Présage
Nurtured by a dual artistic and scientific background, Hicham Berrada’s work combines intuition and knowledge, science and poetry. In his works, he explores scientific protocols that mimic different natural processes and/or climatic conditions as closely as possible. “I try to control the phenomena I mobilize as a painter controls his pigments and brushes. My brushes and pigments would be temperature, magnetism, light.”
UK Pavillion
THE POEM PAVILION FEATURES A BREATHTAKING ILLUMINATED ‘MESSAGE TO SPACE’ TO WHICH EACH OF THE EXPO’S ANTICIPATED 25 MILLION VISITORS WILL BE INVITED TO CONTRIBUTE. “THE IDEA DRAWS DIRECTLY ON ONE OF STEPHEN HAWKING’S FINAL PROJECTS, ‘BREAKTHROUGH MESSAGE’, A GLOBAL COMPETITION THAT HAWKING AND HIS COLLEAGUES CONCEIVED IN 2015 INVITING PEOPLE WORLDWIDE TO CONSIDER WHAT MESSAGE WE WOULD COMMUNICATE TO EXPRESS OURSELVES AS A PLANET, SHOULD WE ONE DAY ENCOUNTER OTHER ADVANCED CIVILIZATIONS IN SPACE. WHAT IF THE UK PAVILION AT EXPO 2020 BECOMES A PLACE WHERE VISITORS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD TAKE PART IN A COLLECTIVE GLOBAL PROJECT THAT SHOWCASES BRITISH EXPERTISE IN A.I. TECHNOLOGIES AND POETRY WHILE TRANSCENDING NATIONAL IDENTITIES?” Es Devlin
Wanderer Spacetime Poetry
Wanderer Spacetime Poetry is a continuously evolving installation series. Wanderers are small modified and individually programmed thermal printers that roam along paper strips that are stretched in different constellations across a space. On their journeys the Wanderers leave traces behind, a line, a dot or words. Like a snail with its trail the units dynamically create a poetic drawing over the course of an exhibition.
For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit
‘For, in your tongue, I cannot fit,’ gives voice to 100 poets who have been jailed through time for their writing or their beliefs. The haunting work highlights the fragility and vulnerability of our right to freedom of expression today—and the bravery of those who struggle to resist. Visitors will encounter 100 microphones suspended over 100 metal rods, each piercing a verse of poetry. Over the course of an hour, each microphone in turn recites a fragment of the poets’ words, spoken first by a single voice then echoed by a chorus which shifts across the space.
Anomy, for U.S.and Mexican News
Anomy, for U.S.and Mexican News uses news media RSS feeds in real time in combination with data sanitization and sound synthesis algorithms in order to create visual displacement and generate a non-linear musical score. Through immersion, adjacency, perpetuity, uncertainty, and content in real time, it offers a contemplative experience with mass media, censorship, and language in contemporary society. Information containing the letter “e” in news briefs from eleven different sources in English and Spanish will be redacted—each triggering a musical note. Inspired by lipogrammatic literature and concrete poetry, this piece uses the lipogram to call attention to subjectivity and control in mainstream news media. The result is both a rhythmically diverse sound piece and a visual document that continuously evolves along with the flow of information published by Mexican and American news outlets.
A struggle that seems to be of particular relevance today. A metaphorical title, poetry of the line and of colour, that highlights the challenge that each of the parties represents. A kind of symbolic correspondence that flirts with our world, with our history, our human condition. War opens up perspectives of matter, a struggle both real and poetic that blends lines and directions, inscribing the trace, the hue, in the flesh of the dancing body but also in a seductive paradox between line and colour.
Pixel
A Small tease of the hour long presentation Intertwining body movement with technology is no easy feat. The Dance show is 11 dancers in a virtual and living visual environment. It took the collaborative artistic efforts of artists Adrien Mondot, Claire Bardainne from Adrien M/Claire B Company and Mourad Merzouk from his dance company Käfig to bring to life Pixels. A work on illusion combining energy and poetry, fiction and technical achievement, hip hop and circus.
لارس فون ترير
拉斯·冯·特里尔
라스 폰 트리에
לארס פון טרייר
ラース·フォン·トリアー
Ларс фон Триер
melancholia
Truth be told, the best thing about Melancholia is its title. In an era where pop therapy abounds, true melancholy and its affinity to beauty needs to be rehabilitated—and of course differentiated from the more banal categories of “mental illness” and “depression.” In a pivotal phase of German Romanticism exemplified by Novalis’ poetry, the quintessentially melancholy category of “longing” is linked with a quest for the “unattainable.” Yet there’s also a tangibly utopian element to Novalis’ melancholy, personified by his dictum, “All representation rests on making present that which is not present.” Or as Max Blechman puts it in his essay “The Revolutionary Dream of Early German Romanticism, the Romantics pantheistic faith points to how art and religion are fundamentally one and the same activity. For is not art the desire to see the real in the ideal, to enliven the ideal behind the real, to transform unconscious idealism into conscious idealism—and is this not done through faith in the ideal?”
EVERY THING EVERY TIME
The piece presents a running commentary on the activity of the city in which it’s located. The ‘poetry,’ which is created by an algorithm which randomly selects and rearranges the data collected from a number of site-specific points, and is posted on a website. The Pis pull the poetry from the website over 4G and then transmits the letter addresses via ethernet to the arduinos and then to the motors using I2C network protocol. The act of this then triggers the algorithm to generate a new poem.
루아리 글린
Performative Ecologies
Each one of the four crude and very technically appearing devices is fitted with a punctually attached, luminous rod of fibreglass, which moves back and forth arrhythmically and freely. This installation’s poetry lies in the choreography of the little robots. They continuously try to gain the observers attention and impress him by waving their luminous tails. They recognise the reactions and movements of their human audience, learn from failure and share their experience with their robotic neighbours – a social structure of humans and machines.
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Inverso Mundus
The title of the work, Inverso – both an Italian “reverse, the opposite” and the Old Italian “poetry,” and Mundus – the Latin “world,” hints at a reinterpretation of reality, a poetic vision. In our interpretation, the absurdist scenes from the medieval carnival appear as episodes of contemporary life in a multichannel video installation. Characters act out scenes of absurd social utopias and exchange masks, morphing from beggars to rich men, from policemen to thieves. Metrosexual street-cleaners are showering the city with refuse. Female inquisitors torture men on IKEA-style structures. Children and seniors are fighting in a kickboxing match. Inverso Mundus is a world where chimeras are pets and the Apocalypse is entertainment.
Formosa
“Formosa relies heavily on words and poetry for its inspiration and imagery. It traces Taiwan’s history from the 16th century, when Portuguese sailors upon seeing the island exclaimed, “Formosa!” meaning “Beautiful!” Poems appear on a white scrim above a white floor. In the beginning, the poems are whole. The black Chinese characters are neatly aligned. Gradually, however, the poems slide away and the characters enlarge, slowly disappear, become abstract, pour like a stream, peel away, and break apart. A chaotic jumble appears. To some extent, the writing dances.” Carmel Morgan
بوب ويلسون
鲍伯·威尔逊
בוב וילסון
ロバート·ウィルソン
밥 윌슨
БОБ УИЛСОН
Odyssey (Οδύσσεια)
The great epic work of ancient Greek poetry tells the story of Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War and what happens when the hero arrives at Ithaca. It is a transcendental tale that has always been the symbolic text par excellence about human adventure and the wanderings of existence in a harsh but exciting world.
Robert Wilson’s encounter with Homer is one of the major artistic events of this season. One of the most influential and acclaimed artists in world theatre brings his own unique approach to the material. The sensitivity, inventiveness and imagination of the great American director resonate with the Homeric spirit, creating a spellbinding new theatrical language. Eighteen carefully chosen performers and Wilson’s own internationally renowned collaborators bring all their artistry to bear on this unique venture, which is intended for all audiences, regardless of age or experience of the theatre.
