Ni zheng zai gong zuo ma?: Are you working now?

Uittreksel

"National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) has long devoted itself to building a platform for international arts exchange and dialogue. It has been 20 years since NTMoFA started to promote art and technology in 2003. As technology improves every day, NTMoFA has not only incubated and fostered myriads of Taiwanese artists working with technology, but also cooperated with different creators and institutions in various transdisciplinary experiments, which continues to spur the development of Taiwanese art and technology by increasing its strength and vitality. The annual International Art and Technology Exhibition is the highlight of the year. By introducing new trends and emerging artists working with technology, the international curators of this exhibition open up new horizons for Taiwanese art scene and meanwhile share the achievements of Taiwanese techno art with the international community. This year, NTMoFA invites British curator Mike Stubbs and Taiwanese curator Ming Turner to co-organize the 2023 International Techno Art Exhibition: "Are You Working Now?" Featuring 13 artists/artist groups who pool wisdom on the transformation of our work pattern and production method in contemporary society, this exhibition seeks to question and define 'what work is' or 'for what we work.' Utilizing the exhibits as diverse as distinctive in terms of issue and technique, the curatorial team shapes the exhibition into an experiment with the exhibition venue, the visitor participation, and the digital space. This exhibition is designed to revisit the essence of labour that may encourage the visitors to reflect on the status quo and difficulties of work and life in contemporary society. The R&D and applications of new technologies, such as VR, Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Al-supported software, have advanced by leaps and bounds today, which substantially enhances our work efficiency as well as reduces the costs of labour and human brain learning. As users around the world continue to train Al for use in the clerical, design, and computational tasks, computers have been accelerating the development of human civilization while they are learning. The greatest impact of such development finds expression in our lifestyle and work pattern. The labour and the intellectual costs of work have decreased when we train computers. The previous exchange of labour and knowledge for capital has been transformed into multiple modes of economic exchange such as big data and attention economy. Our daily life, work, and leisure activities have also been inextricably intertwined with one another. The introduction of Al technology has furthermore challenged frontline planners, designers, and engineers in terms of their niches and career requirements, which is one of the core issues that this exhibition attempts to address as well. This exhibition reviews the history of labour and the evolution of work pattern through the rich repertoire of the exhibits created with different techniques by artists/artist groups from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, aiming not only to respond to the current global turbulence and change, but also to raise the visitors' awareness of the adjustments in our lifestyle and work pattern in the post-pandemic era, as well as to further contemplate individuals' orientation and identity during the time of transition"-- Foreword (pages 5-6).

Inhoud

Director's foreword / Kuang-Yi Chen -- Curatorial essays -- Turning grit into gold / Mike Stubbs -- Are you working now? / Ming Turner -- Artists' statements and plates -- Maurice Benayoun -- Yi Chen -- Simon Denny -- Harun Farocki -- John Gerrard -- Rosie Gibbens -- I-Ting Hou -- Tehching Hsieh -- Ryoichi Kurokawa -- Molleindustria -- Hito Steyerl -- Tzu-Ning Wu -- Your Bros. Filmmaking Group.