HYPERCONNECTED

H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D
Strategic project for the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art at Ermolayevsky Pereulok Tweet

From 30 June to 14 August 2016, H Y P E R C O N N E C T E D, the Strategic project of the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, will be shown in MMOMA. The curator is João Laia. The exhibition is on five floors of the building on Ermolayevsky Pereulok and brings together nineteen artists from fifteen different countries around the world. The project aims to explain to the viewer how art investigates and comments on the processes of everyday interactions between people and the world, how contemporary art practices interpret the current condition of disappearing transitions from object to subject, from nature and culture to conceptions of the world as a collective process. The artists, invited by the Portuguese curator reject apocalyptic and utopian views of modernity, and recognize the world as a plurality of conditions and positions, defying the limitations we have created ourselves. The MMOMA exhibition is a reminder that

we are all part of the same dynamic, where every individual becomes a plurality, each separate piece becomes part of the whole, and all of them are “hyperconnected".

João Laia: "In the current period of accelerated motion our minds and bodies move, change and adapt to the settings and networks we navigate daily. We shape-shift while opening windows, closing folders and browsing through reflecting surfaces; soft borders permanently redefining our identities. As a consequence, any hypothetical separation between nature and culture has been dissolved, our natural environment becoming a cultural environment. Whereas the speculations grouped under object-oriented philosophy highlight a recomposition of the world that questions the centrality of the human and opens alternative ontologies for consideration, the anthropocene reframes mankind as a geological force. Such strands of thinking have added to the on-going crisis of modernism's defining idea of humanity and nature as distinct entities. We are acknowledging our hybrid natural-cultural constitution as well as our state of permanent becoming as agents among other agents, a position expressing a co-extensivity with one’s surroundings in which all organisms are inter-dependent, forming a renewed eco-philosophical thinking that acknowledges our humanity in the midst of an intricate environment. Everything is connected, not only humans through heightened communication and other scientific and cultural developments but also the whole cosmos as a multiple unity. From the dissolution of previously stable conceptions of the world emerge renewed possibilities to articulate hopes and fears. How is art probing and commenting upon these unfolding processes? This exhibition looks at how contemporary practices have been looking at our present situation as a moment of shift in which the correlation between object and subject or distinctions such as nature and culture are being surpassed and replaced for a conception of the world as an interlinked collectivity. Beyond apocalyptic scenarios or utopian visions, the artists included propose a reassessment of our current condition and look towards the future-present from an empowering stance that challenges boundaries. “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”. We are all together in this: one is becoming plural and intensely connected”.

Artists in the exhibition:

Adriano Amaral (1982, Brazil), Hicham Berrada (1986, Morocco), Lupo Borgonovo (1985, Italy), Cécile B. Evans (1983, Belgium - USA), Neringa Cerniauskaite (aka Pakui Hardware) (1984, Lithuania), June Crespo (1982, Spain), Diogo Evangelista (1984, Portugal), Guan Xiao (1983, China), Rodrigo Hernandez (1983, Mexico), Patrick Hough (1989, Ireland), Sasha Litvintseva (1989, Russia), Adrien Missika (1981, France), Saskia Noor van Imhoff (1982, The Netherlands), Yuri Pattison (1986, Ireland), Mariana Silva (1984, Portugal), Iza Tarasewicz (1981, Poland), Ana Vaz (1986, Brazil) & Tristan Bera (1984, France), Zoe Williams (1983, Great Britain).

About the curator:

João Laia (1981, Lisbon) is a writer and curator with a background in social sciences, film theory and contemporary art. He has published in magazines and newspapers such as frieze, Mousse, Spike Art Quarterly, Flash Art, Terremoto and Público. Recent projects were held at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, MNAC - National Museum of Contemporary in Lisbon, Videoex in Zürich, Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, and Delfina Foundation, South London Gallery, Cell Project Space, DRAF - David Roberts Art Foundation, The Mews and Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2014 he was in residency at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin and in Barcelona co-founded The Green Parrot project space, co-directing it until 2016. Currently he is member of the curatorial teams of the inaugural exhibition of MAAT - Museum for Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon and of Videobrasil a biannual contemporary art festival in SESC Pompeia, São Paulo.

In Summer 2016, Moscow will host the International Biennale for Young Art for the fifth time. The head curator for the biennale this year is Nadim Samman, who has created the general theme—"Deep Inside«— and selected the works of art for the main project of the biennale.