FAX invites a multigenerational group of artists, as well as architects, designers, scientists and filmmakers, to conceive of the fax machine as a tool for thinking and drawing. Although the technology for transmitting printed images and texts over distance dates from the nineteenth century—a machine by Scottish mechanic Alexander Bain patented in 1843—it was the introduction of the modern fax through commercially available machines in the 1970s that turned facsimiles into a ubiquitous communications medium for international business. Artists readily exploited its immediate, graphic, and interactive character, making it an important part of the history of telecommunications art, nestled between the legacy of mail art and the nascent practices of new media.
Faxes by nearly 100 artists sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center will form the core of the exhibition, including seminal examples of early telecommunications art. Each institution on the tour will invite up to twenty additional artists to submit works, which will be presented at all successive venues. These works may be transmitted to each participating institution’s working fax line throughout the duration of the exhibition. The active accumulation of information—received in real time, in the exhibition space—will include drawings and texts, and even the inevitable junk faxes from telemarketers and local businesses as well. All the transmitted pages will be archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which may produce new faxes from invited artists at any moment. The result—an ongoing cumulative project—is a show concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation. Here, reproducible yet erratic production via the fax machine displaces traditional notions of the hand‚ still commonly associated with the medium of drawing, and foregrounds the role of drawing as a generative process.
The exhibition is curated by João Ribas, curator of The Drawing Center in New York, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue co-published by iCI and The Drawing Center.
Para/Site Art Space is pleased to finally bring Move on Asia to Hong Kong.
Move on Asia is one of Korea’s leading videoart initiatives. It started 2004 in Seoul, arranged by Asian curator networks. Each year, the Asian curator networks nominate experimental artists and opens single channel video exhibition. The selection includes artists from Korea, Japan, China, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Hong Kong joined this last edition for the first time in 2009, with the participation of Para/Site Art Space in the programme. Representing Hong Kong are local artist Hung Keung and curator Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya.
The exhibition gathers some of the most exciting videoart from Asia, under a new theme every year. In 2009 the general theme confronts us the idea of the end of Video Art and the appropriation of genres that are connected to the filmic and documentary fields. Have the boundaries of video art vanished? What is left from the changes that videoart has undergone over the last decade? The exhibition includes 19 curators and almost 30 artists from the region.
About the guest curator
João Ribas is curator at The Drawing Center in New York and an art critic. Among his recent projects are an exhibition of Matt Mullican’s work, 2008; New Economy, 2007; and Ryan Gander: Loose Associations, 2007. He has also created an online platform for experimental film and durational work called Expanded Cinema. Ribas teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Participating artists
Nadim Abbas
Julieta Aranda
John Armleder
Roy Ascott
Tauba Auerbach
Fia Backström
Darren Bader
Cecil Balmond
BANK
Colby Bird
Pierre Bismuth
Barbara Bloom
Mel Bochner
Tobias Buche
Ian Burns
Cabinet Magazine
Etienne Chambaud
Cleopatra’s
Peter Coffin
Jan De Cock
Collage Center West
Liz Deschenes
Helen Evans & Heiko Hansen
Morgan Fisher
Claire Fontaine
Yona Friedman
Aurélien Froment
Ryan Gander
Wineke Gartz
Liam Gillick
Marisa González
Dan Graham
Joseph Grigely
João Maria Gusmão &
Pedro Paiva
Wade Guyton
Skuta Helgason
Charline von Heyl
Matthew Higgs
Huang Xiaopeng
Eduardo Kac
Matthew Keegan
Zoe Keramea
Tom Klinkowstein
Rem Koolhaas
Germaine Kruip
Lam Hoi Sin
Glenn Ligon
Ronald L. Mallett
Jackson Mac Low
MAP Office
Sanna Marander
Corey McCorkle
Josephine Meckseper
Eric Mitchell
Simon Dybbroe Møller
Olivier Mosset
Warren Neidich
Kambui Olujimi
Erkka Nissinen
Serge Onnen
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Mai-Thu Perret
Prachya Phinthong
Michalis Pichler
William Pope.L
Seth Price
The Propeller Group
Qiu Anxiong
Blake Rayne
Tobias Rehberger
Pedro Reyes
Kay Rosen
Amanda Ross-Ho
Pamela Rosenkranz
Arnd Seibert
Matt Sheridan Smith
Sonia Sheridan
Alexander Singh
Dexter Sinister
Josh Smith
Rich Streitmatter-Tran
Anne Tardos
Cheyney Thompson
Christian Tomaszewski
Nestor Torrens
Wolfgang Tillmans
Edward Tufte
Stan VanDerBeek
Wan Qingli
Olav Westphalen
Christopher Williams
Jack Whitten
Johannes Wohnseifer
Adrian Wong
Doris Wong
Magdalen Wong
Morgan Wong Wing-Fat
Cerith Wyn Evans
Exhibition Credit Line:
FAX is a traveling exhibition co-organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and iCI (Independent Curators International), New York, and circulated by iCI. The guest curator is João Ribas. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue were made possible, in part, by members of the Drawing Room, a patron circle founded to support innovative exhibitions in The Drawing Center’s project gallery; and by support to iCI from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and iCI Benefactor members Agnes Gund, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, and Barbara and John Robinson.
Curator: João Ribas
Curator in Hong Kong: Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya
Co-organizers: iCI (Independent Curators International), New York and The Drawing Center, New York
Main curator:Jinsuk SUH (Director of Alternative Space LOOP in Korea)
Organized by:Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul) in collaboration with Para/Site Art Space
Public programme
Gallery Talk:
(Sunday) 7 February, 2:30pm
Speaker: Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya (Exhibition Curator in Hong Kong) at Para/Site Art Space
Public Lecture – Video in Asia:
(Thursday) 25 February, 7:30pm
Speaker: Isaac Leung at Para/Site Art Space
