Our colleagues from Kontejner – bureau of contemporary art praxis are currently hosting a remote artist-in-residence of Berlin based Canadian artist Darsha Hewitt as the 2021 EMAP resident. The residence also includes Hewitt’s workshop Media Archeology and Sound Workshop for new media art students (mentor: Sunčica Ostoić) of the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb, which is set to take place on 19th and 26th of April in Radiona. The workshop leader and students in isolation will partake via Zoom, whilst the rest of the group will do the practical part of the workshop in our lab.
Her two-month online residency is focusing on the second part of the audio-centric trilogy “High Fidelity Wasteland” that experiments with the material waste left over from generations of decomposing sound reproduction technology.
Darsha Hewitt is a Canadian artist known for her examinations of communication technology in the domestic sphere and her use of DIY aesthetics and practices as an artistic method. Her work is interdisciplinary and often uses electronic sound as a central medium. She makes electromechanical sound installations, drawings, audio-visual works, how-to videos, sculptural installations and experimental performances with handmade electronics. Her artistic and pedagogical methodologies maintain a strong critique of technology centering on models of empowerment within technological environments. Through deconstruction and experimentation with obsolete household technology and defunct media, her work aims to demystify hidden systems within technology as a way to trace-out structures of economy, power and control embedded throughout capitalist culture.
A lot can be learned about the values of capitalist culture by critically investigating the materiality of the machines, processes and practices of technology that consumer society throws away. In its deconstructed form, domestic technology exposes the confounding ways that humans treat one another and how we engage with our built and natural environments. Darsha Hewitt’s art practice is situated across new media and sound studies and largely grows out of empirical material based experimentation with obsolete technology. She make electro-mechanical sound installation, performances with hand-made electronics, video, drawing and photography. Her artwork is presented internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Hong Kong City Hall (CH), Halle14 – Centre for Contemporary Art (DE), MU Artspace (NL), The Museum of Art and Design (NYC), Hartware MedienKunstverein (DE),Gaitée Lyrique (FR), Ottawa Art Gallery (CA), Modern Art Oxford (UK), The CTM Festival Berlin (DE) and WRO Media Art Biennale (PL). She has been awarded numerous commissions, grants and awards for her work. Within Germany, she was the recipient of an International Production Stipend from The Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art and held a fellowship at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
(Source: Kontejner)