MoCA Pavilion will present the new project from 30th May：
Orbit 2046 Together we will travel to the future - A solo project by Urs August Steiner.This project is supported by Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia Shanghai’s Artist in Residency project,in collaboration with MoCA Shanghai.
As is characteristic of Urs August Steiner’s work, Orbit 2046 makes reference to the fantasies of cinema. Taking inspiration from Wong Kar-wai’s 2004 film, 2046, in which a train hurtles inexhaustibly through time, the work explores the postmodern complexities in establishing a grounded reality.
In 1994, Swiss conceptual artist Dieter Meier returned to a plaque he had installed in Kassel during Documenta 5 (1972). The plaque had the prophetic inscription: "On 23rd March 1994, from 3 to 4pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque". It was a bold promise that flirted with the follies of chance and fate.
Our ideas of “presence” -- or of being in a fixed place -- have now been reconfigured by the spaces offered by the internet: an expansive secondary universe that exists between infinite servers and networks. We are everywhere at once, dispersed across an infinite cybernetic realm that has defied our understanding of time.
In Orbit 2046, Steiner reverses Meier’s vow, translating it to this virtual world. The central element in this project is a website (http://www.orbit2046.com) that hosts a video. The video depicts an endlessly spinning roulette wheel void of markings, quietly overseen by a croupier. On January 1st, 2046, the website will be deleted. In the intervening years, a logbook will document every change made to the interface.
Whereas Meier anticipates an embodied moment after a prolonged absence, Steiner maintains an omnipresence before eventual erasure. The roulette wheel represents the mechanisms of probability: like the ball jettisoning off the wheel repeatedly, we wait for the outcome of our own orbital path.
30th May 18:30-21:00，welcome to experience Urs August Steiner’s miraculous virtual world...
Lecture:
A Wrinkle in Time and Space
Artist Talk with Urs August Steiner
June 5, 2015, Friday
7:00 PM
MoCA Pavilion
231 Nanjing Xi Lu
The Swiss conceptual artist Urs August Steiner will be in conversation with art historian Julie Chun to discuss highlights from his previous works and how the poster for H. G. Wells' movie The Time Machine inspired his current solo project Orbit 2046.
This talk is open to the public and is a part of MoCA Shanghai's public education program. The Project is supported by Pro Helvetia’s artist residency program Shanghai, in collaboration with MOCA Shanghai.
