Anna Manankina. “Vegetable Kingdom...Vegetable Anarchy”, 2023. SensUs exhibtion.

From 5 to 7 May at the Karlsruhe Art Fair, we are relaunching our augmented reality (AR) platform SensUs Art, featuring new works by Karlsruhe-based artists. During the coming months, the AR platform will be complemented by new artworks from Riga-based artworks. The new AR exhibition SensUs. Augmented Nature-Cultures will open in Karlsruhe in August, Riga in September and Toronto next year. It is a collaboration between RIXC Riga and NAIA Kalrsuhe.

Check out the video teaser of the SensUs exhibition HERE.

In 2019, Karlsruhe received the UNESCO designation “Creative City of Media Arts” as the first and so far only city in Germany joining in the international UNESCO Creative Cities network. In Karlsruhe, against this backdrop, a network of more than 40 institutions from the fields of art, culture, science, creative industries, the digital scene, municipal enterprises and departments has committed itself to form a sustainable urban society with a special focus on creativity and culture.

For the first time, Karlsruhe’s art and cultural institutions will present a joint presence at art KARLSRUHE 2023 in their own space, the “Forum Karlsruhe” in Hall 1. With media art at the center of the space – as the nucleus of the identity of the city of Karlsruhe – the most recent productions created in Karlsruhe as part of the UNESCO funding program of the Department of Cultural Affairs will be on display alongside the works curated by the ZKM | Center for Art and Media:

SensUs is an Augmented Reality exhibition that makes visible the invisible processes happening in the urban nature of Karlsruhe. Isabella Münnich, Anna Manankina and Jung Eun Lee have created virtual artworks that examine the symbiotic relationship between biological and social processes, trace historical and current developments of nature-culture, and visualize scientific, ecological and social data. The SensUs virtual artworks are geolocated in specific urban sites (such as museums of natural history, botanical gardens, city forests, or national parks) where nature–culture manifests in its most intertwined and symbiotic way. By focusing on a more-than-human perspective, the SensUs exhibition challenges the previously dominant anthropocentric view of our environment and envisages the future of Karlsruhe as an inclusive and sustainable nature–culture city. The SensUs artworks were funded in 2022 as part of the UNESCO City of Media Arts Karlsruhe project funding program for media arts and will be virtually located at the site of the State Museum of Natural History (available from August 2023), featuring three Karlsruhe based emerging female artists. The exhibition is curated by Rasa Smite and Daria Mille, produced by RIXC and NAIA.

In their interactive video installation “The Silent Chaos of Colors” (2020, 2021), Holger Förterer and Eva Judkins inspire visitors to immerse themselves in the world of colors. In this work, the art audience perceives their own body as a reflection, drawn by thousands of luminous, flowing color particles. The particles react to movements of the people, can be swirled and thrown.

The web-based artwork ” Himmel über Karlsruhe” (2022) by Michail Rybakov shows the current color of the sky over Karlsruhe, live. Just the color. Whether rain clouds or sunrise, whether Sahara sand paints the sky yellow or the winter appears gray, himmelueberkarlsruhe.de records the colors and shares the Karlsruhe sky with the entire world. The collected light is archived and the resulting ribbons of color narrate a story, a story of days gone by that is special to each person.

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe is demonstrating at this year’s art KARLSRUHE that art always has a political dimension, too, with the artworks of Ukrainian female media artists. In addition, the online platform “antiwarcoalition.art” will be showcased. With its new scientific-artistic director Alistair Hudson, the ZKM | Karlsruhe presents itself as an open and polyphonic place that is, in the spirit of the “useful museum”, a center for the city’s diverse society, but also for people nationally and internationally.

“art KARLSRUHE is a marvellous platform to present the current media art production emerging from Karlsruhe. Based on digital media, media art productions are eminently suitable for expanding our own perceptual range and for bringing us into mutual dialogue, creating connections, and innovatively reflecting on and promoting our perception of the world. In Karlsruhe, we benefit greatly from the special strength of cooperation between universities, institutions and city societies, from which the initiatives revolving around UNESCO City of Media Arts, such as the Schlosslichtspiele, are carried”, states Dominika Szope, Head of the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Karlsruhe.

At the booths of the “Forum Karlsruhe”, among the publications available will be the Monopol special issue entitled “Karlsruhe – UNESCO City of Media Arts / Medienkunst in Karlsruhe: Hier wird die Zukunft gebaut”, which was released in April 2023.

The art KARLSRUHE audience is cordially invited to immerse themselves in the concentrated cultural presentation with the local actors.

In 2019, Karlsruhe received the UNESCO designation ‘Creative City of Media Arts’ as the first and so far only city in Germany joining in the international UNESCO Creative Cities network. In Karlsruhe, against this backdrop, a network of more than 40 institutions from the fields of art, culture, science, creative industries, the digital scene, municipal enterprises and departments has committed itself to form a sustainable urban society with a special focus on creativity and culture.

The presentations at art KARLSRUHE are a joint endeavor by the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe Marketing und Event GmbH, Karlsruhe Tourism GmbH, the External Relations and Strategic Marketing Department of the City of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe Messe- und Kongress GmbH, and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. With the Stadtwerke Karlsruhe and Sparkasse Karlsruhe, important partners from the business community also support the realization of the media art presentations at art KARLSRUHE.