crafted individual identity. Deeply embedded in digital technology, we are the very first inhabitants of life in the quantum zone. The Quantum Revolution is about life today – its entanglements, creativity, politics, and artistic vision.
Session Two – From Particle Poetics to Wave Aesthetics
Saturday, February 17, 2024, 2:00 pm Pacific Standard Time / 5:00 pm Eastern Standard Time
Moderated by Arthur Kroker and Peter Maravelis with Rebecca Belmore, Ricardo Dominguez, Jackson 2Bears, and Nadia Myre
A panel discussion with the artists from the A to Z section of the book. Illustrating and elaborating many of the themes that emerge in the first session. A discussion of the concept of the quantum zone as a new way of understanding digital culture, as well as a series of reflections on art as a gateway to understanding the quantum imaginary.
About the participants
Arthur Kroker is an author, editor, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture. He serves as director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC), located at the University of Victoria where he has served as Professor of Political Science. Kroker was appointed to the Canada Research Chair in technology, culture and theory in 2003. He was the editor for the online academic journal CTheory, an international journal of theory, technology and culture. He is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous books which include: Body Drift – Butler, Hayles, Haraway; Exits to the Posthuman Future; Technologies of the New Real: Viral Contagion and Death of the Social ; Life in the Wires: The CTheory Reader; amonst many others. He makes his home in Victoria, Canada.
Lynn Baron is a photographer, published poet and painter living in Victoria,Canada. With Arthur Kroker and David Cook her aesthetic imagination and writing contributed in a major way to The Quantum Revolution.
A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist. Rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, Belmore’s works make evocative connections between bodies, land and language. Solo exhibitions include: Facing the Monumental, Art Gallery of Ontario (2018); Rebecca Belmore: Kwe, Justina M.Barnicke Gallery (2014); The Named and The Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, (2002). In 1991, Ayumee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother was created at the Banff Centre for the Arts with a national tour in 1992 and subsequent gatherings took place across the Canada in 1996, 2008, and 2014. In 2017, Belmore participated in documenta 14 with Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside) in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. In 2005, at the Venice Biennale, she exhibited Fountain in the Canadian Pavilion. Other group exhibitions include: Landmarks2017 / Reperes2017, Partners in Art (2017); Land Spirit Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and the IV Bienal de la Habana (1991). She has received numerous honors for her work including the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award (2004), the Hnatyshyn Visual Arts Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016).
Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed virtual sit-in technologies in solidarity with the Zapatistas communities in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1998. His recent Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab project (http://tbt.tome.press/) with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand, the Transborder Immigrant Tool (a GPS cell phone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/US border) was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award” (2008), an award funded by Cultural Contact, Endowment for Culture Mexico–US and handed out by the US Embassy in Mexico. It also was funded by CALIT2 and the UCSD Center for the Humanities. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited at the 2010 California Biennial (OCMA), Toronto Free Gallery, Canada (2011), The Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands (2013), ZKM, Germany (2013), as well as a number of other national and international venues. The project was also under investigation by the US Congress in 2009-2010 and was reviewed by Glenn Beck in 2010 as a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S. border with its poetry. Dominguez is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2/QI, UCSD. He also is co-founder of *particle group*, with artists Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll, whose art project about nano-toxicology entitled *Particles of Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* has been presented at the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2007), the San Diego Museum of Art (2008), Oi Futuro, Brazil (2008), CAL NanoSystems Institute, UCLA (2009), Medialab-Prado, Madrid (2009), E-Poetry Festival, Barcelona, Spain (2009), Nanosférica, NYU (2010), and SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico (2012): http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/particle-group-intro.
Nadia Myre is a contemporary visual artist from Montreal Quebec and an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, who lives and works in Montreal. For over a decade, her multi-disciplinary practice has been inspired by participant involvement as well as recurring themes of identity, language, and longing. and loss. Of the artist, Canadian Art Magazine writes, “Nadia Myre’s work weaves together complex histories of Aboriginal identity, nationhood, memory and handicraft, using beadwork techniques to craft exquisite and laborious works.” Through her body of work, Myre is interested in having conversations about collective identity, resilience and the politics of belonging. Myre has an extensive exhibition history, with over 115 shows—25 of which have been solos—just in the last 10 years. Her work can be found in the National Gallery of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec, the Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian Embassies of New York, London, Paris and Greece. Myre is a recipient of numerous awards, notably Compagne des arts et des lettres du Québec (2019), Banff Centre for Arts Walter Phillips Gallery Indigenous Commission Award (2016), Sobey Art Award (2014), Pratt & Whitney Canada’s ‘Les Elles de l’art’ for the Conseil des arts de Montréal (2011), Quebec Arts Council’s Prix à la création artistique pour la region des Laurentides (2009), and a Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum (2003). In 2023 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Tékeniyáhsen Ohkwá:ri (Jackson 2bears) is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) multimedia installation/ performance artist and cultural theorist from Six Nations and Tyendinaga, who is currently based in Lethbridge, Alberta—Treaty 7, Blackfoot Territory. 2bears’ research-creation activities focus on Indigenous land-based histories and embodied cultural knowledge, wherein they explore the creative use of digital technologies as a means to support the innovation, transmission, expression, and transformation of FNMI creative and cultural practices. Since 1999, 2bears has exhibited his work extensively across Canada in public galleries, museums, and artist-run centres, as well as internationally in festivals and group exhibitions. 2bears is an active researcher in the areas of video arts, digital media, and extended media, with a focus on embodied interaction, live audio/visual (Live Cinema) performance, and immersive, multimedia installation. 2bears is co-director of 2RO MEDIA, with Mohawk poet and producer January Rogers, and Mohawk curator Ryan Rice.
This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation.