Culture & Technology

WADS Garden for Ars Electronica Festival 2020

WADS speaks of plurality and plentifulness, of conjoining principles, disciplines and possibilities. As a virtual space compiled of local artists, it sets out to explore the potential of digital hubs as grounds of artistic and technological co-creation. It imagines a garden of commoning where artists pollinate the digital by employing a technique derived from gardening: namely, grafting.  

 Aware of the effects of such techniques over nature, some of the qualities found in graftingrarely witnessed elsewhereplay a central role in WADS. Gardening in the digital, a form of immaterial labour, allows artists to cultivate and critically reinterpret their practice for the web. Grafting entails delicate care and a commitment to longevity. Each chimeric mien explores the feedback between the virtual and the physical, locale and átopos, politics and the paradox of a labour that grows by consumption. The collectively grafted landscape invites visitors to indulge in each experience separately and in respect to one another.  

These interconnected ecologies contribute to ‘unnatural’ mergings, propagating and spreading an alternate digital common. A nice framework for worldbuilding. One to grow, to work, to flourish and to wither in.  

 Participating Artists:  
Raissa Angeli, Maria Andreou, Marina Ashioti, Pandelis Diamantides, Anastasia Dolitsay, Peter Eramian, Ibrahim Latif Ince, Stelios Ilchouk, Marina Kassianidou, Irini Khenkin, Angeliki Koutsodimitropoulou, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Marietta Mavrokordatou, Panagiotis Mina, Faysal Mroueh, Lina Protopapa, Doros Polydorou, Despina Rangou, Kleanthis Rousos, Elena Savvidou, Nico Stephou 
 

Curatorial Team: 
Demetris Shammas, Constantinos Miltiadis, Emiddio Vasquez, Myrto Aristidou 

Experience >