Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, visual artist and designer. His first novel in 1991 was Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. He has published thirteen novels, a collection of short stories, seven nonfiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. Coupland’s novels and visual work synthesize high and low culture, web technology, religion, and changes in human existence caused by modern technologies.
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery approached Coupland in the spring of 2010 with the idea of comissioning a major outdoor sculpture. His personal relationship with Arthur Erickson, the architect of the 1987 gallery expansion, and his ongoing interest in mid-century modernism, made the proposal particularily appealing to Coupland.
The approximately 27′ x 11′ relief sculpture entitled Group Portrait 1957 was permanently installed on the north/west facade of the RMG in September 2011.
Read more about the sculpture here.
Beijing Posthastism
A show curated by Shumon Basar, Joseph Grima, Hans Ulrich Obrist and The Pavilion.
At the end of 2011, Hans Ulrich Obrist announced that, together with the curators and writers Shumon Basar and Joseph Grima, they had founded a new movement called “Posthastism”. The movement is based on what they describe as a “sudden feeling of posthaste”: a collective impetus to go beyond haste. To de-accelerate.
On June 22, 2012 this urge will be channeled into the Beijing context and the three founders, in collaboration with The Pavilion, will start to map a trajectory of Posthastism as a mode of practice in contemporary China.
Exploring the different rhythms and velocities of the city and its related environments, as well as the vectors that connect it to a global web, with support from the Goethe-Institut China, the event will investigate the ways in which the Posthastism resonates with contemporary life and
cultural practice.
Opens June 22, 2012
The Pavilion
2503 – B-Building 2, Northern District
Pingod Community, No.32
Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District Beijing 100022, China
Read more on artinfo.com
Electric Ikebana is an audio-visual collaboration by writer/artist Douglas Coupland and musician Paul Humphreys from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with the Global telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent.
The concept was to compose a musical track that interacts with telecommunications data of internet traffic and online activity, expressed in a visual manifestation.
Raw numerical data is visually translated into particles and their shape, colour, and quantity are determined by internet traffic volume and type.
It‘s the audio that initiates the coming together of the particles as they’re being driven by the music to build a digital form.
Each viewing is unique. This is due to the experience pulling in user‘s location and time of day while they control the point-of-view, fluidly moving around the environment.
The result is a creation that gives a voice and form to the online network, inspiring new possibilities of digital expression and electronic imaginings.
October 9, 2012
Limmatquai 62
Zürich, Switzerland 8022
www.literaturhaus.ch
Coupland wil be discussing the work of Ed Ruscha at his Bregenz retrospective, as well as reading and discussing his own writings set in California.
October 10, 2012
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Bregenz, austria
The Serpentine Gallery Memory Marathon is the seventh in the Gallery’s acclaimed Marathon series. This two-day event will be an exploration of memory, archaeological excavation, historical recordings as well as digital storage and the effect electronic preservation has on human memory. Exploring the overlaps and interactions between artistic practice and scientific enquiry, the Marathon has become deeply interwoven with the annual Pavilion commission. The design of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012, by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, takes its inspiration from the work of archaeological excavation, as a material unearthing of memory.
Among more than 60 participants confirmed so far are former REM vocalist Michael Stipe; filmmakers Amos Gitai and David Lynch, who will present a new film; historians Eric Hobsbawm,Jay Winter and Donald Sassoon, who together will explore the theme of ‘War Memory’; celebrated neuroscientist Israel Rosenfield, who will introduce ‘The Problem of Memory’ with writer John Hull, robotics expert Luc Steels and World Memory Champion Ed Cooke; artists Olivier Castel and Ed Atkins on ‘Deception and Self-Deception’; publisher Jefferson Hack; scent expert Sissel Tolaas on ‘Sensory Memory’. Other contributors include Harvard astronomy professor Dimitar Sasselov; writer and critic John Berger; writer Douglas Coupland; poet John Giorno; writer and cultural historian Marina Warner; author and technologist China Miéville; artists Gilbert & George; architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron and Fumihiko Maki; composer Gavin Bryars with poet and painter Etel Adnan.
Memory Marathon
October
13–14, 2012
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
T 020 7402 6075
F 020 7402 4103
information@serpentinegallery.org
For more information www.serpentinegallery.org
