Gerald Nestler



PROJECTS

TEXTS | TALKS

BIO | contact




www.geraldnestler.net
thefutureofdemonstration.net
technopolitics.info




in reality the language of power shifts to performative speech in time immediacy exposes visibility as performative resolution in turn resolution technologies escalate fat tail events in fact surfing the volatility wave annihilates truth as a function of probability in effect noise is the master of information

Derivative Bond Emissions. No. 19 and No. 22. 2017/2018.
A series of text works realized in varous media since 2003.




CURRENT | UPCOMING





PREVIOUS (selection)









PLANETARY SKINS engages with the materiality of the real and the digital. In an era increasingly fragmented and amalgamated by global digital platforms, the art project exists as a laboratory to imagine new forms of ecologically, socially and artistically engaged collective practice.

In contrast to typical VR approaches that simulate reality or create artificial 3D-worlds, the art project redefines the virtual experimentally as a membrane to connect voices from different parts of the world.

Multi-user systems provide a yet underutilized potential when it comes to bringing people together in open contexts. We use existing technology (mainly open source). The multi-user environment is based on the UNITY 3D real-time engine in which we integrate AR, AI, Lidar Scanning, Point Cloud, 3D-objects, Kinect motion sensing, Video Mapping, Streaming, amongst others. As a post-disciplinary prototype for probing into the matter of emerging ideas, materials and synergies, PLANETARY SKINS unfolds an arena that brings together XR, performances, talks, conversations, installations, objects, soundscape, and film set.

At once artwork and platform, PLANETARY SKINS aims to access a performative-discursive practice, a “cosmotechnics” (Yuk Hui) in all its more-than-human diversity. What we aim at making tangible is a speculative agency in which sensing and sense-making lead to a new imagination of co-corporeality and co-presence. Can we materialize a “re-entanglement” with nature that transcends human collectivity through different scales and dimensions? Because, aren’t we all radical matter?

photo Thomas Thaler
Photo: Thomas Thaler




Belv



Fanfara



Ran






UNTER DER KURVE 

Ein Spiel im öffentlichen Raum zum Thema Daten.
Ein Projekt von TECHNOPOLITICS im Rahmen von SHIFT. Basis.Kultur.Wien.  

Die Coronakrise hat ein breites gesellschaftliches Bewusstsein erzeugt, in welchem Ausmaß das Leben von Daten, Algorithmen und Diagrammen bestimmt wird. Worüber uns aber die täglich kolportierten statistischen Kurven im Unklaren lassen, ist die Frage, wie die Daten erhoben werden, wer über ihre Interpretation entscheidet und zu wessen Nutzen.
In Form eines Spiels im öffentlichen Raum verhandelt UNTER DER KURVE die Frage, wie Prognosen, Statistiken und Formen der digitalen Erfassung Einfluss auf unseren Alltag nehmen und unsere Gesellschaft abbilden.

18.09 und 19.09. 2021, Kaisermühlenbucht, Neue Donau, 1220 Wien
02.10. und 03.10.2021, Oststation, Am Kempelenpark, 1100 Wien

Das Spiel: Wien, 2035. Daten sind Macht. Daten verändern die Welt. Auch Wien ist von der Datenhegemonie nicht verschont geblieben. Ja, sogar die städtische Struktur hat sich radikal gewandelt – es gibt keine Bezirke mehr, die Stadt ist stattdessen in sieben Zonen aufgeteilt. Bis auf eine Zone werden alle von Datenkonglomeraten beherrscht, die das Leben in ihrer Zone nach Prinzipien organisieren, die oft unklar sind. Und sie beruhen meist auf der asymmetrischen Interpretation von Daten, die den neuen Herrscher:innen nützt. Der Zutritt zu einer Zone wird nur dann gewährt, wenn man ihre Bedingungen erfüllt. Manche der Zonen entstanden aus hehren Zielen und mit großen Versprechungen. Nun aber sind alle Datenregime autoritär geworden. Dagegen kämpft die Data Liberation Front (DLF) mit ihren Strike-Teams und du bist einer ihrer Agent:innen! Das Schicksal der Stadt hängt an dir und deinen Mitstreiter:innen.

Dokuvideo:
UdK 




THE DERIVATIVE CONDITION

A workshop by Diffractions Collective.
In the framework of UROBOROS Festival - Designing in Troubling Times.

Diffractions Collective will host Gerald Nestler and members of the Economic Space Agency/Robin Hood DAO at Uroboros in a bid to untangle finance and consider the possibility of co-op hedge funds or the possibilities of the DAO-Commons.
Registered participants will be encouraged to engage in a Decentralized Prediction Market in tandem with the presentations and subsequent panel discussion.

Online at UROBOROS Festival - Designing in Troubling Times
, May 18, 19:30 CET, 2021.




Sensing Nature

Artistic Positions between Nature and Culture.
Group show curated by Mathias Kessler and Heike Strelow
featuring FEED. 8 cinematic performances by Eckermann & Nestler.
With works by Regula Dettwiler, Mark Dion, Sylvia Eckermann / Gerald Nestler, Irene Grau, Michael Höpfner, Raphael Lyon, Bradford Kessler, Mathias Kessler, Lisa Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, Chrysanne Stathacos, George Steinmann, Lois Weinberger.
Heike Strelow Gallery, Frankfurt am Main.
May 14 - July 16, 2021



HOLOBIONT. LIFE IS OTHER

An exhibition curated by Judith Reichart, Lucie Strecker, Thomas Feuerstein, Jens Hauser and Magazin4.
Magazin4, Bregenz, AT
April 17 - June 20, 2021

With contributions by Art Orienté Objet, Irini Athanassakis, David Berry, Julia Borovaya, Juan M. Castro & Akihiro Kubota, Tagny Duff, Thomas Feuerstein, Ana Maria Gomez Lopez, Luis Hernan/Pei-Ying Lin/Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Nigel Helyer, Hideo Iwasaki, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Eduardo Kac, Lynn Margulis/Dorion Sagan/Bruce Clarke, Yann Marussich, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Gerald Nestler, ORLAN, Špela Petrič, Chris Salter, Maja Smrekar, Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker/KT Zakravsky, Franco Vaccari, Paul Vanouse, M R Vishnuprasad und Peter Weibel.



Alles hat Grenzen NUR DER MONDFISCH NICHT

An environmental film musical by Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler.
2k, 30 min., 2021

Film score: Volkmar Klien. Voice: Anna Mendelsohn. Edited by: Madlen Sieghartsleitner. Colorist: Daniel Hollerweger. Sound design: Szely. Re-recording mixer: Georg Mittermayr. Ötschergräben, Austria – vocal ensemble: Christine Gnigler, Joachim Rigler, Lorina Vallaster; Hip Hop artist: Soulcat E-Phife; beatboxing: Geo Popoff; performances: Martha Laschkolnig; stunting: Christian Fiedler; supporting role: Bela Eckermann. Assistant director: Alex Weber; DoP: Alois Kozar; 2nd camera: Johanna Auer; camera assistant: Anna Wäger; drone pilots: Florian Blang, Luka Janitschek; location sound recordist: Andreas Hamza; lighting: Tom Barcal, Georg Roppatsch; production assistance: Fina Esslinger, Laura Eichenseer, Martin Fricker. Naqab desert, Israel – Aziz Al-Turi, activist and speaker of the unrecognized Arab Bedouin village of Al-Araqib; filmed by Deiaa Haj Yahia and Raafat Abo Aiash. Lake Tyrrell, Australia – Neil Fettling, artist; filmed by Simon Jackson. Bejing, China – Qiu Zhijie, artist (filmed by Eckermann and Nestler for their 3-channel video Breathe My Air, 2008-2011).

Synopsis
"Alles hat Grenzen, NUR DER MONDFISCH NICHT" is an environmental film musical, in which nature acts and speaks in a diversity of voices. Surfacing evocatively from micro- and macrocosmic layers, she resonates with water as the source of life and resounds as exploited resource. She echoes from the trenches of an inverted world and speaks out as a human being. Reverberating through ecological-cultural depths, images, sounds and associations push to light, giving shape to a vision of humanity being in tune with nature.

Trailer



DO THE BET

A project by Gerald Straub with Gerald Nestler at House of Rituals.
VIENNA ART WEEK, November 17, 2020

Mit welchen Ritualen versuchen wir uns in der Gegenwart zukünftig in den Griff zu bekommen? Tour de Ritual sind performative Anteilnahmen an ausgewählten Ritualen. Von und mit: Finanzwetten, Empathie, Relief und Stress.
4 Rituale an 4 Tagen – Tour de Ritual ist ein performative Gesprächsreihe im Garten des „House of Rituals“ – inklusive „Performablaster“ – live Übertragung bzw. Beschallung des öffentlichen Raums – zum Innehalten oder Weitermachen.


FEED

8 cinematic performances
A public art project by Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler, 2020.
FEED was inaugurated as the cinematic parcours of the art intervention Cliffhanger by Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber.
The films can be watched online as well as at the film locations while hiking through the Ötschergräben in Lower Austria.

 



Leipzig Leipzig Leipzig

Images: Halle 14, Leipzig | Walther Le Kon, 2020


Technopolitics

Information Society Timeline
@ Imagine you Wake Up and There is no Internet


An exhibition curated by Katerina Gkoutziouli and Voltnoi Brege.

Particpating Artists: Mediengruppe Bitnik & Low Jack (DE/FR), Aram Bartholl (DE), Jono Boyle (UK), Heath Bunting & Kayle Brandon (UK), Vaggelis Deligiorgis (GR), Exonemo (JP), Marina Gioti (GR), Antonis Kalagkatsis (GR), George Moraitis (GR), No Más / No More (GR), Manos Saklas (GR), Molly Soda (U.S.), Superflux (UK), Technopolitics (AT), Alexandros Tzannis (GR), Filipe Vilas-Boas (PT).

Romantso, Athens. October 22 - November 15, 2020.



Art Up Escalator

Mentor of the artist-entrepreneur programm ART UP NATION, November 19, 2020.



noise is the master of information

Sylva Eckermann, Thomas Feuerstein, Gerald Nestler and Szely.

An exhibition curated by alien productions (Martin Breindl, Norbert Math, Andrea Sodomka). FLUSS – Lower Austrian initatitve for photo and media art. Schloss Wolkersdorf, Austria.




Private Viewing 08

Toni Kleinlercher and Gerald Nestler, October 10 - 17, 2020.
Private Viewing is a series for which Toni Kleinlercher invites artists, poets and writers to exhibit with him at his Vienna studio.


rA/Upture: xenofuturities_specters_anachrony

A conference by adO/Aptive. Online and at nadalokal, Vienna, October 3-4, 2020.

With: Diffractions Collective, Jana Horáková, Martina Růžičková, Michal Kučerák (Alt_Lab), APART Collective, Lucia Udvardyova (Eastern Daze), Contemporary Matters, Petrică Mogoș & Laura Naum (Kajet Journal), Amanda Piña (nadaproductions), Dušan Barok, Michal Klodner, Louis Armand & David Vichnar (Interior Ministry), Klaus Speidel, Mohammad Salemy, Václav Janoščík & Boris Ondreička (Class of Interpretation), Martina Šimkovičová & Kristian Lukić (Robota Center), Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler (The Future Of Demonstration, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi (HUF)

adO/Aptive foments critcal thinking, potential action, communication and Otherness by adopting techniques to situate adaptive processes. adO/Aptive is a fluid identity with its core members being Janina Weißengruber and Daniel Hüttler.



Cliffhanger Parcours

8 cinematic performances

A public art project by Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler in connection with the art intervention Cliffhanger by Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber.

Ötschergräben, Lower Austria.
September 18, 2020 - October 2021.


 

The Spectrality of Future in Finance

Gerald Nestler in conversation with Daniel Hüttler and Zsolt Miklósvölgyi
Video-Podcast in the context of Leaning on the Past, Working for the Future,
an online program/exhibition curated by Krisztina Hunya, Zsolt Miklósvölgyi, Márió Z. Nemes
at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, June 4 - July 17, 2020.
Artists: János Brückner, Igor & Ivan Buharov mit Vasile Croat, Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler,
Mark Fridvalszki, Szabolcs KissPál, Land 3C (Tomas Narkevicius, Gorazd Popov, Vitalij Puzyriov
and Vaida Stepanovaite), Márió Z. Nemes, Dominika Trapp, Suzanne Treister.


Occupy the Market?

ArtUp Nation in conversation with Tatiana Bazzichelli, artistic director of the Disruption Network Lab, Berlin, and artist and writer Gerald Nestler,
moderated by Gözde Güngör, M.COE of ArtUp Nation, August 27, 2020.
YouTube stream >>>


TECHNOPOLITICS

Technopolitics Salon @ Artist Residence Herzliya


A conversation on method. With Udi Edelman, Tsila Hassine, Ran Kasmy-Ilan, Lior Zalmanson, Mushon Zer-Avi, members of the Technopolitics working group and the audience.



Artist Residence Herzliya, March 26, 2020.

Supported by the Residence and the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv.


MAKING TRUTH

Vienna Art Week, 2019

Exhibition, November 16-17, 2019.
A curated parcours through artist studios.

Photo: Sandro E. E. Zanzinger

Curators: Robert Punkenhofer and Angela Stief.

Artists: Bernhard Cella, Beatrice Dreux, Tomas Eller, Karin Ferrari, John und Joy Gerrard, Anna Jermolaewa, Jakob Lena Knebl, Claudia Märzendorfer, Gerald Nestler and Sylvia Eckermann, Klaus Pichler, Lisl Ponger, Lois Renner, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Martin Walde.

 

Vienna Art Week Exhibition Parcours Talks
Gerald Nestler and Sylvia Eckermann in conversation with Friedrich von Borries, architect and curator, Berlin. November 17, 2019.


Photo: Blauer Hase and Giulia Morucchio


TECHNOPOLITICS

DEEP HORIZON: The Culture of Forecasting

Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, October 17 - 19, 2019.


Program & more

 

Participants: Richard Barbrook, Erik Bordeleau, Jaya Klara Brekke, Thomas Feuerstein, Isabell Schrickel, Zentrum für politische Schönheit and Technopolitics research group.

Artistic space intervention by Sylvia Eckermann.

Oracle Drinks by Jessica Blank & Gerald Zahn

 

For more than 10 years now, Western countries have been in crisis mode and economic, social, (geo-)political and ecological issues have become significantly worse. We are off the map and as a consequence the future is both terrifying but also more open.

Contemporary forecasting provides complex tools to intervene in real-time in order to affect future states at present. In contrast to traditional methods of prediction, which derive from a probabilistic concept of representation, the former indicates the turn to a performative regime of governance whose contingent claims strive to leverage the volatile indeterminacy in which the future emerges. Its temporality is therefore not the long-term, but the constantly recalibrated short-term. The state of emergency, inherent in the word crisis, has become the platform on which reality is produced.

Forecasting is an eminently cultural issue, because it provides an aesthetic of the unknown and gives shape to the uncertain. Instead of giving accurate accounts of a situation that cannot be changed, it actualizes the future into the present in order to make the unlikely more likely, or to prevent the likely from happening.

During the event Deep Horizon: The Culture of Forecasting, Technopolitics will bring together the audience with artists, researchers and activists. In talks, discussions, workshops and game playing we will deal with the role of forecasting as a way of inventing the future. Think and act ahead!

Supported by Bundeskanzleramt, Wien Kultur and Fleming's Selection Hotel Vienna.


Video stills, WHISPER


Video still. Concept, text: Gerald Nestler, video: Sylvia Eckermann




THE FUTURE OF DEMONSTRATION

The Future of Demonstration is an art series that focuses on new formats, intensities and consequences of artistic practice, at a time when technocapitalism is unleashing massive transformations in the ecological, social and cultural spheres.

The art series does not feature existing works. Rather, we apply a postdisciplinary method in which projects – we call them episodes – are developed and realized jointly by artists, activists, theorists, scientists and other experts. At its core is an engagment with the political, technological, pedagogical and aesthetic capacities of demonstration that aims to contreive ways and means for imagining, sharing and making narratives, techniques and affiliations of resistance.


WEBSITE | STREAMS >>


Season 1 | 2017  VERMÖGEN
5 episodes
October 31 - November 11, 2017
Venue: REAKTOR, Vienna

Season 2 | 2018   PASSION

3 episodes
October 20-25, 2018
Venue: ATELIER AUGARTEN, Vienna.

Idea, concept and format: Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler
Artistic directors: Sylvia Eckermann, Gerald Nestler, Maximilian Thoman

The Future of Demonstration stands for transgressing limits and intersecting social, technological, and biological epistemes, materials, phenomena and cultures. Our aim is to offer an intense affective and collective experience in the form of “revolutionary celebrations” that are driven by the urgency to redefine terms and conditions, transform technologies and processes and transvalue material and ideological resources.

The art series rejects the division of art and theory in conventional formats such as the exhibition and the symposium. Art, philosophy, science and political activism are not treated as separate realms but rather as vital contributions to a common goal. The experience of difference that allows affiliation, affinity and alliance in the first place underlies our speculative and positively utopian approach which takes off from pratice-led investigations into realities and their complex entanglements.

The episodes are based on thematic clusters derived from leitmotifs. Each season addresses its leitmotif as if it were through a prism, dividing it into its episodes, once again linking them in various traversing relationships to one another. Each episode is at the same time artistic environment, performative space, installative setting, discursive gathering and film set. A live-stream/TV-broadcast accompanies each episode. Each film is an experiment with streaming as an art form. And as artistic works in their own right they replace conventional ways of documenting – The Future of Demonstration and its episodes stay online as a web series.


Making the Black Box Speak

The Future of Demonstration
Season 2: PASSION, episode 3.

Atelier Augarten, Vienna.

 

 

PERFORMANCE
October 23, 2018.


PARTICIPANTS
Haim Bodek, Sylvia Eckermann, Maya Ganesh, Aldo Giannotti, Florentina Holzinger, Volkmar Klien, Gerald Nestler, Peng! Collective, Denis “Jaromil” Roio, Nina Porzer, Soulcat E-Phife, UBERMORGEN (featuring Zenker and Stefan Endres).

Vocal Ensemble: Christine Gnigler, Lorina Vallaster, Joachim Rigler.

Stunting: Fighting for Film.

Data Bodies: Jon Eckermann, Elisa Winkler.

Special Guest Appearance: Frank Pasquale.

 

WEBSITE and STREAM >>

 


CONVERSATIONS, 25.10. 6 - 7:50 pm
RENEGADE ACTIVISM – forms of resistance in the algorithmic condition
Frank Pasquale & Denis “Jaromil” Roio
Maya Ganesh & Alistair Alexander
Haim Bodek & Gerald Nestler
Moderation: Ina Zwerger


EXHIBITION, 24.–25.10.
Tactical Technology Collective, The Glass Room Experience.


WORKSHOPS, 25.10. 2 pm and 4:30 pm
Alistair Alexander, Tactical Technology Collective.


Above: detail of the performative layout
(click image to open the entire layout).

Right: stills from streaming footage.


Stills from streaming footage.


TECHNOPOLITICS

Technopolitics @ Seoul Mediacity Biennale / South Korea

 

Conceived and convened by Dušan Barok.
Curated by Lim Kyung Yong.

10th edition of Seoul Mediacity Biennale
September 5 - November 18, 2018

 

 

THE MONOSKOP EXHIBITION LIBRARY

The exhibition explores the notion and medium of the art catalogue.
The catalogue is the publishing vehicle of an exhibition and outlives the latter. But the imaginative power of this medium has more to offer than mere documentation. Hence, MONOSKOP invited artists, designers, curators, poets and researchers to explore the catalogue as an artistic medium. As our contribution, TECHNOPOLITICS converted Tracing informAtion society - a Timeline into an object-as-catalogue.
(Dušan Barok)


TECHNOPOLITICS

Technopolitics @ SIGraDI 2018 Conference

The XXII International Conference of the Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics.
Universidade de São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil, November 6-9, 2018.


SIGraDi takes on the theme of 'technopoliticas.' It is understood that all technology is generated within cultural, economic and social fabrics, as well as has political aspects in its conformation and its use. However, it is not uncommon for technologies to be autonomously thought of as prefigurers of futures and unequivocal solutions to problems not yet known.


Tracing Information Society – a Timeline


TECHNOPOLITICS set up a Curated Knowledge Space that offers a discursive framework for exploring the genesis and current configuration of the information society. The main visual element of the TECHNOPOLITICS TIMELINE is a large-scale print that traces the evolution of our shared techno-cultural realities. The Timeline's 500 entries draw attention to different events and genealogies from the fields of art, culture, media, politics, economy, technology, and social life that have been relevant for the shaping of the information society. The project's common objective is to investigate from a critical, explorative standpoint the heterogenic historical processes that are structured by techno-economic paradigms. A workshop and discussion program focuses on trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural conversations to connect these processes to the cultural forms of the respective historical moment and place. During the workshops, the TCHNOPOLITICS TIMELINE v.4 was developed into v.5.

 

Supported by the Austrian Federal Chancellery.






Mit: Sabeth Buchmann, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Kai van Eikels, Stuart Elden, Elena Esposito, Paul Feigelfeld, Martin Gasteiner, Ulrike Guérot, Gudrun Harrer, Elisabeth Holzleithner, Eva Horn, Ivan Krastev, Daniel Loick, Fred Luks, Niccoló Milanese, Gerald Nestler, radioee.net, Shalini Randeria, Katrin Solhdju, Saskia Stachowitsch, Friedrich Tietjen, Joseph Vogl.

Facebook page


Eine transdisziplinäre Community aus Expert*innen und Künstler*innen hat über zwei Jahre in wechselnden LABorsituationen einen transdisziplinären Diskurs über die Effekte der Entropie auf Ökonomie, Politik, Kommunikation und Umwelt geführt und aus den einzelnen Argumenten und Theorien künstlerische Installationen und interaktive Apparaturen ausgearbeitet:

Florian Bogner (AT), Christian Faubel (DE), Stefan Glasauer (DE), Max Hoffmann (US/AT), Friedrich Hausen (DE), Margarete Jahrmann (AT), Marian Kaiser (DE), Florian Kmet (AT), Peter Koger (AT), Käthe Kruse (DE), Ulli Kühn (AT), Micheal Loizenbauer (AT), Barbara Lubich (DE), Armin Medosch (AT), Gerald Nestler (AT), Pit Noack (DE), Tobias Nöbauer (AT/US), Hanada Al Refai (SY), MELA Marie Spaemann (AT), Lucie Strecker (DE), Christina Hartl-Prager (AT), Roman Harrer (AT), Louise Linsenbolz (AT), Thomas Wagensommerer (AT) u.a.


Photo credit: Joachim-Dette

 

SWITCHES

The unleashing of the technosphere is, above all, the result of activating and operating numerous tiny switches. With the unfolding of information theory, cybernetics, and the microscopic power of the point-contact transistor, the year 1948 represents the material and theoretical starting point for a universal language of 0s and 1s. From then on, the digital makes up the foundational cultural technique of a present saturated with circuits and electronics. Contributions from theory and art oscillate between diagnostic and speculative accounts of the bit’s role as configurer of new space-time coordinates, pulse generator for the evolution of systems, and unreckoned source for a loss of control. The result is a discursive installation of contributions in strictly clocked intervals, a rhythmic apparatus of switching itself.


With Morehshin Allahyari, Marie-Luise Angerer, Elie Ayache, Anna Echterhölter, Thomas Feuerstein with participation of Marian Kaiser, Alexander R. Galloway, Johnny Golding, Orit Halpern, Giuseppe Longo, Gerald Nestler, Julian Oliver, Sophia Roosth, Sarah Sharma, Felix Stalder, Ubermorgen.com.

 


TECHNOPOLITICS

Technopolitics @ Patchlab Digital Art Festival


Tracing Information Society – a Timeline (v.4 Hong Kong)

6. Patchlab Festival International Digital Art Festival
Krakow, October 24 - 29 2017.

The 6th edition was dedicated to data art and artificial intelligence (AI), designs using extraordinary material – big data bases, which have an increasing impact on our life and the whole society. Data has become a construction material for sophisticated art forms and a basis for philosophical reflection. The exhibition took place in Malopolski Ogród Sztuki and at Galeria Bunkier Sztuki. The festival presented artists from Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Iran, Japan and Taiwan.


Techopolitics was represented in Krakow by Doron Goldfarb and Ina Zwerger.


Ö1 RADIOKOLLEG

Das ABC der Finanzwelt


Austrian Broadcasting Corporation radio series on the world of finance, 2015-2019

Audio archive >> (in German)


TECHNOPOLITICS

TECHNOPOLITICS @ CONNECTING SPACES


Tracing Information Society – a Timeline


"Reading and writing the Timeline" workshops with experts.
Lectures and exhibition on the Tracing Information Society project.


Connecting Space, Hong Kong, June 20 - July 1, 2017.

In collaboration with Zurich University of the Arts and Connecting Spaces.


Technopolitics website >>


Photo credit: LACHSGRAU


Photo: Houda Lazrak, ISCP.

INSTANTERNITY 

An evening of discussion on art, finance and resistance, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, January 23, 2017.

Gerald Nestler in collaboration with the high-frequency trading expert and whistleblower, Haim Bodek, and the artist Sylvia Eckermann. Moderated by Mark Tribe.

 

In cooperation with the International Studies and Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York, in the course of the artists' Residency at the ISCP, August 2016 - January 2017 (artist grant, Arts and Culture Division, Austrian Federal Chancellery)


The large sheet in the background is a result of INSTANTERNITY, an algorithmic finance mapping project carried out by Gerald Nestler and Haim Bodek from October 2016 to January 2017. The video on the right features Haim and is entitled CONTINGENT CLAIM. Portrait of a Philosophy II (2014). The video on the right is COUNTERING CAPITULATION, which was co-produced by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, for the exhibition FORENSIS, 2014.

Photo: Sylvia Eckermann


Curated by Letters & Handshakes.

Artists: Abbas Akhavan, Bureau d'études, Emma Charles, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, Mark Curran, Wally Dion, Keith Hennessy/Circo Zero, Ashley Hunt, Jeremy Hutchison, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Will Kwan, Gerald Nestler, Public Recordings, Public Studio & Darlene Montgomery, Hank Willis Thomas & Christopher Myers.


Photo credit: Sam Homes.


Visiting lecturer Gerald Nestler in conversation with Victoria Ivanova.
ArtCenter/South Florida’s Program for Applied Artistic Research.
Photo credit: ArtCenter/South Florida.


Photo credit: nomad.theatre.

 

Musiktheatertage >>
Nomad. theatre >>


TECHNOPOLITICS

TECHNOPOLITICS @ the MAK FORUM


Tracing Information Society – a Timeline


MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna, June 21 - 26, 2016


In the MAK FORUM, Technopolitics invites visitors to the curated knowledge space “Tracing Information Society.”

A 10-meter-long textual work sheds new light on the information society viewed across a timeframe of more than 100 years. Here, the genesis and influence of the information society can be studied not by scrolling on a screen, but by walking along the timeline. This multidimensional mapping of political events, technological inventions, and cultural developments shows how the information society has seized and transformed every sphere. The entries may be understood in more depth on the timetable, which presents analog and digital media arranged by categories. A network visualization reveals salient associations between the timeline entries on the basis of Wikipedia.


Round Table: Sylvia Eckermann, artist; Doron Goldfarb, computer scientist, network researcher; Armin Medosch, art and media theoretician, curator; Gerald Nestler, artist, researcher; Felix Stalder, sociologist, cultural scientist; Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Director, MAK.


Technopolitics is a research platform composed of scientists, artists, computer scientists, and journalists, who jointly develop innovative formats at the intersection of art, research and education.



www.technopolitics.info >>
MAK >>

PHoto credit: Jorit Aust
Top: Gerald Nestler; middle: Magali Reus; front: Mark Manders.



Artists:

Exhibition Kunstraum Niederoesterreich:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (LB/UK), Ines Doujak and John Barker (AT, UK), Sylvia Eckermann (AT), Earth Sensing Association (Nabil Ahmed & Pierre Blanc, UK, FR), Harun Farocki (DE), Thomas Feuerstein (AT), Forensic Architecture (UK), Christina Goestl (AT), Ayesha Hameed (CA/UK), Mathias Kessler (AT/USA), Mark Lombardi (USA), Jennifer Mattes (DE/AT), Gerald Nestler (AT), Godofredo Pereira (PT/UK), Axel Stockburger (AT), Technopolitics (AT), UBERMORGEN.COM (Hans Bernhard & Lizvlx, USA/CH/AT).

Interventions:
Bernhard Garnicnig & Lukas Heistinger (AT), Manu Luksch (AT/UK), Gerald Straub (AT), The Yes Men (USA), UBERMORGEN.COM (Hans Bernhard & Lizvlx, USA/CH/AT).

Performative Workshops:
Heath Bunting (UK), Pablo Chieregin (IT/AT), Marlene Hausegger (AT), Elvedin Kla?ar (BIH/AT), The Yes Men (USA), Stefanie Wuschitz (AT).

Performances:
Deborah Hazler (AT), Ursula Endlicher (AT/USA) with Frans Poelstra (NL/AT).

Sound Installations:
Volkmar Klien (AT), Szely (AT).


webjournal continent. special issue on SOCIAL GLITCH >>

link to website >>>
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link to catalogue >>>

Photo credit: Eva Würdinger.


Book launch Berlin: June 5, 2015, Schinkelpavilion. With Armen Avanessian and Elie Ayache.

Book launch Vienna: June 8, 2015 at kunstraum BERNSTEINER. Ina Zwerger (Ö1 Radiokolleg) in conversation with Elie Ayache (finance expert and philosopher), Armin Medosch (theoretician and curator) and Gerald Nestler. kunstraum BERNSTEINER, 1020 Wien, Schiffamtsgasse 11


Photo credits: Wolfgang Thaler


Les Rencontres International

nouveau cinema et art contemporain

Gaité Lyrique, Paris, December 1-7, 2014.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, June 23-28, 2015.

Screening of COUNTERING CAPITULATION. From Automated Participation to Renegade Solidarity. Single-channel video, 11:20 min., 2013-14.

The video was originally produced as part of an installation for the Forensic Architecture exhibition FORENSIS at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, curated by Anselm Franke and Eyal Weizmann, 2014.

The work condenses the artistic research findings on the so so-called Flash Crash, a major market crash that occured on May 6, 2010, and the subseuqnt (forensic) analyses of the role of high-frequency trading played in this event..


refuse the shadow of the past

Group show curated by ASAP.

University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hongkong, 2014.

With Sylvia Eckermann.


COUNTERING CAPITULATION engages with the inquiries following the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, an event that went down as the biggest one-day market decline in financial history. Focusing on a remarkable forensic analysis that not only contradicted the official findings of the regulatory authorities and shed light on the impact of algorithmic trading but also developed tools to visualize material processes that operate beyond human perception, Nestler argues that in the current legal framework evidence of market events can only be produced by a double figure of the expert witness: when a (forensic) analyst is joined by a renegade whistleblower.

With this ambivalent, marginal and vulnerable figure at its heart—depending on the perspective, the renegade is either a traitor or public educator—COUNTERING CAPITULATION proposes a multilayered, postdisciplinary practice engaged in creating narrative instabilities that coagulate dissent into insurrection by"enhancing" resolution in the technological, legal as well as social and political sense of the term.

The video concludes with a call for renegade activism—collaborative alliances with renegades as the exemplary figures of contemporary insurrection—to counter the excesses of (automated) evaluation and decision-making schemes, not only as regards financial markets but the proprietary black box in general.

 

COUNTERING CAPITULATION credits:

Gerald Nestler: research, concept, text and editing.
Sylvia Eckermann: animation.
Flash Crash charts and animations courtesy of Nanex LLC.
Sound editing: szely.
Synthetic algo voice over: Alva & Tom.

Special thanks to: Eric Hunsader, Sylvia Eckermann, Brian Holmes, Eyal Weizman.

Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der Welt and bm:ukk Austria.

Photos: (c) Laura Fiorio HKW


A Medien.Kunst.Tirol exhibition curated by Max Thoman and Gerald Nestler.

With Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sylvia Eckermann, Thomas Feuerstein, Christina Goestl, Gerald Nestler, Axel Stockburger, Szely.

 

The art projects address different aspects of social glitches. Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s work Aural Contract: The Freedom of Spech Itself, 2012, for instance investigates speech recognition practices based on algorithms applied on asylum seekers to qualify their stories on their origins. Axel Stockburger’s video Fat Finger Confession, 2013, develops a narrative around media hypes that blame human error rather than algorithmic malfunction to trigger social glitches such as market crashes. Sylvia Eckermann's Crystal Math is a spider web-like projection screen weaved from 5000 metres of nylon thread. In contrast to the conventional metaphor of the internet as a space of social relations, the work hints at the net as an data-driven, uncanny tool to catch the ‘pre,’of social behaviour.


More info and images >>

 


Gerald Nestler, Axel Stockburger, Thomas Feuerstein, Christina Goestl



Gerald Nestler


Photos : Axel Stockburger, Thomas Feuerstein,
Gerald Nestler, Maximilian Thoman.


While the visual stimuli of financial
market transactions appear anaemic,
their mathematically generated
but nevertheless erratic moments
exalt the imagination.
Perpetually seeking dissolution,
surreal dichotomies of relationships open up
between invisibility and omnipotence,
inconceivability and ad hoc access,
time as an object and space
as the transcendent medium of objectification.
While the ancient Greek placed coins
on the eyes and tongues of their deceased,
to pay Charon for passage to the realm of the shades,
the phenomenal world of terrestrials darkens and suffocates
in the presence of algorithmic flashes
whose moneyed microseconds establish
a social event horizon beyond human perception.
The aesthetics of codes below-threshold
conceal an elaborate fiction. It glorifies
mind and body as volatile but quantifiable neuronal objects.
Thus, neither of us is present at such dizzying heights
but as potential resource.
The automated crest they call the future
consumes the present before the moment emerges.
And all image erased.

 

The market is always right, it's a life form that has being in its own right. You know in a sort of Gestalt sort of way – it has form and meaning – it has life, it has life in and of itself ... you know sometimes it all comes together and sometimes it's all just sort of dispersed, and arbitrary, and random, and directionless and lacking cohesiveness ... and we are a sum of our parts, or it is a sum of its parts. (Karin Knorr Cetina, interview with a trader, in: "From Pipes to Scopes", Distinktion 7, 2003)

Video still, Contingent Claim. Portrait of a Philosophy, Series 1. Elie Ayache.
Single-channel video, 35'23'', 2012



SUPERGLUE

Artistic research on scientific research.
A project by Gerald Nestler and Gerald Straub.

VIENNA ART WEEK,, 2011

METAmART. Art & Capital, Künstlerhaus Wien, 2011 - 2012


Sit down hungry
Get drunk
Eat off another person’s plate.
Order foods that stain, are hard to eat, or get stuck in teeth
Put a BlackBerry, iPhone, or other device on the table
Leave your purse on the table.
Order messy foods (ribs, corn on the cob, spaghetti).
Order alcohol, even if your host does.
Slurp through a straw or chew ice.
Discuss private or intimate matters.
Bad mouth a company (including yours) or business person.
Speak with your hands.
Smoke.
Use your phone or text messages.
Comb your hair or apply lipstick at the table.
Leave the lunch meeting before your guest.
Ask for a doggie bag.

 


Credits:
Idea, Concept, Artwork: Sylvia Eckermann | Concept, Research, Text: Gerald Nestler | Sound architecture: Peter Szely | System architecture: Winfried Ritsch | Pd, Game programming: Marius Schebella | GEM Render Library Programming: Johannes Zmölnig | Display Environment, Team TU, Graz: Markus Murschitz, Christian Pirchheim, Univ. Prof. Dieter Schmalstieg, Manuela Waldner | Robotics: Florian Krebs | Additional 3D-Animation: Josef Wienerroither | Insects animation: Fatih Aydogdu | Camera: Hans Kraxner, Cosimo Hnilicka | Architecture: Andreas Baumgartner, Christina Romirer | Photo and video documentation: Martin Krusche | Market model: Wolfgang Höchtl.

MedienKunstLabor | Kunsthaus Graz, 2009.
Curated by Mirjana Peitler | Director + Production: Winfried Ritsch.

In cooperation with: steirischer herbst 09
The Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision (TUG)
The Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (KUG) |

Supported by BMUKK | City of Vienna Department of Cultural Affair | City of Graz Department of Cultural Affairs | SKE austromechana.

Special thanks go to: Ndombi Kande, Ammed Omar Osman, Markus Bauer, City-Thong Vienna | Bertl, Fattinger & Partner, Prof. Romuald Bertl und Martina Haas.


TIYF! was omminated for the FILE PRIX LUX 2010, File Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

 





Photo credit: Walter Luttenberger


nowhere - ein welt raum spiel

3D-Gamemod.

Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler with Christof Cargnelli and Oliver Irschitz.

More info >>

 


2006 3rd International Digital Art Festival, Changzhou.
2006 media@terra, International Art + Technology Festival, Fournos Centre for the Digital Culture, Athens.
2006 Beijing Cubic Art Center, 11-ART.com, 798 Dashanzi, Beijing.
2006 aut.architektur und tirol, Innsbruck.
2005 Exhibition Center of the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.

Installation view, Beijing Cubic Art Center, China.



umspannen - drawing options


Solo exhibition
Plattform Raum für Kunst, Vienna, 2005
Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2005

 

Drawings, neon, video and audio-visual installation.
4-channel sound contribution by Szely.

More info >>

 

 

 






projectfriend~ship

A project by Gerald Nestler and Oliver Irschitz

 

Established as a collaborative workspace for sound, visuals and 3d-animation – friend – and a mobile presentation medium that allowed for contact-free surfing in 3d – ship. The platform with Peyote's innovative natural interaction technology was experienced in the iTube.

In co-operation with artists, scientists and others, projectfriend~ship realized projects in which virtual and real environments merged and interchanged.

Virtuality acts as a feedback area to the specific reality of the site and opens it up for creative interventions. The visitors / participants experience these projects in the Internet and on site.

2003 projectfriend~ship at fluc Praterstern, Vienna

The iTube was installed in front of the fluc. friend~ship operated as a visual, acoustic and architectonic interface for each visitor / participant, connecting the 3d-projects, the fluc-bar and the Praterstern.

The 3d-projects shown in the iTube, together with a multichannel live sound-installation by Christof Cargnelli, Peter Szely and dy:na‘mo created a continually changing performance out of the sounds of Praterstern, the iTube and the fluc.

The urban, social, visual and acoustic structures of the Praterstern were experienced in their interchanging qualities.

 


2002 c_bite

CeBIT fair, Hanover + live on the Internet


c_bite was an interactive and collective photo, text, 3d-object and sound collage, which was created simultaneously and in real time.
c_bite turned the trade fair CeBIT itself, its resources, its function, its structures and communication patterns into the subject of an on-the-spot artistic debate, using the material for subversive creation.
By this it acted as a Trojan Horse or virus entering this largest global fair for technology and business, using it as material for its own creations and inviting people from outside to participate interactively.
The project generated a symbiosis out of art, architecture, technology and communication, using the technology as a tool for critically discursive treatment.




Jamming

graduate show (solo), Academy of fine Arts.

Theseustempel, Vienna, 1992.


Derivative Bond Emissions. No. 1, neon, 2004.