London LASER 02
Tuesday 18 March 2014
6.00 – 8.30pm (talks start at 6.20pm)
Room E003, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, 1 Granary Square,
Kings Cross, London N1C 4AA
The second London LASER for 2014 hosts artist and professor Rob Kesseler talking about his ‘life through a lens’, writer and curator Jasia Reichardt on the origins of theGaberbocchus Common Room, and artist Sophia Kosmaoglou discussing the currentEncyclopedia Galactica exhibition at GV art gallery.
The event is free but booking is essential: londonlaser02.eventbrite.co.uk
Prof. Rob Kesseler is a visual artist who works at the interface between art, design and science and holds the position of Chair in Arts, Design & Science at the University of the Arts London. A former NESTA Fellow at Kew and Research Fellow at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, Portugal, he has collaborated extensively with botanical scientists and molecular biologists in an exploration of the living world at a microscopic level. Rob will be talking about his ‘life through a lens’, which for the past twelve years has involved close observation of the microscopic natural world, in an attempt to reveal its hidden forms and patterns. http://www.robkesseler.co.uk
Jasia Reichardt is a writer and curator, who has written about art and science and technology and, among many others, organised the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity in 1968. Jasia will talk about the Gaberbocchus Common Room, a London club for artists and scientists, and people interested in the philosophies of art and science, to meet, talk, watch films, listen to lectures, drink coffee, play chess and eat spaghetti. The Common Room was launched by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson in the basement of their publishing company, Gaberbocchus Press. It opened in the summer of 1957 and closed two years later. It was there that she attended the first lecture on Pop Art, was introduced to cybernetics, something very new at the time, and realised that mathematical models can be thought of as sculptures.
Sophia Kosmaoglou is an artist working in a broad range of media, including sculpture, painting, installation, video, performance and sound intervention. In 2012 she completed a practice-based PhD in Fine Art titled “The self-conscious artist and the politics of art: from institutional critique to underground cinema”. Sophia teaches studio practice, curating, critical theory and the history and philosophy of art. She has been a member of numerous artists’ collectives and, as a member of Exploding Cinema, she is currently planning a Festival of Independents. Sophia will talk about the current retrospective of GV Art gallery, which she co-curated, Encyclopedia Galactica (13 Feb – 17 Apr 2014). The exhibition charts the last five years of the gallery programme and initiates a research project on the Gaberbocchus Common Room. www.gvart.co.uk
Refreshments will be provided by the laboratories of the notorious quacksalver, Daniel Simon Ayat.
London LASER is hosted by University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science and The Lens) and University of Westminster (Broad Vision art/science research and learning project and CREAM), in association with Leonardo/ISAST (the International Society for Art, Science and Technology). LASER is a project of Leonardo® /ISAST.