16 – part video series – watch an excerpt here
“Our Non-Understanding of Everything” is a daily practice and a 16 part video-series, in which we observe, sense, trigger, stage and record ways of how our personal tech devices and their building parts exist in our worlds and how the structures of architecture, semiconductors, and circuits become forms of expression reflecting hierarchies, cognitive processes, political thoughts and relationships to our hybrid environments of technology, nature and spirits.
Three parts of the series were shown in Hong Kong at current plans from 9/9/22- 11/06/22 in the show “Witches Own Without” curated by Wong Kit Yi, Eunice Tsang and Lok Wong
Three parts of the series were shown at The Digital Wilds, curated by Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown, at Lump Gallery, NC, as part of the Cosmic Rays Film Festival from March 3-April 2, 2023
Part 08 was shown at the Onion City Experimental Film Festival in Chicago on April 2, 2023 as part of the program: Enchanted Environments
In June, 2023 we launched Spirit World, a series of digital art collectibles. If you want to support our practice, specifically this project, buying these works is a good way to do so. On the occasion of the launch, Vladislav Alimpiev from seditionart did this email interview with us: Blurring the Lines: eteam’s Exploration of Art, Nature, and Technology
Part 08 accompanied by two video-paintings was showing as a three channel video installation in the Documentary Arts Section of the Mimesis Documentary Film Festival from August 15-20, 2023, our installation won the Jury Award in the Documentary Arts Section
For our solo exhibition “Our Non-Understanding of Everything” at Create Gallery in Catskill, organized by Galen Joseph-Hunter and Bianca Felix Biberaj from Wave Farm (October 13 – November 12, 2023) we installed a projection wall (12 x 8 feet) and two free floating screens on which we projected two video-paintings. Each week – for the duration of the show (5 weeks) we projected two different videos from the series, inviting visitors to get a sense of the larger scope of this project and come back regularly to watch the different iteration.
On October 17, 2023 Radio Host Justin Maiman invited us to his Ginger Radio Hour, where we talked together with media theorist Natasha Chuk about what it means to be in a mode of “Non-Understanding”
Natasha Chuk wrote a review of our show in Catskill for the November 2023 issue of Chronogram
… The work conceptually calls to mind Nam June Paik’s TV Garden (1974) but for the 21st century. Caterpillars, snails, moths, and frogs unwittingly pass through, producing a stark visual contrast between their bodies and LCD screens, plastic, and metal materials and between the thickness of insect time and the fast pace and immediacy of a highly technological world. This idea is complemented by an intricate sound design and the occasional image of a skyscraper, whose immutable architecture and lack of visible activity contrast the accelerated lifestyle of our techno present.
These combinations suggest that the thin surface separating one intricate system of interconnection and complexity from another shifts the impression that these staged encounters are interactions between opposites. As we’re dwarfed by the large scale of small creatures on large screens, we’re reminded of our own small stature in a massive, incomprehensibly vast universe, and even in our own towns and cities. We can recognize the ways we’re like an insect that crawls across the reflective surface of a silicon wafer, or a gecko that taps nonsensically on the keyboard of a smartphone, or a deer with a gaze of curiosity and attention when facing a camera. We’re both bigger and smaller than many things. We’re among countless creatures living in a massive grid that entangles and connects us all. In this way, the work reflects a cognitive assemblage of knowledge building and meaning making while also, delightfully, acknowledges our non-understanding of everything. – Natasha Chuk
Part 04 was screens at the recontres internationales paris/berlin – new cinema and contemporary art festival as part of a program called “Non-Human, All Too Human and was held at the Musee de la chasse et de la nature, on November 3, 2023
From November 4 – December 17, 2023 we are showing five parts of “Our Non-Understanding of Everything” in an immersive video installation – together with with lololol.net ( Sheryl Cheung and Xia Lin) at PS 122 gallery in NYC in a show called: Semi-Conducting Hand-Held Moons
In her review: eteam’s Video Art Reflects on Our Pervasive Physical Entanglement with Technology Jeong-A Kim writes:
eteam’s perspective invites the viewer to think about agency: is the slug that folds its body over the wafer’s surface exploring, or escaping? The images of buildings and technological devices remind us of the human manipulation required for these encounters to happen. The animals’ meandering interactions with the devices mirror our own; we are animals placed in a different physical situation but with similar animal reactions. It is unlikely the animals experience such mental dissociation as humans do. Can we claim control of our technology when we absent-mindedly scroll every 6 seconds to the next video or article?
A quote that seems to speak directly to our project: “This is a new sublime. A landscape totally dictated by function, data and engineering. The scale alters, the human becomes almost irrelevant. The paraphernalia of human habitation can be reduced. We are in a moment of transition now, in a half-human, half-machine architecture. Is this a post-city? If we articulate it properly it could be insanely beautiful.” Rem Kolhaas
The conception of this project started during Covid lockdown in Taipei 2021 in close collaboration with lololol.net ( Sheryl Cheung and Xia Lin)
Parts of this project were made possible through the support of a Fulbright Scholarship 2021 & by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Fiscal Sponsorship for this grant was provided by Wave Farm.
eteam further received assistance through a PSC-CUNY grant and a City College of New York 2023 Rifkind Center Fellowship. Thank you!
