News/Research

ATC Revisited: Zhang Ga

04 Dec, 2013

ATC Revisited: Zhang Ga

For those unable to attend the ATC lecture on Monday, December 2nd, we’ve brought you a brief recap of the highlights!

Zhang Ga concluded this semester’s Arts, Technology, and Culture Colloquium with “From Timelapse to Timecollapse: Rethinking New Media Art and Platform China” on December 2nd, 2013 in Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley. After a brief overview of some of the key exhibitions he’s curated, he mused on how new media art takes advantage of the collapse of time in a more immediate digital world to offer alternative narratives.

Zhang Ga considered how elapsed time creates narratives and argued that our interpretation of these stories are inherently political. By representing in art, he said, we declare what is, reinforcing culturally specific identities. In contrast, a move to digital art makes possible the notion of “timecollapse,” where time folds in on itself and becomes preposterous through excessive looping, or simultaneous display. In this manner, art is no longer representation but presentation and has no memory, no longer inherently advances an agenda through story as a result. Zhang Ga proposed that this condition was post-human and allows for new vocabularies and identities to be formed. In particular, he suggested that this art is able to offer both our technical and human forms the dignity and rights they deserve.

The next ATC lecture takes place February 24th with Casey Reas’ presentation “SUPERCONCENTRATED: Image, Media, Software.”