dark designs - sombres desseins

OPENING TUESDAY 14 OCTOBER 2008 AT 6.30 P.M
MAISON D’AILLEURS / PLACE PESTALOZZI 14 / 1401 YVERDON-LES-BAINS

Exhibition from 15 to 24 October
Open: Wed. – Fri. 2.00 – 6.00 p.m., Sat. + Sun. 11.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.

www.dark-designs.net

Dark Designs – Art, Technology and conspiracies is a cutural and academic event co-produced by la Maison d’Ailleurs and the Geneva University of Art and Design. Centred on the relation between art and technology and inspired by the research project Iconography of Conspiracy shown during the Transmediale 08 Festival, Dark Designs develops this theme in a symposium, an exhibition and a series of performance works. In a society of flux and hyper-transparency, of widespread surveillance, image manipulation and general paranoia, the Internet appears to have become the favourite technical support for spreading rumours and wild conspiracy theories. New media art gives rise to the very same controversies that surround Science Fiction and scientific progress in general, between unconditional technophiles and those who denounce a system for the dissemination of alienating technological tools. Dark Designs takes a thoughtful and incisive look at conspiracy theories and their digital avatars. This event questions freely the ambiguity of the concept – shared breath (con-spiracy) involving discussing and exposing undisclosed intentions, tactical manoeuvres with the aim of taking control, and its actuality in art and research in a time when technology is omnipresent.

– a symposium, open to the public, in the new Jules Verne section of the Maison d’Ailleurs, brings together artists, researchers and thinkers on the concept of conspiracy and its link to different art practices, history and technology. Speakers : Stephen Kovats (Transmediale, Berlin), Pierre Lagrange (LAHIC-CNRS, Paris), Daniel Pinkas (HEAD - Genève), Laurent Schmid (HEAD - Genève) and Manuel Schmalstieg (N3krozoft Ltd), Anne Zeitz (Université Paris 8), Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (Amsterdam), Herbert Keppner and Jérôme Charmet (HE-ARC - Le Locle), Norman Spinrad (writer, USA).

– the exhibition shows digital art works by students in the postgraduate program Immédiat at the Geneva University of Art and Design. The theme of the event was freely interpreted and used as guiding principle for a selection of works either made especially for the occasion or chosen amongst recent student productions, ranging from computer imagery to programmed on-line works, videos, animations and interactive installations.

– the performances are programmed for the evening of the opening and the symposium. L’Echandole theatre will host swiss performer Gaspard Buma’s Partition pour 8 muscles et un sampler, and artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s first performance in Switzerland, the visual and quadriphonic sound piece Ten Thousand Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid.

INFORMATION & BOOKING
Maison d’Ailleurs
Place Pestalozzi 14
1400 Yverdon-les-Bains
+41 (0)24 425 64 38
info@dark-designs.net