Tomas Saraceno
14 Billions Working Title Enabling Lecture Series, organised by Theo Spyropoulos
Date: 5/3/2012
Time: 18:00:00
Venue: Lecture Hall
Time: 18:00:00
Venue: Lecture Hall
Running time: 0 mins
Image: 14 Billions Working Title, at Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm, 2010
Projects by Tomas Saraceno, whether of a social or community nature, defy traditional notion of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception, depicting a utopian and participatory nature. The sky and the land are interchanged in his installations; gardens float and people fulfill their longed-for dream of flying. Inspired by his interest in introducing changes in the patterns of existence and experimenting with reality, each one of his pieces is an invitation to ponder on alternative ways to know, feel and interact with other people. His projects also encourage interrelations and propose an interdependence between spaces, where the focus is on emphasising the ecological aspect not only of social as well as rural environments. His work suggests, to some extent, that the capacity to transform the world is available to those willing to collaborate with its design and construction; perhaps it constitutes the set of tools that was missing.
Tomas Saraceno was born in 1973, the same year that Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Gravity’s Rainbow was published. Its much-quoted first line – ‘A screaming comes across the sky …’ – signalled a significant shift in aesthetic attention to the geometrical, geopolitical and technological placement of figures into the atmosphere. The novel is a veritable essay on the social uses and misuses of scientific knowledge, from nonlinear geometries and probability theory to that of social networks, behavioral psychology and chemical engineering. The overriding social imperative is primary in exactly this way in the work of Tomas Saraceno.
Projects by Tomas Saraceno, whether of a social or community nature, defy traditional notion of space, time, gravity, consciousness and perception, depicting a utopian and participatory nature. The sky and the land are interchanged in his installations; gardens float and people fulfill their longed-for dream of flying. Inspired by his interest in introducing changes in the patterns of existence and experimenting with reality, each one of his pieces is an invitation to ponder on alternative ways to know, feel and interact with other people. His projects also encourage interrelations and propose an interdependence between spaces, where the focus is on emphasising the ecological aspect not only of social as well as rural environments. His work suggests, to some extent, that the capacity to transform the world is available to those willing to collaborate with its design and construction; perhaps it constitutes the set of tools that was missing.
Tomas Saraceno was born in 1973, the same year that Thomas Pynchon’s novel, Gravity’s Rainbow was published. Its much-quoted first line – ‘A screaming comes across the sky …’ – signalled a significant shift in aesthetic attention to the geometrical, geopolitical and technological placement of figures into the atmosphere. The novel is a veritable essay on the social uses and misuses of scientific knowledge, from nonlinear geometries and probability theory to that of social networks, behavioral psychology and chemical engineering. The overriding social imperative is primary in exactly this way in the work of Tomas Saraceno.
