The Greek artist Takis has often worked with magnets and electricity to produce innovative new sculptures and musical devices. His imaginative ways of thinking prompted responses from the American Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
As Takis’s new exhibition at Tate Modern opens, this panel discussion explores how leading artists, writers and thinkers are approaching technology today. What are the utopian possibilities of technology? How might poetry and beauty be found in everyday devices? What is the darker side of our dependence on digital technology?
Contributors include the artist Adham Faramawy and the artist and poet Caspar Heinemann, with the panel chaired by lecturer Zara Dinnen (Queen Mary University of London).
Biographies
Adham Faramawy
Adham Faramawy is an artist based in London. His work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation and print, engaging and using technology to discuss issues of materiality, touch, embodiment and identity construction. Solo exhibitions include There’s this thing, this feeling... Naughton Gallery, Belfast; Janus Collapse (the juice box edition), The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Feels Real, Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam and Hydra, Cell Projects, London. In 2018 Adham presented a show on virtual reality for BBC Radio 4 and had a performative make-up tutorial broadcast on Channel 4. Adham was shortlisted for the Jarman award 2017 and his video works have been included in screening events such as Flatness, Oberhausen Film Festival, Syndrome of a Decade, Ikono Film Festival, Diamond Dust – A Shifting Grammar of Originality, Circa Projects, Edinburgh Arts Festival and 21st Century Pop at the ICA, London touring to Turner Contemporary, Margate, MK, Milton Keynes, Cornerhouse, Manchester and Tramway in Glasgow.
Caspar Heinemann
Caspar Heinemann is a writer, artist, and poet. Their interests include critical occultism, gay biosemiotics, and countercultural mythologies. Recent events include a US tour and readings at the Baltic Triennial, CAC Vilnius, Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht, and KW, Berlin. They have exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, and Outpost Gallery, Norwich and been a guest tutor at Chelsea College of Arts, the University of Reading, the Sandberg Institute, Goldsmiths, and HEAD, Geneva. Their first book is forthcoming from The 87 Press. They were born in London, UK, roughly 2.5 months after the release of Green Day’s seminal album Dookie.
Dr Zara Dinnen
Dr Zara Dinnen is Lecturer in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Digital Banal (Columbia University Press, 2018). @zara_dinnen