Exhibition

Presented in conjunction with the Mobility in Post Democracy seminar: Indigeneity, Stack, Sovereignty, artist Nobutaka Aozaki contributes a site-specific, temporary installation featuring several recent, select works from 2012 to the present. The installation encompasses the entire lecture hall, framing the Indigeneity, Stack, Sovereignty event both literally and metaphorically. At 5:00 pm, Aozaki and Benjamin Bratton address the installation in this context, followed by a reception.

The installation of these works has is modified specifically for this event space. Installation support is provided by Yuriko Katori, The New School Facilities Team and The Shelia C. Johnson Design Center.

Nobutaka Aozaki is a New York-based artist born in Kagoshima, Japan. He brings a wry and playful approach to his multifaceted practice, often focusing on the transactional nature of both art and life in the city. His work frequently combines performance and sculpture, developing from everyday interactions with people on the street. He completed his MFA at Hunter College in 2012. He has been awarded the Artist Files Grant from A Blade of Grass Foundation, and the Artists’ Fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent exhibitions include Transportation, ISCP, New York, Crossing Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum, New York; Queens International 2013, Queens Museum, New York; What is the Real Value of Wealth, Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia; Tina, SPIKE, Berlin; and Where Do We Migrate To?, Varmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden; at the moment, Statements, Tokyo. He has participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Queens Museum Studio Program, the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Center For Book Arts workspace residency program, and LMCC Swing Space residency program. His work has been recently discussed in Spike Art Quarterly, The New York Times, The Atlantic Cities, The Huffington Post, ArtAsiaPacific, and Cabinet Magazine.

Benjamin H. Bratton’s work spans Philosophy, Art, Design and Computer Science. He is Professor of Visual Arts and Director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at the University of California, San Diego. He is Program Director of the Strelka Institute of Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow. He is also a Professor of Digital Design at The European Graduate School and Visiting Faculty at SCI_Arc (The Southern California Institute of Architecture). In The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2016. 503 pages) Bratton outlines a new theory for the age of global computation and algorithmic governance. He proposes that different genres of planetary-scale computation -smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation- can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure that is both a computational infrastructure and a new governing architecture. The book plots an expansive interdisciplinary design brief for The Stack-to-Come.

Mobility in Post Democracy is a Vera List Center public seminar series, supported by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility