New platform – The Riga Technoculture Research Unit
First season “Under The Hood” announced
Kim? Contemporary Art Centre has announced the soft opening of inaugural Season 1 of The Riga Technoculture Research Unit (RTRU) titled “Under The Hood”. RTRU can be accessed on www.rtru.org
The Riga Technoculture Research Unit is a new platform curated by Elizaveta Shneyderman and Zane Onckule under the commission of Kim? Contemporary Centre (Riga, Latvia). Part research journal, part art and writing publisher, part hub for developments in emerging media, RTRU brings an interdisciplinary and technicity-centered approach to the status quo of contemporary art programming. Design and identity of the platform by Becca Abbe.
RTRU Season 1 contributors/participants: Dana Kopel (New York), Eltons Kūns (Riga), Deborah Levitt (New York), Rio Roye (New York), Līga Spunde (Riga), Candice Strongwater (New York), Alise Tifentale (New York/Riga), Viktor Timofeev (New York), Jessica Wilson (New York).
Season one, “Under The Hood”, looks at the technical processes and economic and social structures of production that profoundly shape visual culture. First season considers the museum without images; the effusive “student body”; labor history; “the factory of phenomena”, or the paradigmatic worksite of contemporary media culture; and much more.
“RTRU is committed to the expanding universe of technical images in contemporary art practice. Central premise is that art and emerging media don’t pre-exist culture, but instead emerge from it. The feedback loop between media and its reception, between technics and culture, suggests a transductive relationship: bodies, images, technologies, and aesthetic modes merge in relation to and co-determine one another. It is only through engagements with and mediations of contemporary culture that we can effectively investigate and observe the technoculture that augments and shapes our world,” creators of the platform explain.
By invitation only, RTRU commissions and gathers materials from culture workers—artists, curators, writers—that present multifaceted engagements with current theoretical trends while also questioning the hegemony of techno-positivist paradigms. Furthermore, RTRU emphasizes a focus on the particular localities of Riga, Latvia, the Baltics, and New York City, US, as well as the historical and cultural perspectives immanent to them.
