Last week, the global art world descended onto a sinking city for the glitzy opening of La Biennale di Venezia (17-19 April ‘24). This prestigious art event, dating back to 1895, sees over 85 countries from all over the world present their best and brightest artists. With this edition’s theme being Foreigners Everywhere, the exhibits focus on topics around migration, but also generates attention for queer, indigenous, and folk artists, often treated as foreigners in their own land. Still on view to the public until 24 November ‘24, here are some of the highlights selected by the Nxt Museum team.

1. Thresholds – Yael Bartana & Ersan Mondtag

Location: German Pavilion at Giardini

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Future Forward Artworks

Realtime comprises three unique artworks:

Q is for Climate, Libby Heaney
Libby Heaney, a quantum physicist turned artist, combines quantum computing and art to create digital installations and live performances. Her unique storytelling in the artwork, ‘Q is For Climate’,  blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, exploring our interconnectedness with technology, the environment, and each other.

Find out more about Q is for Climate

Decohering Delineation by Entangled Others Studio with Robert M. Thomas
Entangled Others Studio, consisting of Sofia Crespo and Feileacan McCormick, celebrates the interconnectedness of humanity, technology, and the natural world. Their collaborative work, ‘Decohering Delineation’ in collaboration with composer Robert M. Thomas, challenges our perception of ecosystems and invites viewers to recognise the unseen elements that entangle us with the world.

Find out more about Decohering Delineation

Midnight & To Body by Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Amelia Winger-Bearskin, a multimedia artist and AI professor, merges technology with intergenerational storytelling to create positive impacts on communities and the environment. Her work, ‘Midnight & To Body,‘ explores communication networks and the preservation of ethical practices across generations.

Find out more about Midnight & To Body

Collaboration

In this transformative era of technological advancements, climate change, and heightened collective awareness, the urgency to unite and collaborate has never been more critical. Recognising the power of our differences, we must harness diverse intelligences from across the globe to shape sustainable futures that accommodate all life forms, including artificial ones. Our technologies, as tools, possess the potential to either aid or impede progress on our planet. The vision of Web3, the next iteration of the internet, strives for shared ownership and decentralised power, challenging exploitative monopolies. Quantum computers, the next frontier in computing, enable multidimensional thinking and imagination far beyond human capacity. Additionally, the rise of artificial intelligence applications present new opportunities for collaboration.

Technologies develop alongside human nature, and one of the fundamental questions in setting up this Realtime exhibition was whether technologies can be viewed as ecologies, or eco-systems. Inviting the public to contribute to usually behind-closed-doors developments, Nxt Museum facilitated a series of open discussions through Twitter Spaces, welcoming diverse voices to strengthen curatorial thought processes. Scholar-in-residence Charlotte Kent emphasises the significance of external feedback, “It’s easy when you’re thinking about an idea to have it become closed… doing the Twitter Spaces was a really important step for us to kind of posit a very broad idea, like ‘technology as ecology’, and then invite artists and thinkers to contribute to the conversation.”

Better Luck Next time

Realtime encourages co-creation across diverse perspectives in lieu of decentralised futures. Through the visionary works of artists such as Libby Heaney, Entangled Others Studio, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin, the exhibition showcases alternative pathways for surfacing new knowledge through human collaboration with new technologies. In this way there’s the possibility to ensure equitable representation in the landscapes to come. Tech presents an opportunity to wield the tools at hand to affect our collective fate, moving away from the corrupted systems that exclude and isolate many to serve but a few – regardless of the lessons of the past and red flags of the future. This moment in time represents a chance to turn a tide, to re-code the script, and together co-engineer better luck next time.

Visit Realtime and expand your understanding of the future we share.