Art in Motion: Masterpieces with and through Media

Co-produced by: ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the Beijing ZONHOM Arts and Cultural Development Co., Ltd, and New Media Arts Foundation. 

The exhibition Art in Motion presents the development of media art through a selection of important apparatus-based masterpieces—from photography to cinematography and sound art; the theater of machines and projections; radiophonic and televisual art;  video art; media-based action and Fluxus arts; and the networked and collaborative artistic practices of the last decades. This exhibition, organized by the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, is part of a major show “Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen 2023” at the Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning.

Art in Motion focuses on the question of how technological media have changed our perception—from the first camera lens to the new possibilities of perception through digitization. The works in the exhibition have not been selected on the basis of the classic notion of an image which is oriented on painting, for this always attempts to bend back the new media towards the traditional visual arts and hinders understanding of how the media arts have developed. The coevolution of wheel-based technologies, such as clockwork and calculating machines, transportation machines like automobiles and trains, as well as the image machines that have not only brought forth moving pictures, moving sculptures, and moving spectators, but also ushered in the changeover to electromagnetic production, storage, and distribution media, is an area that is still an open research field. This is why it is important to advance understanding of the development of this art genre by presenting a selection of canonical works.

This “operative canon,” is radical in many respects, not least through the inter- and transmedial claim that omits strategic genre divisions such as video art, film art, media installation or net art and rather focuses on links and interrelations. The exhibition thus shows the connections between early avant-garde films, cinematographic art as the illusion of motion, and kinetic art, the art of real movement. Furthermore, the closed-circuit installations of early video art are closely linked to the theories of cybernetics, the science of control, regulation, and message transmission, which in turn pushed the development of computer-based and digital art.

These connecting lines of development are presented for the first time in Art in Motion in a coherent overview. In this way, the exhibition also takes a look at the current thematic areas of today’s media-imbued society. An important focus is on the democratization of the media arts that began in the 1960s through the active inclusion and participation of the public in interactive artworks.

Curators: Peter Weibel (†), Siegfried Zielinski, Daria Mille, Zhang Ga

Art in Motion was conceived and first exhibited at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe based on a concept by Peter Weibel and Siegfried Zielinski. The adaption Art in Motion. Masterpieces with and through Media is co-produced by the ZKM | Karlsruhe, and the Beijing ZONHOM Arts and Cultural Development Co., Ltd and New Media Arts Foundation.

The realization of the exhibition is generously supported by the German Foreign Office.

Exhibition venue: Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning (MOCAUP)