Learned Friends; Piasecki vs Wade

05/08/23 • 59 min

Nina Davies shares her work ‘Learned Friends; Piasecki vs Wade’ for episode 14 of the show. It is a fictional podcast voiced by characters Riley and Devon, who discuss legal cases that present the rising issues of using predictive technology within the justice system. Set in a world where technology documents the future just as well as in documents the past, people have begun to move in pre-programmed ways as a matter of safety, to be better detected by self-driving cars or correctly prescribed medications. In this episode we explore Nina’s research alongside guest co-presenter Jorge Poveda Yanez. Together we connect the moving body to forms of digital choreography and truth making to predictive movement technologies.

Bios;

Nina Davies is a Canadian/British artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture; how it's disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed. She recently graduated from Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art where she was awarded the Almacantar Studio Award and the Goldsmiths Junior Fellowship position. Her work has recently been exhibited and shown at Transmediale, AdK, Berlin; Seventeen, London; Matt’s Gallery, Mattflix program; Circa x Dazed Class of 2022, Piccadilly Lights in London, Limes in Berlin, K-Pop Square in Seoul, Fed Square, Melbourne; Overmorrow House, Battle; and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick. In 2021 She co-founded Future Artefacts FM with artist Niamh Schmidtke and was awarded an Arts Council Project Grant to produce their 2022 programme.

Jorge Poveda Yanez is a dancer, theater-maker, researcher, and scholar working with new technologies, human rights, and the arts. He is currently the editor of Ghent University's DOCUMENTA journal, which focuses on theatre and performance studies. His training as a dancer/anthropologist (UCA - France), Performer (UCE - Ecuador), and Social Scientist (UDLA - Ecuador) led him to enroll in UCR's Ph.D. program in Critical Dance Studies, where he currently works as a Teaching Assistant too.

Artist: Nina Davies

Hosts: Jorge Poveda Yanez and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

Bios;

Artist: Nina Davies

Hosts: Jorge Poveda Yanez and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

Previous Episode

The diamond's less sexy sister

In this episode we welcome our first guest presenter, Ariane Koek, to discuss Niamh Schmidtke’s work-in-progress, The diamond’s less sexy sister. Somewhere between a radio essay and a voicenote, the 5 minute piece explores human relations to minerals, specifically with graphite. Combining scripted and organic conversation, prose and academic information, the audio slips in and out of speculation; is that a mineral speaking, or a person speaking about a mineral? Together we untangle Niamh’s current research as part of their artist in residence program at TU Berlin, with the Science Gallery Network and fully funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. We collectively question the ways minerals could speak for themselves through technology, materiality and the act of holding hands.

Bio:

Niamh Schmidtke (b. 1997, Dublin) is an artist based in London with Irish/ Swedish heritage. Their work playfully sits between installation, sculpture and writing, exploring the political implications of ‘being green’. They completed their MFA at Goldsmiths, London with a First Class Honours in 2021 and hold a Fine Art Honours BA from Limerick School of Art and Design (2019). Their work has been exhibited and collected internationally, including a solo exhibition at Limerick City Gallery (2019). In 2020 they were a recipient of the European Investment Bank’s Artist Development Fund award and in 2022 they were shortlisted for the Gilchrist Fisher Award. In 2023 they will be artist in residence at TU Berlin, as part of the Earth Wind Sky residency, culminating in a new commissioned work with the Science Gallery Network and fully funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primate. They currently co-produce Future Artefacts FM with Nina Davies, a radio show supported by the British Arts Council Lottery Fund and the Elephant Trust.

Ariane Koek is anglo-american-dutch, internationally recognised for initiating in 2009 the Arts at CERN programme – based at the world’s largest particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland. She designed and directed the Collide, Accelerate and Guest artists programmes for the first five years until 2015.

Koek now works independently, specialising in advising on and/or designing new transdisciplinary programmes and residencies for foundations, cultural institutions, science laboratories, museums and universities around the world, including the Endowment fund of the International Red Cross Committee (FICRC), The Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA; Cavendish Physics Laboratories, Cambridge University, UK; and Science Gallery International Network.

In 2018 she initiated the Earth Water Sky environmental science and arts research, production and exhibition programme, which is fully funded by Fondation Didier et Martine Primat. It was the first artists residency programme done by the Science Gallery International network, and began at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and for its final edition is at TU Berlin where Ariane is working with Niamh in 2023.

Artist: Niamh Schmidtke

Hosts: Ariane Koek and Nina Davies

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead

Next Episode

Infinite Customisation

Please join us for this special episode of Future Artefacts FM with Joe Moss’ audio piece Infinite Customisation. In this 17 minute audio-book style work, we meet the ghost of J. Thaddeus Toad, transported from the 1908 novel, The Wind in the Willows, and risen in the future. Following Toad’s perceptions, the work draws contrasts between the linear perspective of industrial England in the 1910s to a far different reality of revolving subcultures, nostalgia and technological beings. With Joe, we unpack the connections between nostalgia and progress, where Toad’s opinions may come from and where the idea of modernity still haunts the present day. Together we consider Toad’s legacy, how he implies capitalistic growth, and what economic alternatives that throws up, while considering the impact these larger models have on our cultures and connections with one another. For our regular listeners, you’ve been hearing Joe’s amazing work since episode one, as he is one of our music producers on the show!

Joe Moss makes work with a vast appetite for pre-existing cultural and material references. Connected by the logic of collage, Moss’ works weave together the contemporary logics of a variety of fictions, examining cultural threads from high-fantasy to streetwear with entertaining and slightly sinister results.

Moss’ diverse output ranges from solo presentations to radio production to collaborative exhibition-making. Recent projects include Model Village at NN Contemporary, Homegrown on the Hauser & Wirth website, residencies at Eastcheap Projects UK and Stokkoyart Norway, and The London Bronze Editions Foundry Fellowship. Moss graduated with a BA from Central Saint Martins in 2015, spent three years on the Conditions Studio Programme between 2019 and 2022 and is currently enrolled on the MFA programme at the Slade.

Artist: Joe Moss

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead