Wrapping

Origin Stories looks at how designers use media, making and production processes in unusual ways to help formulate alternative forms of design practice.

The film theoretician Michael Renov proposed that “fiction is oriented toward a world, nonfiction toward the world.” Insofar as all reality gives birth to possible or other realities, speaking to a world while being in the world does not deny the existence or preponderance of facts. As Renov stated, fiction and nonfiction are "two domains" that "inhabit one another." In this talk, titled Wrapping, Metahaven engages with non-industry cinematic moving images (including their own) through the lens of fiction, poetry, and their mutual involvement.

The work of Metahaven consists of filmmaking, writing, and design. Films by Metahaven include The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda) (2015), Information Skies (2016, nominated for the 2017 European Film Awards), Hometown (2018), and Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) (2018). Solo exhibitions include Turnarounds, e-flux, New York (2019), Version History, ICA London (2018), Earth, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2018), Hometown, Izolyatsia, Kyiv (2018), Information Skies, Auto Italia, London (2016), The Sprawl, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2015), and Islands in the Cloud, MoMA PS1, New York (2013).

Group exhibitions include Ghost:2651, Bangkok (2018), the Busan Biennale (2018), the Sharjah Biennial (2017), the Gwangju Biennale (2016), Private Settings: Art after the Internet, Warsaw Museum of Modern Art (2014), and Frozen Lakes, Artists Space, New York (2013). Recent lectures and events include “An Evening with Metahaven,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019), “After The Sprawl,” Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2019), and “Inhabitant,” Harvard GSD, Cambridge (2020).

Recent publications include PSYOP: An Anthology (Koenig Books, London, 2018), and Digital Tarkovsky (Strelka Press, Moscow, 2018).

Image: Metahaven, Hometown, (2018), two-channel film work. Installation view at Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, 2020.

Event organised by Inigo Minns for Media Studies.