The CalArts Center for Integrated Media’s (CIM) online curatorial initiative, archive, and virtual studio viralnet-v4.net launches its 2021 edition with three new projects: a podcast series titled Now|Swerve, hosted by director of the Program in Art and Technology and CIM director Tom Leeser and Carlin Wing (Art MFA 08); a collaborative project by Chris Bassett (Art/IM MFA 05) and the Center for Land Use (CLUI); and Lake Lonely, a new video and interview with Sichong Xie (Art MFA 17).
Hosted by Leeser and Wing, an assistant professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Media Studies at Scripps College, the Now|Swerve podcast features guest artists, writers, and academics who’ll examine “the swerve of 2020.” In the first conversation, Leeser and Wing discuss how the pandemic, the 2020 US presidential election, and uprisings against racial injustice have caused us to reevaluate our awareness of the past, present, and future. The second conversation features Femke Snelling and Helen Pritchard of the Underground Division, who discuss their research project Figurations of Timely Extraction, an examination of the dynamic crossings of time and matter, geological time, and other multitime-spaces that pierce what they call “the technocolonial apparatus.” In the third conversation, Leeser and Wing are joined by CalArtian Ronni Kimm (Art-IM MFA 05) and interdisciplinary artist Carla Gannis and discuss the perception of time within this precarious post-future moment—a time that is analogous to the “long now.” In an addendum, the fourth conversation features a discussion between the hosts about the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, DC, and the need to reimagine the social collective and the role of educators in a post-future.
CIM’s second project is part of viralnet-v4.net’s initiative called The Networked Library Project, which looks at the artist’s library as a networked space and a source for collection, identity, and creative practice. After the CDC’s first round of “safer at home” orders, Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Chris Bassett visited the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s (CLUI) library, in which he discovered the second edition of Mark Monmonier’s illustrated essay How to Lie with Maps. Bassett’s “book report” can be read here.
The third project is Lake Lonely, which takes place as part of viralnet-v4.net’s ongoing initiative The Networked Studio. This latest installment is a video and interview with media and performance artist Xie that was filmed in April 2020 at the onset of “stay at home” orders. Xie discusses her performance in the Lake Lonely video and touches on themes of memory loss, nomadic living, and temporal migration in a prepandemic time.
All of these projects, along with a selection of past initiatives from the archive, can be viewed at viralnet-v4.net.