John B. Aird Gallery, exhibition of artworks exploring human animal interactions in an age of risk.

Digital Animalities

John B. Aird Gallery, exhibition of artworks exploring human animal interactions in an age of risk.

900 Bay Street, The Macdonald Block

Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday 10 am to 6 pm. The gallery is closed Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays.

 

Exhibit Dates: October 30 to November 23, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday November 1, 6 to 8 pm
Cinq à Sept: Curatorial Tour: November 8, 5 to 7 p.m.

Curators: Giovanni Aloi and Matthew Brower
Exhibiting Artists: Julie Andreyev and Simon Lysander Overstall, Jonathan Keats,
Gwen MacGregor, Neozoon, Ken Rinaldo, Lou Sheppard, and Donna Szokethat

 

Digital Animalities is a two-venue exhibition of artworks exploring human animal interactions in an age of risk.

Digital technologies have been reshaping human understandings of animals and transforming the possibilities for human-animal relations. Artists have been at the forefront of exploring these challenges, using the languages and forms of artistic practice to stage, explore, and intervene in these emerging situations. These works present a range of approaches to the themes. They offer models for understanding new possibilities provided by new technologies, critiques of implicit tendencies in the workings and organizations of these technologies, and classifications and frameworks for orienting ourselves to these new possibilities.

Loosely organized under two major tendencies presented in the works, Mapping and Rendering, the two venues present complementary experiences of the evolving space of animality in contemporary digital culture.

At the John B. Aird Gallery, the theme of Mapping brings together works by Julie Andreyev and Simon Lysander Overstall, Jonathon Keats, Gwen MacGregor, Neozoon, Ken Rinaldo, Lou Sheppard, and Donna Szoke that suggest how new cartographies organize and orient us.


At the CONTACT Gallery, 80 Spadina Ave, Suite #205, November 1–December 15, 2018 the theme of Rendering brings together works by Sara Angelucci, Ingrid Bachmann, Maria Fernanda Cardosa, Wally Dion, and Aki Inamota that reveal digital technology’s ability to scan and re-assemble aspects of reality.


Curated by Giovanni Aloi and Matthew Brower, Digital Animalities is part of a SSHRC funded research project entitled “Digital Animalies: Media Representations of Nonhuman Life in the Age of Risk” led by Jody Berland of York University.