| Description |
Aural and Digital Archives is a free online event with artist Andrius Arutiunian and curator and writer Eloise Sweetman. It will feature a conversation-in-motion between Arutiunian and Sweetman. Arutiunian is a sound artist working with speculative aural histories and technologies, as well as the politics of listening. His practice often draws on non-Western modes of listening through their transmission, propagation, and resonance. He is currently making a series of works related to historic, temporal, and political dissent and dissonance.
Arutiunian and Sweetman will discuss the complex ways of making, nurturing, and destroying the archive. Seeing the archive as essentially a synthetic organism of cryptogenic origins, they will talk about their previous work and their entanglements with the analogue and digital archive. Their conversation will be accompanied by a playlist that Arutiunian has compiled for this occasion, which features forged tracks, collections of ghostly voices and vernacular disco music.
Biographies
Andrius Arutiunian is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist based in The Hague, Netherlands. He works through sound and hybrid media, with a focus on aural identities, sonic artefacts, and digital, automated technologies. Currently Arutiunian is developing a series of new works under the Talent Development Grant from the Creative Industries Fund in the Netherlands. Recent shows and performances include ZKM | Hertz Lab, Karlsruhe (2020), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019), Parliament of Bodies, documenta 14, Kassel (2017), Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2017), and Rewire Festival, The Hague (2016). Arutiunian is a recipient of EMARE/EMAP annual award (2020), and was an artist-in-residence at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2019), Amant, Siena (2020), and FACT Liverpool (2021).
Eloise Sweetman is a curator, writer and teacher. Sweetman is committed to engendering moments and spaces where intergenerational audiences can come together with art, along with the various ways such encounters come about, and how temporary communities arise from such meetings. Her practice intertwines the group exhibition format with a strong emphasis on event-based programming and working within varied contexts from the museum to the library, from the observatory to the artist-run space. Projects and collaborations include: Kunstlicht Journal of Visual Art and Culture, Amsterdam; Cookies, Amsterdam; Treignac Projet, Treignac; The Community, Paris; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; PUBLICS, Helsinki; MADA Gallery, Monash University Melbourne; A Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Turning A Blind Eye, São Paulo Biennial; De Appel, Amsterdam; Political Arts Initiative, Leiden; Casco - Institute for Art, Utrecht; Thai Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice; and Gallery VER, Bangkok. In 2017, Sweetman founded Shimmer with artist Jason Hendrik Hansma, an exhibition, events and online platform in the Port of Rotterdam, where she is currently co-director. |