menu
ArchiveTalks & Events
Talk

Online event: Ruth Catlow: Decentralising Art Ecosystems

12 Jan 2022 6-7.30pm

NN Contemporary Art
Northampton NN1 1DP

Overview

In this talk, we will be joined by Ruth Catlow with whom we will explore the potentials and limits of new technologies such as blockchain and Web 3.0 for creating more equitable art ecosystems, the issues with the complex relationship of art with money and technology's role in creating spaces for radical imagination and increased transparency in art.

This event is a part of NN's Morphisms online talks programme.

About the speaker
Ruth Catlow is an artist, curator and researcher of emancipatory network cultures, practices and poetics that embrace more than human interests. She is artistic director of Furtherfield, a hub for critical explorations in art and technology, a community of radical friends who carry out fieldwork in human and machine imagination, founded with Marc Garrett in London, in 1996. She co-edited Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain (2017). Ruth is director of DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab, a Furtherfield initiative which mobilises research and development by artists, using blockchain and web 3.0 technologies for fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies.

About Morphisms
Morphisms is our autumn 2021/22 online talks programme exploring transformations and new arrangements of knowledge production. To morph is to gradually change one thing into another by describing the state in between.

As we construct new digital and physical spaces at NN, we are thinking through these transitions. In October, we will launch the inaugural Library Stack NN Contemporary Art branch; the pilot programme for a digital lending library that explores both alternative publishing models and contexts for translocation. We have also commissioned artist David Blandy to produce Northampton The World After, a role-playing experience of gaming and speculative fiction for institution building and, through a new project collaborating with the Northamptonshire Black Archives Association, we examine the potential of digital archiving as a postcolonial methodology for preserving and documenting regional black* histories.

By way of these projects’ expansion, we will invite artists, curators and thinkers to address new movements and complex interactions. Speakers will discuss their methods of exploring inaccessible, opaque systems, such as internet platforms, online libraries, search engines, and how these play an increasingly significant role in the organisation of modern life. Morphisms will delve into the organising principles that inform these algorithmic projects and new forms of cultural intelligence.

Each season, NN hosts a programme of lectures by leading artists, curators, art historians and critics, situating the organisational concerns within the larger context of contemporary art. Talks are free and open to all, and will also be documented through audio recordings that reside in the NN Archives Talks. In order to receive a Zoom link, registration is required in advance via our website or Eventbrite.

*The Northamptonshire Black History Association defines black as people and groups from visible minority communities, especially those with African and/or Asian origins.

Access Notes
The event will happen on Zoom – a link will be emailed to attendees. This event will be live captioned and transcription will be available afterwards. For help with how to set up Zoom and accessibility enquiries, email [email protected].

This event will be recorded for archival purposes.

Image credit: From A Blockchain Art History Timeline by DECAL@Furtherfield: Visual Design: Studio Hyte

Book now