Rirkirit Tiravanija ATC Lecture

About

Rirkrit Tiravanija, “The Way Things Go”

Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium February 23, 2015, 7:30-9:00pm The David Brower Center, Berkeley CA

Co-presented with the Arts Research Center, Berkeley Center for New Media, The Brower Center, and the UC Berkeley Art Practice Department along with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

About the lecture: Well-known for installations which invite viewers to cook, share meals, and interact with one another, Rirkrit Tiravanija is widely recognized as playing a critical role in the development of artwork that engages the social space, and has been cited by French critical theorist Nicolas Bourriaud as a key example of his theory of Relational Aesthetics. In this lecture, Tiravanija will discuss his current exhibit, on view at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from February 13th – May 24th, 2015; The Way Things Go is an expansive curatorial project which uncovers narratives, reveals personal stories, and shares vignettes that lead to a larger understanding of migration of people in the production of material culture.

Tiravanija invited artists from Asia and Europe, as well as from the San Francisco Bay Area, to contribute works related to the circulation and anthropology of seeds, plants, food, recipes, and related materials of kitchen culture that have circulated across regions and time. Featuring 12 artists projects and a wide range of work, from mixed-media installations to film, video, archive-oriented art, The Way Things Go explores how personal effects, gourds, seeds, a recipe, and sugar all yield stories that go beyond each artist’s personal intention, and creates a larger story of interwoven meanings embedded in cultural geography and spatial history.