Introduction to Unsettled Artifacts

• Paula Gaetano Adi

• SIGGRAPH 2017: Unsettled Artifacts: Technological Speculations from Latin America

Category:

• Essay

• The motivation for the 2017 Art Gallery was, in fact, not only to examine the current state of art, science, and technology, but also to return a sense of “agency” to these technological artifacts and to help us recognize that we all make the choices that create the future. Therefore, convinced of the power of the poetics of technological speculation, and with the intention of mapping the ground on which we can imagine alternative futures, the Art Gallery traveled south in order to exhibit works of art produced outside the traditional centers of industrial and technological development, by artists living and working in Latin America.

• 1. See W. Mignolo, e Idea of Latin America (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). On Latin American contemporary art, see L. Camnitzer, On Art, Artists, Latin America and Other Utopias, R. Weiss, ed. (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2009); G. Mosquera, “Against Latin American Art,” in Contemporary Art in Latin America (London: Black Dog, 2010) pp. 12–22.

  2. For an excellent study on these conditions, see E. Median, I. Marques, and C. Holmes, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014).

  3. For more on the politics of technological artifacts, see variously B. Latour, “Where Are the Missing Masses? e Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” in W.E. Bijker and J. Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); P. Verbeek and P. Vermaas, “Technological Artifacts,” in J.K. Olsen, S. Pedersen, and V. Hendricks, eds., A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); L. Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” in e Whale and the Reactor (Chicago, Ill./London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986).