WINTERSESSION 2020: Vortrag: Experimenting with Obsolescence

There is a lot to learn about the anthropocentric values in capitalist culture by critically investigating the materiality of machines and the processes and practices of technology that consumer society throws away. In its deconstructed form, everyday domestic technology exposes the confounding ways that humans treat one another and how we engage with our built and natural enviroments. In 'Experimenting with Obsolescence' Darsha Hewitt presents a 'bottom-up' approach to artmaking with generations of consumer electronic waste.

Darsha Hewitt's art practice is situated across new media and sound studies and largely grows out of empirical material based experimentation with obsolete technology. She make electro- mechanical sound installation, performances with hand-made electronics, video, drawing and photography. Her studio practice and teaching methods alike take an adventurous hands-on /media-archeological approach to art making, where hidden systems within technology are de/re-mystified as a means to trace out struktures of economy, power and control embedded throughout western culture. Her artwork is presented internationally, with recent exhibitions at Hong Kong City Hall (CH), Halle 14 - Centre for Contemporary Art (DE), MU Artspace (NL), The Museum of Art and Design (NYC), Hartware MedienKunstverein (DE), Gaitée Lyrique (FR), Ottawa Gallery (CA), Modern Art Oxford (UK), The CTM Festival Berlin (DE) and WRO Media Art Biennale (PL). She has been awarded numerous commissions, grants and awards for her work. Within Germany, she was the recipient of an International Production Stipend from Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art and held a fellowship at Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences at the University of the Arts in Berlin.