In conceptual art, art becomes a Trojan horse: an unexpected, sometimes subversive, means of creating ideas in the mind of an audience.
Meet artists who have copyrighted their own mind, let the world send messages to US and UK spies, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time, hired people to live the same lives across the world, and attempted to genetically engineer God.
As part of our current exhibition, Mental Work, we present artists with strategies that dismantle boundaries between art and society, which aims to open up new thoughts to grasp today's world. Through such thought experiments, the audience become actors, exploring the boundaries between performance and spectacle. No recording is allowed: be there to get a glimpse into the secrets of conceptual art practices.
Program
6pm — doors open 6:30pm — stories & concepts 6:45pm — discussion 8:00pm — reception8:30pm — doors close
Bios
Mathias Jud Mathias Jud, of the artist duo Wachter and Jud, were both born in Zurich and live and work in Berlin. The pair are professors at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, have participated in international exhibitions and have been awarded international prizes. Their art works include open-source projects that uncover forms of censorship of the Internet, undermine the concentration of political power and even resolve the dependency on infrastructure. The tools, provided by the artists, are used by communities in the USA, Europe, Australia and in countries such as Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, China and Thailand. Activists even participate in North Korea.
Florence Jung Florence Jung is an artist who infiltrates contexts and situations. Not much evidence of Florence Jung’s works is left behind. They exist merely as records from those who experienced them, as countless individual versions, some ever-expanding and others forever forgotten. Jung lives in Amsterdam, where she is artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. She was awarded the Swiss Performance Prize in 2013, the Swiss Art Award and the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize in 2017.
Jonathon Keats Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic, Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher based in San Francisco and Northern Italy. His conceptually-driven interdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society through science and technology. In recent years, he has installed a camera with a thousand-year-long exposure – documenting the long-term effects of climate change – at Arizona State University; opened a photosynthetic restaurant serving gourmet sunlight to plants at the Crocker Art Museum; exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork decoded from Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope data at the Judah L. Magnes Museum; and applied quantum mechanics to banking – coaxing money into a quantum superposition to be shared by everyone – at Rockefeller Center. Others TBC.
Partners
The swissnex San Francisco edition of Mental Work and related programming is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Bertarelli Foundation, which tackles some the biggest challenges in neuroscience and marine conservation. Based in Switzerland, it supports research at Harvard Medical School and Campus Biotech, a neuroscience center in Geneva established by the Bertarelli family, the Wyss Foundation, the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva. Part of the Swiss Touch campaign, Mental Work receives additional support from Wearable Sensing and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
show less
Meet artists who have copyrighted their own mind, let the world send messages to US and UK spies, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time, hired people to live the same lives across the world, and attempted to genetically engineer God.
As part of our current exhibition, Mental Work, we present artists with strategies that dismantle boundaries between art and society, which aims to open up new thoughts to grasp today's world. Through such thought experiments, the audience become actors, exploring the boundaries between performance and spectacle. No recording is allowed: be there to get a glimpse into the secrets of conceptual art practices.
Program
6pm — doors open 6:30pm — stories & concepts 6:45pm — discussion 8:00pm — reception8:30pm — doors close
Bios
Mathias Jud Mathias Jud, of the artist duo Wachter and Jud, were both born in Zurich and live and work in Berlin. The pair are professors at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, have participated in international exhibitions and have been awarded international prizes. Their art works include open-source projects that uncover forms of censorship of the Internet, undermine the concentration of political power and even resolve the dependency on infrastructure. The tools, provided by the artists, are used by communities in the USA, Europe, Australia and in countries such as Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, China and Thailand. Activists even participate in North Korea.
Florence Jung Florence Jung is an artist who infiltrates contexts and situations. Not much evidence of Florence Jung’s works is left behind. They exist merely as records from those who experienced them, as countless individual versions, some ever-expanding and others forever forgotten. Jung lives in Amsterdam, where she is artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. She was awarded the Swiss Performance Prize in 2013, the Swiss Art Award and the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize in 2017.
Jonathon Keats Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic, Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher based in San Francisco and Northern Italy. His conceptually-driven interdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society through science and technology. In recent years, he has installed a camera with a thousand-year-long exposure – documenting the long-term effects of climate change – at Arizona State University; opened a photosynthetic restaurant serving gourmet sunlight to plants at the Crocker Art Museum; exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork decoded from Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope data at the Judah L. Magnes Museum; and applied quantum mechanics to banking – coaxing money into a quantum superposition to be shared by everyone – at Rockefeller Center. Others TBC.
Partners
The swissnex San Francisco edition of Mental Work and related programming is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Bertarelli Foundation, which tackles some the biggest challenges in neuroscience and marine conservation. Based in Switzerland, it supports research at Harvard Medical School and Campus Biotech, a neuroscience center in Geneva established by the Bertarelli family, the Wyss Foundation, the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva. Part of the Swiss Touch campaign, Mental Work receives additional support from Wearable Sensing and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
In conceptual art, art becomes a Trojan horse: an unexpected, sometimes subversive, means of creating ideas in the mind of an audience.
Meet artists who have copyrighted their own mind, let the world send messages to US and UK spies, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time, hired people to live the same lives across the world, and attempted to genetically engineer God.
As part of our current exhibition, Mental Work, we present artists with strategies that dismantle boundaries between art and society, which aims to open up new thoughts to grasp today's world. Through such thought experiments, the audience become actors, exploring the boundaries between performance and spectacle. No recording is allowed: be there to get a glimpse into the secrets of conceptual art practices.
Program
6pm — doors open 6:30pm — stories & concepts 6:45pm — discussion 8:00pm — reception8:30pm — doors close
Bios
Mathias Jud Mathias Jud, of the artist duo Wachter and Jud, were both born in Zurich and live and work in Berlin. The pair are professors at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, have participated in international exhibitions and have been awarded international prizes. Their art works include open-source projects that uncover forms of censorship of the Internet, undermine the concentration of political power and even resolve the dependency on infrastructure. The tools, provided by the artists, are used by communities in the USA, Europe, Australia and in countries such as Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, China and Thailand. Activists even participate in North Korea.
Florence Jung Florence Jung is an artist who infiltrates contexts and situations. Not much evidence of Florence Jung’s works is left behind. They exist merely as records from those who experienced them, as countless individual versions, some ever-expanding and others forever forgotten. Jung lives in Amsterdam, where she is artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. She was awarded the Swiss Performance Prize in 2013, the Swiss Art Award and the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize in 2017.
Jonathon Keats Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic, Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher based in San Francisco and Northern Italy. His conceptually-driven interdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society through science and technology. In recent years, he has installed a camera with a thousand-year-long exposure – documenting the long-term effects of climate change – at Arizona State University; opened a photosynthetic restaurant serving gourmet sunlight to plants at the Crocker Art Museum; exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork decoded from Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope data at the Judah L. Magnes Museum; and applied quantum mechanics to banking – coaxing money into a quantum superposition to be shared by everyone – at Rockefeller Center. Others TBC.
Partners
The swissnex San Francisco edition of Mental Work and related programming is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Bertarelli Foundation, which tackles some the biggest challenges in neuroscience and marine conservation. Based in Switzerland, it supports research at Harvard Medical School and Campus Biotech, a neuroscience center in Geneva established by the Bertarelli family, the Wyss Foundation, the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva. Part of the Swiss Touch campaign, Mental Work receives additional support from Wearable Sensing and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
read more
Meet artists who have copyrighted their own mind, let the world send messages to US and UK spies, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time, hired people to live the same lives across the world, and attempted to genetically engineer God.
As part of our current exhibition, Mental Work, we present artists with strategies that dismantle boundaries between art and society, which aims to open up new thoughts to grasp today's world. Through such thought experiments, the audience become actors, exploring the boundaries between performance and spectacle. No recording is allowed: be there to get a glimpse into the secrets of conceptual art practices.
Program
6pm — doors open 6:30pm — stories & concepts 6:45pm — discussion 8:00pm — reception8:30pm — doors close
Bios
Mathias Jud Mathias Jud, of the artist duo Wachter and Jud, were both born in Zurich and live and work in Berlin. The pair are professors at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, have participated in international exhibitions and have been awarded international prizes. Their art works include open-source projects that uncover forms of censorship of the Internet, undermine the concentration of political power and even resolve the dependency on infrastructure. The tools, provided by the artists, are used by communities in the USA, Europe, Australia and in countries such as Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, China and Thailand. Activists even participate in North Korea.
Florence Jung Florence Jung is an artist who infiltrates contexts and situations. Not much evidence of Florence Jung’s works is left behind. They exist merely as records from those who experienced them, as countless individual versions, some ever-expanding and others forever forgotten. Jung lives in Amsterdam, where she is artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. She was awarded the Swiss Performance Prize in 2013, the Swiss Art Award and the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize in 2017.
Jonathon Keats Acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic, Jonathon Keats is an artist, writer and experimental philosopher based in San Francisco and Northern Italy. His conceptually-driven interdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society through science and technology. In recent years, he has installed a camera with a thousand-year-long exposure – documenting the long-term effects of climate change – at Arizona State University; opened a photosynthetic restaurant serving gourmet sunlight to plants at the Crocker Art Museum; exhibited extraterrestrial abstract artwork decoded from Arecibo Observatory radiotelescope data at the Judah L. Magnes Museum; and applied quantum mechanics to banking – coaxing money into a quantum superposition to be shared by everyone – at Rockefeller Center. Others TBC.
Partners
The swissnex San Francisco edition of Mental Work and related programming is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Bertarelli Foundation, which tackles some the biggest challenges in neuroscience and marine conservation. Based in Switzerland, it supports research at Harvard Medical School and Campus Biotech, a neuroscience center in Geneva established by the Bertarelli family, the Wyss Foundation, the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva. Part of the Swiss Touch campaign, Mental Work receives additional support from Wearable Sensing and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
show less
Date/Times:
Pier 17, Suite 800, San Francisco, CA 94111
The Best Events
Every Week in Your Inbox
From Our Sponsors
UPCOMING EVENTS
Great suggestion! We'll be in touch.
Event reviewed successfully.