Institutional Presentation Statement 

CCCB Auditorium, June 14th Session: Heritage community and citizenship

Keywords: Cultural heritage, practice-based research, virtual condition, digital art conservation, hybrid museum experience

The aim of Beyond Matter is to develop novel solutions for the accessible digital documentation and networked presentation of physical exhibitions. Our experiential and research-based methodology will provide a basis for developing both museological and technological aspects, while also providing museums and galleries with tools for the virtualization, documentation, and revival of exhibitions.

Beyond Matter is an international, collaborative, practice-based research project that takes cultural heritage and contemporary art to the verge of virtual reality. The project is funded by the European Union and the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media. The project runs from 2019 to 2023.

Despite being a project per se, the endeavour, specifically its online platform, can be understood as being a decentralized hybrid institution. Beyond Matter takes cultural heritage and contemporary art to the verge of virtual reality. It reflects on a condition of art production and mediation that is increasingly virtual with a specific emphasis on spatial aspects in art production, curating, and mediation. A plurality of possible solutions and options that are emerging alongside the development of computation is explored through numerous activities and formats, such as the digital revival of selected past landmark exhibitions, the curation of art and archival exhibitions, conferences, artist residency programs, an online platform, and publications.

Initiated and led by ZKM, Karlsruhe (DE), the collaborative endeavor relies on partnerships with the Aalto University in Espoo, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Tallinna Kunstihoone, and Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art. It understands practice-based research as a process within the museum context that encompasses the development and creation of museum experiences, their evaluation with the inclusion of the audiences in order to develop best practices for museum professionals who are increasingly required to apply digital tools.

In attempting to depict the virtual condition, the project probes the ways in which physical and digital space are interdependent and seeks to inhabit computer-generated space as an assembly—as a platform for exchange, for the contemplation and mediation of art—without approaching it as a virtual copy, a depiction or digital twin of actual physical spaces.

• Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás (Hungary) is a curator and art historian. She has curated exhibitions at institutions of contemporary and media art worldwide since 2006, including at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, DE), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Tallinna Kunstihoone, Műcsarnok Budapest, focusing on the constantly changing media of contemporary art and intersections with various disciplines. She has initiated and developed thematic exhibitions raising questions such as the genealogy and social impact of planetary computation and computer code, electronic surveillance and democracy, and synesthetic perception. As of 2019 she has started research in curatorial studies on the “virtual condition” and its implications on the exhibition space at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, and as acting head and initiator of the international collaboration project entitled Beyond Matter at ZKM | Karlsruhe, which enjoys the partnership with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Aalto University, and others.