JODI: OXO

Join us on Saturday, April 21, 2018 for a conversation with JODI, the pioneering artist collective formed in the mid-1990s by Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. JODI will discuss their work and their recent Lightbox Gallery installation  JODI: OXO  with Jon Cates, associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This talk is presented in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (ICA) exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today (February 7–May 20, 2018).

OXO (2018), commissioned by the Harvard Art Museums, is on view in the Lightbox Gallery through April 23, 2018. Based on the game tic-tac-toe, it is an interactive multichannel installation influenced by early computer games such as Noughts and Crosses or OXO, built in 1952 by Alexander S. Douglas. JODI’s installation responds to this early history of computing, war games, and artificial intelligence, using the game tic-tac-toe as an important cultural artifact. 

JODI’s work has been featured at documenta X; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, in Germany; Bonner Kunstverein and Artothek, in Bonn; InterCommunication Center, in Tokyo; Centre Pompidou, in Paris; Centre for Contemporary Arts, in Glasgow; Guggenheim Museum, in New York; Eyebeam, in New York; and FACT Gallery, in Liverpool, among many others. In 2014, JODI was awarded the inaugural Prix Net Art Award by Rhizome, a leading art organization dedicated to born-digital art and culture affiliated with the New Museum in New York. Frequently experienced online, JODI’s work is considered to be among the most influential productions by artists working in the early age of the Internet. By using game play and language and abstract and layered forms, JODI extend histories of Fluxus and code-based performance (Paesmans studied under artist Nam June Paik at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf), transforming the aesthetic and functional territory of our desktop into something new.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway. Doors open at 1:30pm. Free admission, but seating is limited. Tickets will be distributed beginning at 1:30pm at the Broadway entrance. One ticket per person. Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

JODI: OXO at the Harvard Art Museums is supported by a grant from The Creative Industries Fund NL. Support for the lecture is provided by the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.