89plus and the LUMA Foundation present: The 89plus Resources Workshop and Panel
Sunday 27 October 2013
This October, 89plus and the LUMA Foundation are partnering to present the 89plus Resources Workshop and Panel at LUMA/Westbau, Zürich. 89plus is a long-term, multi- platform research project, co-founded and co-curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the generation of innovators born in and after 1989.
The 89plus Resources Workshop and Panel at LUMA is the first 89plus event to be structured around a single theme, Resources, engaging the disciplines of art, architecture, literature, science, and technology in a focused conversation. On this occasion, 89plus and LUMA are consulting with local universities in Zürich to achieve a broader dialogue with both students and scholars.
The 89plus Resources Workshop and Panel will bring together environmental activists and artists from the 89plus generation along with experts in resources and sustainable development. Led by 89plus co-founders and co-curators, Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Workshop will be an opportunity for local university students to meet and engage with experts and 89plus participants, to discuss the most pressing issues concerning the environment in 2014. This will be followed by a public panel discussion, which will address the potential of new technologies for positive environmental and social change in a world of declining natural resources.
Confirmed participants in the 89plus Resources Workshop and Panel include Swiss economist Hans Christoph Binswanger, Vice President of ‘World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) International’ André Hoffmann, German architecture critic Niklas Maak, and Argentinean artist Adrián Villar Rojas. 89plus participants include eco-social entrepreneurs, Anoka Abeyrathne (Sri Lanka) and Chris Rueth (USA); Italian architect, Alessandro Bava; artists, Josh Bitelli (UK), Alex Dolan (US), Charlie Fegan (UK) and Takeshi Shiomitsu (UK); and Nigerian author, Chibundu Onuzo.
Following the event, a press conference will be held at 10:30am on Monday 28 October 2013 at LUMA/Westbau. The conference will be the occasion to discuss the previous day’s exchanges and to announce a project that 89plus and the LUMA Foundation are planning for Zürich in 2014.
Event details:
Workshop* 11:00am – 2:00pm, Sunday 27 October (by invitation only*)
Panel 4:00pm – 7:00pm, Sunday 27 October (free entry, open to the public, RSVP to katherine@89plus.com)
Press conference 10:30am, Monday 28 October
*Participants will be invited based on submissions to 89plus.com/submit
Venue information:
LUMA/Westbau
Löwenbräukunst
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zürich
Switzerland
Entry is free
For press information:
Silke Neumann / silke.neumann@bureau-n.de / +49.30.62736102
Katherine Dionysius / katherine@89plus.com
About LUMA
The non-profit LUMA Foundation is committed to supporting the activities of independent artists and pioneers, as well as international institutions working in the fields of art and photography, publishing, documentary, and multimedia. Established by Maja Hoffmann, the foundation promotes challenging artistic projects combining a particular interest in environmental issues, human rights, education, and culture in the broadest sense.
The LUMA Foundation’s current focus is to create a truly experimental cultural complex, the Parc des Ateliers in Arles (France), dedicated to the production of exhibitions and ideas and developed with architect Frank Gehry. This ambitious project envisions an interdisciplinary centre for the production of exhibitions, research, education and archives, and is supported by a growing number of public and private partnerships.
About 89plus
89plus is a long-term, multi-platform research project, co-founded and co-curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, mapping the generation of innovators born in and after 1989.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Galleries, London and Co-founder of 89plus.
Simon Castets is Director and Curator, Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art, New York, and Co- founder of 89plus.
89plus manifests itself through panels, books, periodicals, exhibitions and residencies, bringing together individuals from a generation whose voices are only starting to be heard, yet which accounts for almost half of the world’s population.
Marked by several paradigm-shifting events, the year 1989 saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the introduction of the World Wide Web, and the orbit of the first Global Positioning System satellite. Positing a relationship between these world-changing events and creative production at large, 89plus introduces the work of some of this generation’s most inspiring protagonists. More at 89plus.com.
Since an introductory panel held in January 2013 at the DLD – Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich, 89plus has conducted research in Australia with Kaldor Public Art Projects, Hong Kong with Art Basel’s Salon series, New York through the 89plus Colony Conference at MoMA PS1, and Italy with the Innovation Festival, Bolzano-Bozen and Palazzo Grassi, Venice. 89plus is developing a series of residencies with various partners internationally including the Park Avenue Armory in New York and the Tara Oceans Polar Circle Expedition taking place in
late 2013.
About the Panellists
Hans Christoph Binswanger
b.1929 Economist/Ecologist, Switzerland
In the 1970s and 80s Hans Christoph Binswanger taught economics at the elite Swiss University of St. Gallen and became known as an ecologist and critic of uncontrolled growth. His work and research interests include environmental and resource economics, monetary theory, history of economic theory and European integration. His main interests since the 1960s has been the relationship between economy and ecology. Binswanger sees money in a dual role: as cash and capital. He argues not for an end of growth, but to a reduced growth. His economic theory is an alternative model to the neoclassical theory.
André Hoffmann
b.1958 Vice President of ‘World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) International’
André Hoffman studied economics at St. Gallen University and holds an MBA from INSEAD. In 1983, he stepped up from his role as board member at “Fondation Tour du Valat” to the position of acting head of administration at the “station biologique de la Tour du Valat” in the Camargue, France. In 1985, he joined James Capel in London as an associate on the Continental Desk before working on European M&A. He then worked for Nestlé UK for three years before establishing a family office dealing with asset management and board directorships. André Hoffmann’s main philanthropic interest is in the field of nature conservation. To support his efforts in this field, he chairs the Fondation Internationale du Banc d’Arguin (FIBA), and the Fondation MAVA. He is also Vice-President of the Fondation Tour du Valat, as well as a board member for several businesses and charities.
Niklas Maak
b.1972 Journalist and architecture critic, Germany
Niklas Maak is a German writer and architecture critic. For several years he worked as features editor and author at Süddeutsche Zeitung and since 2001 he has been editor of the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He also writes for German travel magazine, Merian. Maak has taught as a visiting professor in architectural history at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, as well as the University of Basel and the University of Berlin.
Adrián Villar Rojas
b.1980 Artist, Argentina
One of the most exciting artists to have emerged in recent years, the Argentinean-born artist has become renowned for his large-scale sculptural works, predominantly made in clay and brick. The inaugural exhibition at the newly opened Serpentine Sackler Gallery, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, presented a site-specific installation by Adrián Villar Rojas in September 2013. Rojas’ work combines formal experimentation with the construction of a narrative, which allows him to reflect on art, its forms of appearance, and its meanings, as if it were the end of time and the end of the world. His works are derived from a story that speculates on the present from a hypothetical future, unfolding a political dimension of fantasy. Focused on that end of the world—ours—he suggests that we rethink art as a shelter for existence, passion and sensibility. He is the recipient of several prestigious international art awards, including the The Zürich Art Prize at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv (2013) and the 9th Benesse Prize in the 54th Venice Biennial (2011).
Anoka Abeyrathne
b.1992 Eco-social entrepreneur, Sri Lanka
Anoka Abeyrathne is an eco-social entrepreneur working on environmental and entrepreneurial issues in Sri Lanka and in the South Asian region. Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, HE Kamlesh Sharma, presented Abeyrathne with a Commonwealth Youth Award in March 2013. She was honoured for her work by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and by Youth Service America as one of the 25 Most Influential and Powerful Young Persons of the World 2012, and was part of Sri Lanka’s first ever digital environmental music video with Make It Green Again. Abeyrathne has
been featured by the United Nations Environmental Programme, the UNICEF and Huffington Post.
Alessandro Bava
b.1989 Architect and Zine Editor, Italy (lives London)
Alessandro Bava’s work as an architect focuses on inventing a new habitat for the 21st century, reimagining the city and its political and spatial dynamics through beauty and architecture. His recent research focuses on spaces of exception and contemporary urban anomalies, antagonistic political and spatial phenomena, understood as ideal laboratories for future living/lifestyle options. At the core of his practice is computation and history in the belief that architecture must resurrect its god complex and get rid of its current neo-lib hybris. Recent projects include a gated micro-city in Naples, based on subverting the principles of seasteading; a megachurch and monastery to save bankrupt Detroit, and an offshore public space in Dubai. He is the editor of ECOCORE an annual zine on ecology.
Josh Bitelli
b.1989 Artist, UK
Josh Bitelli’s art practice is concerned with points of industrial intersection; where production systems co-exist, and encounter places and characters and other commercial activities. These nodes are often representative of greater webs of confusion and chaos and have intrinsic environmental and socio-political impacts. Bitelli makes interfaces and moorings that articulate and engender these human actions, that disentangle and frame the hypnosis of normality.
Alex Dolan
b.1990 Artist, USA
Alex Dolan is an artist and curator living in Portland OR. His work utilizes a wide range of media and is about an increasingly complex awareness of objects as influenced by contemporary stressors, such as global warming, technology, the internet. He is a co-curator at Appendix Project Space, and has recently shown at Generation Works, Karma International, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and West Lane South. In September 2013 Dolan was the 89plus Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
Charlie Fegan
b.1990 Artist, UK
Charlie Fegan’s art practice primarily investigates environmental, political, economic, and architectural ideas. His work is always implicit in questioning the ways in which capitalism global scale has colonised both our imagination and our consciousness. In recent work, Fegan discusses the role artists play in the gentrification processes of urban environments. He recently graduated from Goldsmiths College (London) with a Bachelor of Fine Art and History of Art (DHons).
Chibundu Onuzu
b.1991 Novelist, Nigeria (lives London)
Chibundu Onuzo started writing her first book aged 17. At 19, she was the youngest female to sign to publishing giant Faber & Faber, and released her first book, The Spider King’s Daughter, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, at 21. Her novel underscores the conflicts and struggles caused by unregulated growth, poverty, and rapidly developing urban environments. She has also contributed articles to The Guardian, and is currently completing her Masters degree in Public Policy at University College, London.
Chris Rueth
b.1994 Eco-social entrepreneur, US (lives India)
Chris Rueth is Co-founder and Executive Director of Community Kit, a not-for-profit organization that combines the latest most efficient technologies to strengthen communities by providing renewable power, water purification and networked education. Chris was first inspired to help improve the existing educational system in the developing regions of the world by organizing a hotspot technology that would provide content offline for teachers. After visiting Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community, he decided to also expand his vision to include renewable power and water purification. An advocate for the free flow of information, he believes that education must be brought to the developing world in a way where it can sustain itself.
Takeshi Shiomitsu
b.1989 Artist, UK
Takeshi Shiomitsu graduated from Chelsea College of Art in 2011 and lives and works in London. Shiomitsu works in video and sculpture, and his research is based in the implementation of ideologies and power in networked postfordist culture, especially focused on the encounter with, representation of, and materiality of, the digital image and labour. Recent exhibitions include Unified Fabric at Arcadia Missa (2013), Video:Video at PAMI (2013) and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid (2012).