LABOR is excited to announce that Gala Porras-Kim will participate in the 5th edition of the Ural Industrial Biennial of contemporary art.
Responding to the overarching framework of “Immortality,” this biennial seeks the possibilities of multiple futures. By probing into various historical junctures, the project explores the catalytic moments to speculate the interruption of the global temporal axis’s synchronization process. It challenges the prevailing belief of having technological acceleration leading us to the end of history, to a singularity. The exhibition rejects the politics of acceleration as the only means to resolve social and political crises. The concepts of immortality depart from the anticipation of the homo deus and metamorphose into various philosophical and aesthetic positions. How can we overcome, not death, but immortality?
The artist-in-residence program—the strategic project of the Ural Biennial—has invited 10 artists from 7 countries to rethink the constant presence of industrial traces in the Urals by actively communicating with the local context. List of artists in the artist-in-residence program: Cecilia Jonsson, Werker Collective, Krasil Makar, Anna Marchenkova, Luc Mattenberger, Naïmé Perrette, Hannah Perry, Anna Titova, Anika Schwarzlose, Katja Schenker.
The symposium—the key event of the Intellectual Platform—will take place from September 11 to 14 and feature presentations by art historians, social scientists, biotech scholars, curators and artists from different parts of the world. Their discussions will provide new theoretical and aesthetic framework to contextualize the artworks on view.
The Ural Industrial Biennial is one of the largest international projects in the field of contemporary art in Russia, organized and conducted by NCCA in Ekaterinburg and the Ural region since 2010. Once in two years the Biennial takes place in the non-exhibition spaces of Ekaterinburg and the Ural region.