CURA 39: ‘Are we Eternal Beings?’ Interview in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

In today’s era of increasingly eroding certainties, artists survey the fundamental questions of life and death, extinction and immortality, investigating the impact that fragments of the past, technology, and collective behaviour can have in becoming active agents of change, transformation, and connection. This edition features an interview with Jakob Kudsk Steensen in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Interspecies Podcast by LAS: Ep 6 - Imagining the Interspecies (Part 2)

LAS’s Interspecies podcast invites specialists in ecology, art and technology for discussions around the future of their work, the planet’s ecosystems, and how these intertwine. In this episode, science-fiction author Stanley Qiufan Chen and artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen discuss AI and a need for new forms of communication across species, and relate this concept to how they communicate in their own practices in multidisciplinary ways. They also explore narrative and alternatives to this linear logic through new rhythms – both literal and metaphorical – and the importance of intersubjectivity. By animating other worlds through mythology, science, technology, space, and sound, we come closer to a collective awakening of an Interspecies Future. Produced by Bridey Addison-Child. A Reduced Listening production for LAS.

Listen here

The Making of Berl-Berl: Exhibition and Sound Design Interview for Chapter Magazine

Interview on Berl-Berl for Lousiana Channel, by Lousiana Museum of Art in Denmark

‘Artist Worlds’ talk for Serpentine Galleries inside the virtual world of ‘Primal Tourism’

ARTE, "Le bonheur malgré la crise"

Arte filmed spent a day with Jakob in the Camargue landscape, where Jakob explains his approach to an upcoming project, Liminal Lands, commissioned by the Luma Foundation. He discusses the slow method of engaging with the landscape over a long time and for the creation process, geological timescales, and unseen energies in the landscape. (German w/ English CC) October 24, 2020.

Link

LOUISIANA channel

Jakob discusses our middle existence with the Louisiana Channel at his studio. Jakob Kudsk Steensen was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his studio in April 2019. Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019

Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, who has been dubbed a ‘digital gardener’, is one to watch. We met the rising star in his studio in New York to talk about his enchanting virtual reality and video installations, which invite people to enter futuristic simulations of ecosystems. “All my work is connected by an interest in landscapes and how we can use technology to experience them in new ways,” Steensen says, adding that he is particularly interested in the smaller ecosystems “in different parts of the world that are changing because of a general climate change.” In these places, specialized biologists research one specific thing, and Kudsk Steensen spends 3-6 months in a given landscape, talking to them, taking photographs, and collecting soil, leaves etc. He then returns to his studio where he creates digital creatures and locations based on his expedition: “I transform it a bit, and enable new ways of sensing and perceiving, for example, the leaf of a tree. So a leaf would be on a gigantic scale, and the veins are like two meters wide, and you can see everything pulsating, you can touch it and move around it.” A lot of the 3D-models – the “virtual sculptures” – are created in VR, which Kudsk Steensen then places in virtual landscapes, each of which is designed in a computer game engine. Virtual reality, he feels, presents you with the opportunity to “literally be inside the soil of the ground.” Though the landscape lives digitally, Kudsk Steensen always adapts the piece to the architecture of the exhibition, because it creates a new world: “It’s like a friction space between this cultivated museum space and the remote ecosystem that I had to go to… and then the exhibition itself is this fractured space or this middle existence that I think we all live in right now.” It is precisely this meeting point, this “middle existence”, which makes up our perception of reality, that Kudsk Steensen seeks to play with. Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987) is a Danish artist and art director based in New York. Kudsk Steensen is concerned with how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine, and he develops VR and installations, which enables visitors to enter new ecological realities. For his work, he collects organic material, which is then digitized and converted into digital worlds with 3D scanners, photogrammetry, satellite data and computer game software. Kudsk Steensen has exhibited internationally at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Serpentine Galleries Marathon in London, MAXXI Rome, Frieze London, Zabludowicz Collection in London and many more. For more see: https://jakobsteensen.squarespace.com/ Jakob Kudsk Steensen was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his studio in Newark, New York in April 2019. Camera: Jakob Solbakken Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner Cover photo: Still from ‘Re-Animated. Mating Call’, 2018 by Jakob Kudsk Steensen Edited by: Klaus Elmer Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019 Supported by Nordea fonden

DLD Conference, rewilding our virtual worlds

Jakob discusses rewilding our virtual worlds with The Serpentine Gallerie’s Ben Vickers, at the DLD conference January 2020, in Munich, Germany.

In conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries

Jakob discusses the Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist during the summer pavilion opening and augmented architecture launch, July 2019.

Google arts & culture and the serpentine galleries

Jakob on The Deep Listener, the inaugural commission of Serpentine Augmented Architecture and Google Arts & Culture, discussing with Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Sir David Adjaye OBE.

Explore how imagination, ecology and technology intertwine with The Deep Listener at https://experiments.withgoogle.com/augmentedarchitecture Let artist Jako...

BTS - CONNECT, BTS Interview

Jakob and BTS discuss their upcoming collaboration for Connect, BTS, working processes, nature, technology and inspiring new ways of looking at the world.

CONNECT, BTS Official Homepage https://www.connect-bts.com/ BTS Official Homepage http://bts.ibighit.com BTS Blog http://btsblog.ibighit.com BTS Facebook htt...

SERPENTINE DIGITAL

Reshaping the digital. Jakob discusses the goal of challenging and reshaping the role that technology can play in our culture and society, alongside Ben Vickers, Kay Watson, Suzanne Treister and Jenna Sutela

For the last five years, the Serpentine's Digital Commissions Programme has been experimenting with technology, commissioning pioneering artists with the goa...

Future Generation Art Prize, Victor Pinchuk Foundation

Jakob discusses his piece RE-ANIMATED as presented at the 5th edition of the Future Generation Art Prize, established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009.

ARTISTIC PRACTICE

Interview with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, produced by the BIKUBEN foundation.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen (b. 1987) is a Danish artist based in New York with a special interest in how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine. His works range from immersive VR ecosystems to mixed reality installations bridging physical and digital worlds, which invite audiences to enter new ecological realities. Find out more about Jakob Kudsk Steensen here: http://www.jakobsteensen.com/ ARTISTIC PRACTICE – a portrait series of a particularly promising Danish artist. The Bikuben Foundation works to create new opportunities for art institutions and professional artists by assisting artists in developing their potential, focusing on particularly promising practices. The aim of ARTISTIC PRACTICE is to raise and enhance the visibility of artists to promote the advancement of their careers both nationally and internationally. ARTISTIC PRACTICE focuses on promising artists in the performing and visual arts. -------------------- Billedkunstner Jakob Kudsk Steensen (f. 1987) har de seneste par år markeret sig nyskabende gennem sine Virtual Reality-værker i et grænseland mellem kunst og film. Han arbejder som kunstner med virtuelle og syntetiske virkeligheder, og han skaber nye komplekse verdener i digitale miljøer, man som publikum kan opleve gennem fx VR eller via sin smartphone. Læs mere om Jakob Kudsk Steensen her: http://www.jakobsteensen.com/ ARTISTIC PRACTICE – et værknært portrætinterview af en lovende kunstnerisk praksis. Bikubenfonden har som strategisk mål at styrke og stimulere samtalen om den aktuelle kunst, dens betydning, og at bistå kunstnere i at udvikle deres potentiale, herunder fokus på udvikling af særligt kunstnerisk lovende praksisser. Bikubenfonden har i den forbindelse etableret filmportræt-serien ARTISTIC PRACTICE – en platform til det kvalificerede person- og værknære portrætinterview, hvor en dansk kunstner med særligt lovende praksis og potentiale udfoldes visuelt. Det er målet med ARTISTIC PRACTICE at stille den portrætterede kunstner et materiale til rådighed, som potentielt kan fremhæve og styrke kunstnerens synlighed i sin videre karriere, nationalt som internationalt. ARTISTIC PRACTICE fokuserer på kunstnerisk lovende praksisser indenfor aktuel scene- og billedkunst.

COS X SERPENTINE GALLERIES PARK NIGHTS 2019: THE DEEP LISTENER

Jakob Kudsk Steensen creates a sonic and immersive environment for The Deep Listener, the inaugural Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission that explores themes of extinction, preservation and the emergence of new ecological realities.

Conversations