Performing the Techno Imagination 

This ongoing research project conjures the late philosopher Vilém Flusser’s concept of the ‘Techno Imagination’ in order to consider artistic and performative strategies in engaging with and reading ‘that which is beyond us’. This research is given form through a series of actions, each exploring a certain position to, or reading of, these perceptual proposals, whilst aiming to explore the potential of the performative in a process-focused mode, a ‘live’ thinking through activity.

Form

The research project will develop a series of stagings. Each staging (‘Action’) explores specific thematics emerging from the assemblage of connections, contradictions and inter-subjectivities of the overall research.

Continuing an interest in process-focused working- the ‘live’ as a testing ground- these actions will aim to be explorative spaces; questioning the line between process and product.

Staging (Actions)

Action I: Reality Production

Reality Production is a program exploring mythmaking and the performative in the construction of the ‘real’.

Countering the conjecture that fantasy, mythologies and the mystical equate to regression; a step back into a state of ‘pre-enlightenment’ or represent the escapist and ignorant, this project instead proposes a function of a new mythic consciousness for a modern age- Mythologies’ potential role in further human social evolution.

Emerging over three scenes, three new artists commissions will be staged in sequence and in dialogue.

Action II: Hunger for Pictures

Considering the image, from its magical (mythic) state through to its ‘incontinent’ over- production, Action II explores our relationship to image production, consumption and distribution in a post-historical age. What does it mean to work as an artist today in an era ruled by the ‘non-material’ (‘technical’) image, in a sea of stimulation and apparent access to an abundance of references where everything relates to something else? In this digital universe how does one think in a more complicated, relational and non- linear way?

Practice

Rowan Geddis’ curatorial practice centers around questions concerning the potential of the performative- situationally, relationally and in a process-focused mode: through the staging of innovative ‘event- based’ activity and diverse ‘live’ works. He frequently returns to working with film and artist moving image material and is specifically interested in how the aesthetics of cinema infiltrate other art-forms.

Having originally studied and practiced as an artist, Rowan Geddis has spent the last ten years working as a curator, producer and programmer, working with film and artists moving image production and presentation, and supporting and developing artists projects on three continents. From 2010-2014 he curated and programmed Gasworks’ (London) International Residencies Programme, where he worked with over 60 artists to develop and present their work. In this role he focused on developing a public programme that considered the potential of performative aspects of varied art practices in order to develop relationships between artists and audiences, the culmination of which was a 60 day-long festival of live-art called Situation|Event.