YOUniverse
exhibition at BIACS3, the 3rd edition of the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain
2 October 2008- 11 January 2009

Discover a “new universe” – YOUniverse !

The curators Peter Weibel, Wonil Rhee, and Marie-Ange Brayer map out a new cartography of Global Art, World Art in the context of today's information and communication society with works by approximately 100 leading and emerging artists.

The democratisation of art and the emancipation of the masses:
Society changes with media, technology, science, architecture, art, design, ... Today's society participates active in these changes because of the democratic tools to make personal opinions public. This is a brand new equation between woman and man and their environment. YOUniverse refers to the interactivity of each individual with a universe – namely, his or her own personal universe.

You are invited to personally interact with the contents of the exhibition! According to the artistic director Peter Weibel in YOUniverse the visitor will be the protagonist.

The leading idea is to make “the democratisation of art and the emancipation of the masses by means of the individual’s interaction with his environment, which has been modified substantially by information and communication technologies,” visible.

Themes of the exhibition:
Curator and artistic director Peter Weibel (born in Odessa, Ukraine, 1944) as an early and eloquent champion of a theory of media and communication investigates the inherent laws and mechanisms of the various media since many years. He and his co-curators selected creations by around 100 artists about the themes mobility, individualisation through technologies, quantum physics, nanotechnology, hydraulic engineering, architecture and the environment.

One aspect is to show the democratization of art. The audience, rather than the artists, is the star. The other aspect will be that technology as man-made nature can help to solve our problems with natural environments.

Technology as man-made nature:
Check out how the latest technologies have provided us with a gateway to an unknown world where we find that human beings are the nexus for all connections between science, art, technology and media, and that we have the power to control these ties. “The tendency at present is to democratise the use of technology; from personal computers and mobile phones to faucets and light switches, new technologies allow the user to adapt the environment to his needs, anytime, anywhere”.

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The exhibition is divided in 4 sections:
Section 1 > the great masterpieces of media art, from Nam June Paik to Bill Viola.
Section 2 > the very latest trends in media art: interactivity and participation of the public, Internet art, multiplayer media, the spectator as user.
Section 3 > biomorphic architecture; the relations between humans and environment architecture invents new technological interfaces.
Section 4 > the city of Seville itself

Check out detailed programs www.fundacionbiacs.com

Video: "Superspeed Weibel", a documentary of Peter Weibel's exhibition in Neue Galerie Graz in 2004; produced by JuliaStaudach.com

About Peter Weibel:
Artist, media theorist, curator, museums director,... Peter Weibel studied literature, medicine, logics, philosophy and film in Paris and Vienna.

Beginning with work in the tradition of visual poetry, Weibel produced «media-based
literature» in the form of paper, photographic and object poems, body texts and material
poetry, text objects and video texts. In the late 1960s he worked in the field of Expanded Cinema, action art, performances and film together with his partner Valie Export; his interdisciplinary activities comprise scientific, artistic as well as literary, photographic, graphic, plastic, and digital works.

Since 1976 he has lectured widely at universities and academies in Europe and the US. After heading the digital arts laboratory at the Media Department of New York University in Buffalo from 1984 to 1989, he founded the Institute of New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt in 1989. Between 1986 and 1995, he was in charge of the Ars Electronica in Linz as artistic consultant and later artistic director. From 1993 to 1999 he was curator at the Neue Galerie Graz and commissioned the Austrian pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Peter Weibel has worked as Professor at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna and has been Chairman and CEO of the ZKM_Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, since 1999.