10/21 Nina Wenhart
10/21 8pm FREE
The Nightingale 1084 N Milwaukee
More: http://upgradechicago.org
Austrian artist and Media Art Historian, Nina Wenhart presents her
latest research:
“ARS ELECTRONICA: re:shaping a city’s cultural identity”
30 years ago the first Ars Electronica festival took place in Linz,
Austria. Ars has grown to be one of the most influential Media Art
festivals and centers in the world. But while much has been written
about it, and still more will be talked about its history when Ars
celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2009, there has not yet been a
comprehensive study about Ars Electronica’s influence on the local
community and its impact on the cultural development of Linz. This
paper investigates the socio-cultural, artistic and geographic traces
Ars Electronica has left on the city of Linz. This Media Art historical
account also details a very personal history, as the author, being four
years old at the time of the first festival and amazed by its fireworks
display, remembers the festival’s beginnings from her personal
experience and – having worked for Ars Electronica’s Futurelab for many
years – from a professional perspective as well.
The main question of this talk is how the then marginal field of art,
science and technology, placed in an even more marginal, working-class
and steel-producing city contributed greatly to the
creation/development of a new cultural identity of the city, the art
scene and the community as a whole. My investigation into the histories
of this cultural institution focuses on the regional impact, regional
being interpreted as geographically located/rooted as well as
interpersonally built.
BIO
Nina Wenhart is an instructor for the „Prehystories of New Media“ class
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an independent
artist/researcher. She is a graduate student at Prof. Oliver Grau’s
Media Art Histories program at the Danube University in Krems. For many
years, she was the head of the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s videostudio,
where she created their archives and primarily worked with the
historical material. She was four years old, when Ars Electronica
started and has stayed connected with it ever since.