Panorama 26

From the advent of autonomous machines during the industrial revolution to today’s social networks and artificial intelligence, our experience of the world is confronted with, on one hand, an unlimited and diffuse expansion of reality, and on the other hand, paradoxically, the fragmentation and shrinking of knowledge sources.

Using various transdisciplinary technologies, from the most traditional to the most virtual and cybernetic, Le Fresnoy students and invited artist-teachers critically explore the conditions under which the limits, expansions, and cracks of this new expanded reality shape the spirit of contemporary storytelling.

Through assemblages, experiments, recontextualizations, downloads, appropriations, from music, cinema, architecture, science, or visual arts, this exhibition brings together the research works of over 50 artists who recognize that art, science, and artistic practice are indispensable allies in critically, poetically, and transformatively deciphering our experience of reality reinvented by technology.

From exploring the politics of control and power over the organic and inorganic (with their promises and consolations), to awakening certain states of consciousness and spirituality, to subverting public space and intimacy politics, Panorama 26 confirms that today, more than ever, any resemblance to reality is not purely coincidental in contemporary artistic practice.

Marta Gili
Artistic Direction of Panorama 26