Featured Event
Downtown Artists: Neighborhood Tour
11/16/2024
11AM
NEW INC and Onassis ONX Present “Particles and Digital Serfs”
NEW INC and Onassis ONX proudly present “Particles and Digital Serfs,” a dual exhibition featuring artists Itziar Barrio and Janet Biggs, curated by Jane Ursula Harris. The core works on view in the exhibition were developed at NEW INC. To celebrate their first collaboration, Barrio and Biggs will premiere a collaborative performance on March 23, featuring drummer Jason Barnes and performer Candystore.
Barrio’s film, ROBOTA MML (2019–2024), the artist’s second in her Material trilogy, invokes Karel Capek’s dystopian sci-fi play R.U.R. (1920), a cautionary tale about over-mechanization that famously introduced the word robot. Connecting the play to contemporary gender politics, Barrio replaces the play’s factory setting with a queer night club, transforming the story into an allegory for subversive bodily pleasures. For the exhibition, Barrio will debut a special three-channel version of ROBOTA MML installed with newly created sculptures.
Biggs’s work also considers the limits and potential of robotics. Seeing Constellations (2018) combines footage from Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge with performance footage of drummer Jason Barnes. In the film, test rovers compete to carry out various tasks on a barren, artificial landscape, set to a thumping soundtrack performed by Barnes and a prosthetic arm guided by AI. By foregrounding the demanding physical nature of labor in environments deemed inhospitable for humans, the film alludes to the ongoing perils of colonization—whether on Earth or in outer space—and holds space for hope through cooperation.
Both artists remind us that notions of the cyborg and humanoid are inextricably tied to capitalist ideas of power and exploitation and question how we may possibly work alongside them in an increasingly AI-powered world.
Schedule of Events
Thursday, March 21
6–8 PM: Opening Reception
Friday–Sunday, March 22–24
12–6 PM: Public Hours
Saturday, March 23
6–8 PM: Performance by Itziar Barrio and Janet Biggs
Performance will start promptly at 6:30 p.m. Late seating is not guaranteed.
Tickets
Entry to view the works March 22–24 is free, but registration is strongly recommended.
Entry to the opening reception and performance has reached capacity.
About the Artists:
Itziar Barrio is an interdisciplinary artist producing long-term research based projects involving different agents and collaborators. By rewriting the dominant narratives on which our societies, identities, and realities are constructed, her work unlocks new and emancipatory futures. Her work has been presented internationally at the 14th Shanghai Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, PARTICIPANT INC, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Belgrade; Museo del Banco de la República, Bogotá; and at the Havana Biennial. She has received awards from NYSCA, Brooklyn Arts Council, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and Spanish Academy in Rome, among others. Barrio’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Art Papers and BOMB, among others. She currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Sarah Lawrence College.
Janet Biggs is a research-based interdisciplinary artist known for her immersive work in video, film, and performance. Her work focuses on individuals in extreme landscapes and situations navigating the territory between art, science and technology. Her body of work has garnered support from organizations including the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has exhibited at museums and institutions worldwide including Sarasota Art Museum, Spencer Museum of Art, Musee d’art contemporain, Montréal; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Neuberger Museum of Art, SCAD Museum of Art, and the Blaffer Art Museum. Reviews of her work have appeared in New York Times, New Yorker, Artforum, ARTNews, and Art in America.
Jane Ursula Harris is a Brooklyn-based writer, art historian, and curator. Her essays have appeared in recent monographs on Jacolby Satterwhite, Werner Buttner, and M. Lamar. In addition to exhibition catalogs, she has written for Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, The Believer, BOMB, Bookforum, Brooklyn Rail, Cultural Politics, Cultured Magazine, Flash Art, frieze, GARAGE, Paris Review, PAJ, TDR, Time Out New York, and Village Voice. She is a 2023 recipient of The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Harris currently teaches at the School of Visual Arts. She also curates “HERETICS”—an ongoing performance series at Pioneer Works.
About Onassis ONX
Onassis ONX is a hybrid production and exhibition space with a global community of members who create interactive and immersive extended reality (XR) works. Located in the Onassis Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, it was founded in partnership by the Onassis Foundation and New Museum’s NEW INC.
About Hyphen Hub
Hyphen Hub is a New York-based non-profit interdisciplinary new media art organization that explores, promotes, and presents new visions of the future through the integration of art and emerging technologies. Hyphen Hub produces innovative live performances, art salons, and art exhibitions with established and emerging new media artists who work on the vanguard of creative technologies—from augmented and virtual reality to artificial intelligence, fashion technology, bionics, robotics, and cyborgism.
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