StART Digital

StART is excited to take our first steps to embrace the growing demand for digital art. This year we will showcase 8 emerging digital artists from around the world, under the curatorial stewardship of Mr Huang Yi, Advisory Council member of the 19^th Arte Laguna Prize, chief curator of the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Korea, and academic curator of the 9th Shanghai Youth Art Fair.

The title of this exhibition is ‘Global Digital Art: Walter Benjamin's Dialogue with Digital Intelligence’.

The exhibits cover photographic, video, and digital intelligence artworks, showing the evolution and innovation of digital art in different historical stages.

Exhibition Objective:

Through the exhibition, we hope to stimulate the public's attention and reflection on digital art and encourage the audience to think about how the fusion of technology and art is shaping our culture, society, and political ecology. The curatorial concept focuses on the evolution and innovation of digital art in different historical contexts. Through these works, we hope that the audience will appreciate that digital art is not only a product of technology, but also an important medium to reflect on and intervene in social reality.

By the time of the Second World War, which corresponds to Benjamin’s era, the relationship between art and technology had begun to reveal challenges to traditional art forms. In today's era of digital intelligence, such challenges and integration are even more profound and complex. The works in the exhibition will reveal how digital art promotes social change, expresses cultural identity, and challenges existing political power structures in the context of globalisation, prompting viewers to consider the future direction and potential of art forms in the digital age.

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) is a German philosopher who has substantial contribution to the philosophy of aesthetics, art, and technology. His essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility’ has extensive influence on photography and film. He is a Marxist and sees technology(‘technik’), such as the use of a camera, as a Marxist concept fundamental to Marxist historical development. He believes the development of technology is the motor of history as it empowers forces of production.

Benjamin also explores the relationship between nature and humanity via art, as he sees the primary social function of art, especially film, to be rehearsing the interplay between nature and humanity. Film is particularly powerful as it unfolds ‘all the forms of perception’, which in itself is a form of revolution.

‘I am excited to be able to bring such a collection of artists together for this special moment.’

Huang Yi, independent curator